My Budget 455 build

Hi guys. I picked up a 70' SF code 455 a few years back and have very slowly collecting parts and prepping pieces to do a budget rebuild on it. Initial autopsy upon dismantling it back then showed it was reasonably low wear on it so I decided to just do a refresh of the engine using stock pistons, rods and crank. It is standard bore and standard crank. I am doing my best to get what I can performance wise out of it. I have done some previous posts asking a few questions in the past but thought I would do a post on the build now as it is finally coming together. My goal is to have it assembled and ready for a later Spring installation in my 66' Skylark. That car is currently running the same 70' SF code 455 I pulled from a 70' Riviera. That engine has been in there for over 25 years. (Where does the time go?) I was extremely tight on money in those days so it had very little done to it and has served me well.
I will follow up with some more posts to get me up to date.

Attached some pictures of how I purchased it. It was listed as a 430 but I spotted it was a 455 right away. I just did not tell the seller.

 

Now onto the build. I think the first thing I rebuilt from the engine a few years back was the timing cover. I went through it opening up and smoothing all the oil galleries and installed a high volume Melling pump with thrust plate. I already had this kit in my parts so even though most recommend not to use the high volume pump I stuck with it. There has been a high volume pump in my other engine for over 25 years with absolutely no issues to I am fine with it.

The next thing I did was build up the heads. I stripped the heads, opened & cleaned up the bowls and did a little work to the runners. The chambers were unshrouded around the valves and polished up. I then had the heads machined for Stage 1 valves and milled the heads .010". Chambers ended up at 68.5 cc. I machined for modern positive valve seals and TA 1125 dual springs. I did those heads about 4 years ago now. I managed to build these for pretty cheap by buying other folks unused parts. I have a good local machinist to use and he knows Buicks fairly well. He works for cash and is reasonable if you give him time to do things in between his regular work. I have attached some pictures of the heads. I don't seem to have any pictures of the fully finished ports with the valve seats opened for the Stage 1 valves.
Greg

 

I wanted some better oil control in the pan and a little more capacity so I decided to modify one of my pans by adding some windage control on the shallow area. I have over an inch of clearance from my front crossmember to the shallow part of my pan so I made the original pan layer into the windage tray and cut one of the mid sump big car pans up I had and added a new layer over top with about a 1/2" gap for the oil to return to the sump. I also added some sump baffles to hold the oil around the pickup and enlarged the pan sump a little. It is not the prettiest piece but will do the job. I think sometime when I have more time I will make a new fully fabricated pan from the rail left over from that old mid sump pan I cut up. I wanted to move on to the engine build so it was complete for Spring so this was the quicker way of dealing with that for now. I think it will work pretty good.
Greg

 

I followed Jim's tutorial and did pretty much all the oiling modifications. I have a 5/8" pickup, and enlarged the suction line to 5/8". I went with the external oil line to the back to "Dual Feed" the main oil gallery. I have installed TA cam bearings and I also drilled a 3/32" hole to feed oil into the back end of the drivers side gallery from the back cam journal. Since I was doing a dual feed and the TA bearings are back grooved on all I thought why not feed some oil to the back of that gallery. While likely unnecessary, I like the idea.
I am also taking my oil pressure gauge wet line from the drivers side back gallery.
Greg

 

I had my machinist check the crank and the journals were in good shape and nice and round so he polished the journals and left them standard. I deburred the casting flash on them as some of it was rough and super sharp. Always good to smooth out any stress risers.
Greg

 

I honed the cylinders at hone first with a 3 shoe hone and then a quick few passes with the ball hone. I have my own torque plate so thought I might as well use it. It makes it easier to run the hone back and forth without having the hone fall out of the bore. They cleaned up ok but are not ideal. There are a couple rust spots and scratches still in there but they are pretty smooth. I am going to send it. I have another engine to build after this that will be a little higher budget and it can get a full bore with new pistons.
Greg

 

I am using the stock 70' pistons and rods. They will be the weak link but in the budget. I fit ARP rod bolts, vapour blasted the pistons and then skirt coated the pistons with Molykote and the domes with Cerakote piston dome coating. I have enough to do pistons for the rest of my life so thought there is no harm in coating these ones. I have used Speed Pro Rings and bearings for this build.
Greg

 

I am up in Canada and we have had some cold wintery weather around Vancouver so I had to wait for a warm enough day to give the block a final wash. Looking forward to Spring.
Greg

 

The last of the work I did was to get the rear main seal in. BOP engineering seal. Then install the bearings and crankshaft. Main bearing clearance ended up being .002" which is a little tight but with no machining done it will have to do. I am using Speed pro 3/4 groove bearings on this one. Next up was to install the cam, timing set and slip in a piston. I am using a TA C113 cam in this build along with a Cloyes 3 way timing set. I ended up installing it in the 4 degrees retarded position to get the lobe centre at 109.5 for 3.5 degrees advanced. The cam card had suggested to instal at 113 for 0 advance but I wanted to keep the dynamic compression up and went to the advance position. I would have to use my 9 way timing set to get it straight up anyway and I am saving that set for my other engine. The cam card has notes added to show what the actual install numbers were.
Greg

 

I have CCd the heads and pistons so I have accurate dimensions for all the compression calculations now. Originally the Pistons were .055" down in the hole. After knocking .o20" off the deck we are at .035" now. I have Cometic .027" MLS head gaskets. My compression ended up being 9.85:1 Static and 7.39:1 Dynamic. I have heard the factory specs were pretty optimistic and this shows you how true that is. Pistons were 22 CC and chambers ended up being 68.5 CC.
Greg

 

Following.....

 

I' going to follow your build as well. Thank you for posting it up!

 

I like that calculator - can you post a link?

 

Did you resize the big end of the rods after the ARP bolts?

 

Did you have the big end of the rods resized after installing the arp rod bolts. They fit drastically different than stk and quite often effect the journal shape. Even seen plenty where because they locate the cap differently they actually become offset after installing the arp bolts. I've had to go through 3 sets b4 to get a set that match up after the new bolts are installed.

Other than that sounds like elbow grease well applied and money well saved. Stk rods and pistons are plenty strong enough to run well into the 11s when proper parts are combined and I personally have put thousands of passes on stk rods in the low 12 high ten second area on a well balanced motor..........the cost to balance even a stk motor is money well spent and will add life.

And on our bbb it's not uncommon to need to take a little out of stk crank even in stk form to get the modern clearance we like........the factory specs were up to what we call way too tight now.......so if your at .002 the only way to get more is take it off the crank

 

Spot facing is often required for them to sit correctly

 

I lost a cam and when I was putting the motor back together I noticed the caps had not been spot faced the first time around and the nuts were just barely seating, binding up agains tthe chamfer of the cap. . I have no idea how I didnt lose a rod, or why I didnt check that when it went together initially. Even if they look good, always insist on having it done.

 

I really like this compression calculator as well. https://www.jeepstrokers.com/forum/calculator/

 

I would have liked to spend a little more money to balance this one but it I am out of time and money on this one so the stock balance will have to do and I will live with the somewhat tight .002".
I have not resized the rods and that was a concern of mine when I pressed those bolts in. I will double check the nuts to the cap to see if I need to deal with spot facing them as well. I will contact my machinist to see if he can fit me in to do a rod resize for me. I work a rotation of two weeks away then have near two weeks off so I try to get work done when I am back home. Hopefully he can fit me in or my work will be stalled next time home.
Thanks for the advice.
Greg

 

I love seeing the avi8ing way of doing things!

Including washing things (like aircraft and engines) in the snow.