Joe.....I agree the nailheads were pretty tough but my 67 Riv GS 430 will take yours. :laugh: :3gears: Best of 14.36 (26 in. slicks), 155,000 miles with heads and intake never off, BONE stock with 20 yr old Midas 3 ft long mufflers, and a good tune on the carb and dist and a new timing chain at 104K. Bruce
I don't know what mine runs in the 1/4 but I'm always up a good challenge. Mine may or may not be faster, but I know I made the right engine choice. If you can beat me with a stock 430 it won't be by much. :bglasses:
It seems to me that these are BOTH goos motors! I know the 430s and 455s have some problems taking HUGE HP mods, but that should be a thing of the past with the new block. I hate to say it but if you look at a well maintained engine from the factory, most 430s and 455s will laugh at 100,000 miles. It is usually when the end up in the hands of a machine shop that thinks it's just a Chevy, that they go down hill fast! There is enough information and parts out there to build a nice mild 400-430-455 that will ROCk and be solid as a rock too so unless you are going for an all out effort motor, I think the 430 is a great motor. Even the full race 455s hold up well..........untill they bust the block that is! Ken
Yeah, the nailhead block looks stout. I wonder how much hp it can handle. The heads hold it back but alot of NO2 can make up for it! :rant:
Why do you hate to say it? When my 462 was still a 455, it had two cracked pistons with bad rings for God alone knows how long, and it had 40K miles that I put on it, plus the 76K miles it had originally. I pulled the motor to fix the pan seal and that's how I found out the pistons were bad!
I was never able to do 100,000 miles with a 430-455. My 67 had 74,000 miles when the engine blew, my 68 Wildcat's 430 was rebuilt at about 98,000 and again at 127,000. My 76 Electra's 455 did quit at 96,000 and my 75 isn't too far from this condition at 80,000... The 430 I rebuilt for my Riv had just 51,000 miles on it... In stock form, they were not the most reliable engines! These engines were known for oil pressure problems. My 65 Wildcat's 401 with a single Carter carb isn't as strong as the Riv's 430 but it is a great engine. It has never been rebuilt in 40 years! It never overheats, Has good oil pressure, runs smoother and it's performance is more than adequate! I'm less afraid to floor the gas pedal on my Wildcat!
Sounds like the 455 I have now! Pulled it apart to clean it, ring it & cam it and found a cracked skirt. I would bet that if I put it back in, it would go a long long time but now that I see it, I have a whole new can of worms here! It's really hard to just do a re-ring! If I NEEDED that motor to get me to work, I'd throw 1 piston in it and go!! What I meant to say is lots of the problems aren't with the motor ,but with how they are machined or rebuilt and some of the factory parts do have lower performance limits than those on other motors. Ken
I agree that machine shops have to rebuild them correctly but even from the factory, they were not as solid as the 401-425 engines.
A 430 might be more powerful but it won't be stronger! If it makes the car go make faster, it will also probably break sooner :laugh:. I know that the right aftermarket parts will make 430-455 engines much better. T/A makes improved timing covers, oiling mods and block girdles certainly help a lot too but we are talking about more expensive rebuilds that I can afford! Of course, I wouldn't have to do it twice if I did it that way! I guess that very few people ever did this kind of mods to an engine that was going to sit in a mid seventies Electra like mine! I wish I could afford it!
My engine has 138 thousand on it. I can't understand why the engines with less than 100 on them would ned a rebuild unless something really bad was done to them. My 455 has always run smoothly. It starts up in cold weather, and has always run really well. Even when the engine is making the clicking sound it runs well. I can barely hear it run on the inside of the car. If it needs to be rebuilt, although I'd like the experience, I don't have the room, or the knowledge to do it. My Lincoln has a reserved spot in the garage, and it barely fits two cars as it is. I'll just have to sell it. o No:
Come on.....If well maintained a 400-430-455 will easily last at stock power levels without any oiling mods etc even at higher power levels. I'm making 650 hp with stock oil pan, rods, stock front cover, no girdle. Lets not perpetuate the myth that any 455 over 500 hp needs a girdle! What it needs is a good engine builder. It's not as tolerant to incorrect bearing clearances as a Chevy or Nailhead. :Brow: I sincerely believe that part of the reason that 430s/455s sucumb too early is that they run so well that people run them harder than the tractor-like 401/425s. Sorry had to say it.....and yes tractors do last. :laugh: Bruce
You dare to refer to a Nailhead as if it were on the same level as a chebby? And you never even used a capital N.........SHAME ON YOU! :spank: :rant: :laugh:
Yow! I'd beg to differ...yup, they had/have oil issues, but I've seen tons of 455's around here with WAY over 100K miles on them, many with less-than-good maintenance schedules. Keep clean oil in them, don't floor them until they're warm, and a stock 455 would last 150-200K before needing opening up (not counting that stupid nylon timing chain...). Heck, I know of 2 engines right now with over 300K on them, the oilpan or valve covers have never been off! One has the original timing chain! :eek2: (prolly has 2-3 inches of slack by now...) ...it's got to have something to do with your colder climate up there...
The driving habits and the cold temperature aren't helping Buick engines in Quebec. At cold temperatures, the OIL light remains on for as much as 20 seconds after the engine is started and the engines have to run on the fastest position of the fast idle cam for at least two minutes before the choke opens. On my 65 and my former 68 Widcat, if I don't wait for the engine to warm-up, the "'cold" light stays on for 5 minutes while driving and frequently comes on again the first time the thermostat opens. Also, we must use 5W30 oil in winter. I have always changed the oil and filter at every 2000 miles and I always used good quality oil and AC Delco filters. It's true that most people drive much more agressively than in the U.S., and they don't respect signalisation or speed limits. I was amased to see people respecting the 15 MPH speed limits in school zones in the U.S. Here, nobody does that, they do 35-40 MPH instead. On the highway, I usually drive at 85 MPH and many go faster than I do, even if the speed limit is only 62MPH.
Ok, back to the original problem, I read something online from a buick place that if i could hear a ticking noise gradually upon warmup this is what it said. Loud noise at normal operating temperature only. If a lifter develops a loud noise when engine is at normal operating temperature, but is quiet when engine is below normal temperature, it indicates an excessively fast leak down rate or scored lifter plunger. Recondition or replace lifter. Thats from buicks.net, how much would a lifter replacement be and how difficult is it for a novice with the help of shop manuals to do?
Not hard to do at all, just tedious getting in there... Use a piece of heater hose to narrow down which lifter/rocker is ticking, then pull the valve covers and recheck/confirm/narrow it down. Unhook everything from the top of the engine - hoses, carb linkage, etc, so you can remove the intake manifold. Pull the rocker arms (easy on a Buick, they're all on a shaft), then the pushrods, keeping them in order (poke them through a piece of cardboard). Pull the intake manifold with or without carb (heavier with), then you're looking at the lifters. Simply push the bad lifter(s) up out of their bore, and replace with a good one. You'll want to get some cam lube to put on the bottoms of the new lifters, if you replace them. You might get lucky and they'll clean up, but I'd doubt it, and I don't now how you'd check one out of the engine (unless you have a leakdown tester). Parts needed: Valve cover and Intake manifold gaskets, some pooky, and however many good lifters it takes. Tools: nothing special, a "normal" hand tools oughta do it.
No point in just replacing a few lifters.........may as well just replace the whole set........the first ones failed and the rest couldn't be too far behind. Most of the time (but not always) noisy valve action is caused by loose valve guides. Always check that first, do the wiggle test with the rocker arms removed. :bglasses:
400-430-455 eng problems It is my humble opinion that the bearing problems are caused by oil that is too thin. :Smarty: Straight 20 wt or straight 30 wt with a good hp pump is the way to solve most of this kind of problems. :Brow:
