Question about my 69 heads on my 455

Good day everyone.

After spending 35 years going to school, moving around the country to find work after school, getting married, having kids, raising kids and finally almost getting the kids out of the house (both in college now), I am finally ready to get back to restoring / working on my high school hot rod, 72 Skylark Convertible with a 455.

When I built the engine back in high school, working with some guys at the local Buick dealership, I really didn't ask allot of detail questions, pretty much took their word for things. Now that I am on my own I have a ton of question. Today, I have questions concerning my heads.

I have 69 400 heads, casting 1231109, on the attached photo, the circled parts are my questions:

What do the two "dial" points in the upper left corner of each head mean?
What is the "rod" in the upper head coolant hole?
Any idea why my top head has an extra coolant hole than the lower head?
What does the "5" and the "1" mean between each head?

Thank you all in advance for your time and patience with my questions.

 

The number 1 and 5 are the casting mold patterns.
The higher the number of castings needed the more molds the foundry will need.
And as posted, the extra holes are not coolant holes.

 

Thank you Larry and Steve! I just wanted some folks with more experience to say the heads aren't unusual looking.

I do have another question that pertains the carbon build up. Once again, it's been since around 1987 that the engine ran and the heads were taken off shortly before I was laid off for 6 months and moved half way across the country in 1989. But if you look around the bottom of the cylinder (bottom in the picture) you can see some pretty good amount of carbon build up. This engine had less than 10k miles when the oil pump broke and I began to "fix" it. I am wondering if I need to address an issue when I have the engine rebuilt this time?

Now back in the day, I always ran 93 octane or lower if I added octane boost, I don't remember seeing any "smoke" coming from the tail pipes so I don't remember burning oil. I am just wondering if this shows the machine shop I used back then maybe didn't do something right? Wrong ring gap or maybe wrong valve guides or something.

Thanks for the info gents and I hope you both had an enjoyable July 4th!!

 

You have a big cam in it?

 

LOL! Great question! Seriously, I have to go find the cam in the garage (packed away) but it was a Kenne-Bell and I believe it was their Mark C118, 500 lift?

 

What I see from those chambers is that the oil usage was good, but the black is from the Carb feeding a little too much fuel during normal running conditions.
This is ok if it's what's needed to keep a motor out of knock or over heating, but ring, piston ring land and cylinder wall life can be expected to be greatly reduced long term!

Buick heads do not have much in the way of wet fuel sheer points in them to help out with keeping the air and fuel mixed up nice, so if the heads will get some porting work or the valve job touched up measures should be taken to address that and improve that lacking, which inturn will allow the motor / Carb to be jetted leaner yet make more power!

If the motor is getting new Pistons then using ones with the top ring much closer to the piston top will also help out with having all the fuel that gets into the chamber being burned, and this makes for a cleaner running motor and more power to boot, not to mention less ware from less raw fuel diluting the oil on the walls and rings!

 

Thanks again Steve. Being in high school at the time I know the carb wasn't set up correctly. I was running a rebuilt Quad but I am planning / wanting to run a EFI system instead once I get to that point. Also would like to eventually get a set of TA aluminum heads but, once again, that's aways down the road. I'll keep your notes from above for when I am ready to work on these heads.