hey guys, heres a tech oppertunity for all you motor heads out there. lets say youve got a 455 olds of a 1973 vintage and plan on dumping it into a car that would weight about the same as a shoebox ford, for some serious drag action. still keeping it streetable and with out an outragous budget what would you do? any secret head work or cams that seem to work well? how would you build it? tia tim
I've heard that "E" heads are the ones to run. You will want to weld a divider inbetween (SP?) the two center exhaust ports. If you look at a set of Olds heads you will see that the wall dividing the two center ports is recessed somewhat. Bringing the wall out to match the rest will improve exhaust air flow. I'm sure there are web pages that talk about it. My first car was a 1970 Cutlass, Blew up the 350 and bought a junkyard 455. It had something like 510 pounds of torque. It was a monster and completley stock!
I'm presently modifying a 1968 455 that came from the factory with 390 hp and 470ish ft lb of torque...! This was their Highest hp 455 from Olds..!! Their biggest downfall is that the small bore limited the size of the valves and that required tons of special headwork. I have an article at home from "Car Craft" that covers the Big Block Build-Off..., featuring the Olds 455, Buick 455, Chevy 454, Mopar 440, and Ford 460 and all cars were built using similar components i.e. MSD ignition, Edlebrock manifolds, headers, aftermarket heads, and similar cfm carburators. Olds was on the bottom of the list on the Horse power mainly because the engine design is condusive to a dual plane manifold verses a single plane they had used in the test. In other words they didn't have the right combination for the optimum hp and torque where as the same components for the other engines worked better for their design. The article for you...! http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/116_0609_comb/index.html Good luck
Here are some links I have. http://www.dehabeyracing.com/intake.html http://www.taperformance.com/ http://www.postonbuick.com/
Wow! Some good stuff here already. We must remember what the Olds is good at (making face-distorting torque) and what it is not so good at (oiling) to plan the buildup. I like C or E casting heads, with plenty of port work done on the exhaust side. I like Edelbrock's Performer RPM Olds intakes, and I like talking cams with Dick Miller Racing (www.dickmillerracing.com). Headers were a concern before Kooks began making great ones. There are now several heads available too! Bulldog and Edelbrock both have good aluminum castings for street cars. You can get some great buildup advice at www.realoldspower.com and they have a forum covering complete engine buildups with results. If you see a buildup that suits your needs, you can see what kind of power it'll put out too. I like this plenty. When it comes to a big Olds, worry less about the HP number and more about the TQ number. Let the grunt pull the car down the road. Build it to make crazy torque with low compression and a good cam with adequate vacuum, and you won't need a crazy converter or rear gear ratio to wind it up. Torque is underrated. Horsepower is overrated. A balance of both is what's best, and when it comes to building a traditional big-inch Olds, if you can keep the oil where it's supposed to be, you'll have many smiles in store for many miles. They are great performance engines, especially on the street where torque rules. If you can keep traction, they'll run with the best. Scotch~!
Actually, "E"s are the "common" ones, the ones you use if you can't find some Cs or Ds. "C" castings are the first-gen Toronado and/or Hurst/Olds. They're not 'rare' but are definitely hard to find and in demand. Ds, as I recall, were a very rare model- like one year only H/O, maybe? Hi-po stuff, worth bucks. Not really all that much better than the Cs though. Gs are okay, with minor porting can be as good as Cs. Es are more common, all Toronados and most 88s/98s had 'em through the mid/late seventies. With porting they can be pretty good, but takes more work and knowhow than the Cs or Ds. Js are the smogger heads and your last-resort choice. They can be made to work for mild HP applications, but take some solid porting knowhow. As above, either weld the two center exhaust port dividers up to "flush", or add a matching "fin" on the inside of the header/exhaust manifold flange. It's worth 10HP, I'm told, on a hot motor. Fill the exhaust crossovers and port the center bowls to match the outboard ones. That's a big difference in high-output Olds. Ditch the nonadjustable rockers for a set of stud-mounted rollers. Depending on the kit, machine work may be necessary, and you'll need taller valve covers. The Olds lower end is, unfortunately, kind of weak. Places like Mondello offer stud girdles and support rings. The block is too thin to 4-bolt without modification. There's some oiling tricks too- I can't recall the details, but the Olds pushes too much oil into the cam and heads. Adding a restrictor lets more stay on the crank and keeps the valve covers from filling with oil at high RPM. Smooth out the oil returns on the ends of the heads, and at the bottom of the lifter valley. The rest is typical- choose a good cam, roller timing chain, good intake and carb combo, match ports. Doc.
Try using realoldspower.com they are great. Also Lunati has a great line of newly designed solid lifter cams that are great! Remember you might have to add oil restricters to make the engine live at over 6000, and you will need hardend valve seats to run unleaded gas in E heads . Also i belive E heads had 77cc chambers while C's had 80. You can still find dual quad intakes, and edel. has the new victor single plain available. There are some really helpful articles at Joe Mondelos websight mondellotwister.com. As soon as I am done with my 32, im thinking of building a altered wheelbase 51 ford, with a Olds 455 we have laying around. Anyway if you build it on the cheap you should still have enough torque to shear a u-joint or two!! later Marc
This post so far is really informative, alittle over my head (the oiling thing) but maybe Roadstar and walk thru it with me tonight and explain. Won't that make nice Valentine Day dinner conversation? Anyway, in simple terms here's how Big Olds was built, by Just Steve. Perfect for not only the street, but for a once in a while drag race as well, and VERY affordable! He has a '70 Olds 455, Edelbrock Torker intake, Edelbrock 600 carb with electric choke, and a Comp Cams 268 cam, TH400 tranny, rebuilt with Trans-Go shift kit, Rodtronics Trani-cooler installed with the torque converter. Rear end is a '70 GM 10 bolt and about the only thing I would change cuz it sure would be nice to have a posi........one day he will though
Well Tim, a while back Car craft Magazine built a killer 455 olds. The buildup might be in the tech section on the website. Good luck!
I guess I need to read this a little slower next time. Whenn I saw 455 I was thinking Buick. Maybe some of this will lead you in the right direction though. Sorry
So you were running 15's in the quarter with ONE Tire in flames...?!?!?!?!?! Damn..., that's good...! What was your mph??? Mark
New TRW pistons will give you a little over 9:1 comp ratio (even though a lot of literature says 10:1 but it's not accurate). Get a HEI distributor out of a later model Olds V8 (if the 73 doesn't have one). Clean up the ports a little under the valves (bowls) and get a good 3 angle or 5 angle valve job. Run a performer intake if it will see street duty, but a torquer will give you a TINY bit more up top in exchange for (what I feel) is a lot of responsiveness down low. As far as heads go, C's are the supposed best, and my testing on a flow bench has shown that to be true, although I did not test EVERY Olds head... I can tell you that J's suck - bad, and that G's are pretty decent and have hardened seats. I would run a 268 or 272 adv duration cam, with around .500 lift. More cam than that and you rapidly get into expensive valvetrain upgrades. This should make you plenty of power, run on 92 octane, and put a 3800 lb car solidly in the mid to low 13's legit at a track. I ran a combo similar to that with 3.50 gears, a mild converter, and a limited slip & drove it everyday for 4 years. Very good performance for the money. For the record I ran a rebuilt Q-Jet on the performer but have driven similar single plane equipped cars (Holley and Torquer). Get oil restrictors to go in the mains for like $10 and keep it below 5500 RPM and stock oiling (new pump of course) will work fine - more R's than that and you get expensive quick again with fancy pumps and pans. With the bulldozer-like torque these make, you don't need R's to make 'em quick.
I ran a 425 in my stock car years ago- the side clearance on the rods is critical in these motors for some reason. Make sure whoever does your machine work checks it, then check it again yourself!
Can't take credit for that engine build -- it pretty much fell out of the sky and landed on my lap as it was. Bought it from another street rodder who was taking it out of a '39 Chevy (smooth hood sides, couldn't cool it) and replacing it with a SBC. Judging by the paint layers on the block, Big Olds is its third hot rod. But it does work good, don't it? Steve.
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