I am looking into buying a big block engine very soon, I wanted to find out how to tell how much HP this 455 engine put out per manufacturer.

It's a 396021 F (serif type)

Also it has G heads with subscript A.

Is there any way to find out which oldsmobile this engine came from? oil filler tag is missing, was it a 310, 360 or 390 HP engine? what's another identifier? intake manifold?

thanks

 

I just mentioned this tonight here.

- Eric

 

I just bought this exact motor not long ago. Ga heads mean it is a 72' 455 which have very low compression pistons (ive heard between 7.5-8.5 in stock form). Horsepower wouldnt be too amazing, maybe 280 or so, but the torque will still be good in the high 300s maybe around 380. However, just change out the pistons and youre in business as far as compression goes. Almost all 455 heads are 80cc so its a simple piston swap to make good street performance. Thats what i'll be doing. Also the Ga heads are a good head to work with if you dont want to throw down for Edelbrocks (again, what im doing). You should look at the valve covers, oil pan, and whether the motor has/had a flywheel or flexplate. Toronados had a larger oil pan with clearances for the transaxle, Cutlasses had notched valve covers, and if the motor had a flexplate youre in business because it should have large valves. However if there is no flywheel/flexplate you'll have to measure the valves to see whether it is a large or small valve. Dont worry about the block as all 455 blocks are the same, the whole "nickle content" idea has been disproved. How much are they selling the motor for? i got a steal on mine for $100, but anything up to $300 is a good price for a rebuildable core. Ask about spun bearings as a lot of these motors are pulled out for that reason (olds 455's notorious oiling issues). If the motor has notched valve covers id definatly jump on it, those valve covers are rather rare and will bring a decent amount of money, or would make an awesome stock-looking resto if you decided to drop it in a cutlass

 

excuse my french but its a biatch trying to read that engine # from that small plate area! I have a 350 in my cutlass and its impossible to make out anything and I doubt the 455 im looking at is any different.

 

Especially if the motor is in the car. If its out its a simple matter of taking a rag too it and squinting. Not that it matters anyway, the block number isnt going to tell you anything useful that you dont already know. Itd tell you its an Olds and its from 72', both of which you get from the Ga head subscription.

Also i forgot in my earlier post, there were special (i think aluminum?) intakes for 442s and very low profile intakes for toronados, as far as i know those are the only two identifying factors you could get from the intake. Mine came without the intake so i totally spaced that

 

Vega, thanks for your detailed feedback, do you happen to have pictures for the oil pans and valve covers so I can differentiate.

 

I have pictures of my valve covers but i have to leave for work now, i'll upload them when i get home assuming nobody else has uploaded some between then and now. I'll try to find a picture of a toro oil pan. You may be able to google pics of the notched valve covers im not sure. But yeah, i'll get some up when i get home, its no problem

 

if your talking about that little pad with the second half of the vin code on it..... I got it wet with a cleaning solvent and you could read it real well as long as it was wet.

 

Heres a pic of notched valve covers. You can see one has a large indention in it and the other has a smaller indention. These were necessary on the Cutlass to get the accessories to fit under the hood along with the 455 so if the valve covers have these notches it the motor was most likely from a 442
http://www.thepartsplaceinc.com/imag...s/EN10490T.JPG

Heres the smaller normal oil pan
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2155/...4edc7f9bf4.jpg
And the larger Toronado oil pan (its a bad pic but you can see where it dips in in the middle, this was a clearance fix on the front wheel drive Toronado, also notice how the pan is simply larger capacity than normal) the dipin the middle is a sure fire ID of a Toro motor
http://www.gmcmhphotos.com/photos/da...cture_0271.jpg

This page will show and describe many many different Olds intakes, from here you should be able to match yours to this page and find out what it is
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...ke-thread.html


All in all every Ga headed Olds 455 was the exact same except the manual and/or W-30 442s. Those had the larger valves which were 2.072" intake/1.685" exhaust. Every other Ga headed 455 had 2.000" intake/1.625" exhaust. Aside from that W-30s had a performance intake and Toronados had the larger oil pan and a shorter low-rise intake. My 455 has Ga heads and notched valve covers for Cutlass/442 but was not from a W-30 or manual car so it has the smaller valves. Its not a big deal to me though as the valve sizes wont make a big enough difference to notice unless you're bracket racing, and even then youd opt out of the stock heads and go for Edelbrocks. Plus just the fact that the motor was from a Cutlass makes me like it that much more, its just a fun little afterthought since i plan to drop it into a Cutlass anyway

Hope that helps. All 72s had Ga heads and all 71s had G heads which were essentially the same thing. As i previously stated the G heads are a great choice for street performance because they come factory stock with hardened valve seats and have deep spring seats which make it easier to get springs for a high lift cam. They have the same CCs as almost every other 455 head and they flow well. Honestly in my oppinion as far as the common heads go Gs or Gas are the heads to have 2nd only to Cs which are said to flow a little better but still only enough to register very slightly on a dyno and not enough to ever feel the difference. The motor sounds like a great start, keep us posted, id be interested in what you plan to do with it since i recently aquired the exact same motor and am in the process of rebuilding it

 

I can't argue that it's hard to read, or that the GA heads were installed on '72s, BUT, if it were me, I would want to check the number on the block just to assure myself that the block and the heads all rolled off the assembly line attached to one another. A lot of things happen over the years, and, hey, you may have an older block with high-compression pistons with newer heads bolted on to it. The block number wouldn't prove this, but would give you more information to think through.

In the end, it's your choice.

- Eric

 

Thats true too, you cant account for what anyone has done to the motor over the years. Im just assuming its all stock. Although even if it was all stock thats still pretty good. What id do is find out if the block is good or needs overboring, and work from there. Find some good Speed Pro pistons for either stock diameter or .030 over. That should work with just about any street build. stock rods, crank, and bottom end in general on these Olds 455s are damn near bulletproof so anything but a race setup should be fine with a stock bottom end (theres a reason they only ever made these motors in 2-bolt main haha, 4-bolt is just overkill on these beasts). When you get the crank out you'll understand what i mean, that thing is a small steel TREE. Its insane lol

 

Vega, thanks for all the useful feedback. Pictures did help me and I did get the intake casting #.

Before all, there an indents / notches, 3 on each valve cover. So that's a good sign right? from looking at the pics, the oil pan looks more like a 442 oil pan and not toronado's.

Here is the intake # 410448, I dont have the letter ID but it should be U, when I research this code, on http://www.442.com/oldsfaq/ofinm.htm#Intake%20Manifolds
it states
455 4V except W-30, alternate to R for '72. Iron.

what is 4V referring to? Im guessing it's not large valves but small,
and it's the same engine as yours...

So back to my question, Is this from a 442? and/or how many HP was this
advertised as back in the day? 310, 365 or 390 HP?

thanks

 

As far as i know my valve covers have one notch on each valve cover, one being larger than the other. You should try to post a pic of the valve covers if you can. But yeah congrats on the purchase, sounds like its a very good possability that its from a 72' 442. Im pretty sure the 4V just means 4-barrel. Small valves arent a bad thing, large valve Ga heads are extremely rare, besides it shouldnt be a big enough difference to feel.

As far as power goes, back in the day they rated them at about 270-300 horsepower. Most likely in the mid to upper 300s of torque. But GM always notoriously under-rated their motors, plus this is with extremely low compression (about 8:1 on average) pistons and an antique cam. Drop in some higher compression pistons and a modern cam and you'll easily push 400 horsepower and 500 torque (and thats with a stock bottom end and without a whole lot of head or block work, lets see the smallblock guys do that haha). If youre interested in guestimates check out some of carcraft's Olds 455 builds. They use Edelbrock heads but its a good general idea of what power you could expect with a similar build. Also lots of people around here can help you with rebuild questions, parts, etc.

My guess is if your valve covers have those same notches that it shows in the pic its a good bet to say its from a non-W-30 442. Next thing you should do is go to the rear of the motor and see if it has a flexplate or a flywheel. If it has neither you should post a pic of that end of the crank as Olds was very lame with their cranks and while other manufacturers would drill all cranks for use with automatic or manual transmission Olds only bothered drilling the hole for a manual transmission on motors that were being put into manual transmission cars. If you have a non-drilled (automatic) crank you can always get it drilled out or there are adaptors being sold now to use with a manual transmission, but its still annoying that Olds did this. If you have a drilled crank you need to find out fast whether you want to run a manual or not because if not there are a LOT of people who would love to use that crank in a 4-speed set-up, myself included ^_^ hahaha.

 

alright, you just crossed over to my wish #2, I want to convert my car to a manual but my dad got in my head this weekend when i was telling him about it.

He was saying the car is originally automatic and to go 4 speed I would have to do alot of things, starting pedals, clutch, etc.... so I was kind of going away from the idea.

From the pics, you will notice the transmission is attached to the engine, he said its from a 79 camaro, I guess it fits... the oil pan and valves are seen on the pics.

 

Yep, those are indeed 442 valve covers. And looking at the motor it looks like a pretty complete stock setup since its all still got the blue paint on it. Those valve covers alone are worth a couple hundred dollars to a purist. From your pics your motor is a lot more complete than mine was haha, mine didnt have an intake or exhaust manifolds and was black with grime haha. If it were a 70 or 71 i could say they might be 442 or SX valve covers but they didnt make an SX for 72'. I guess having an automatic transmission bolted to it would be a pretty good way to be sure about the crank hahaha, but then again you can bolt an auto tranny to either a drilled or non-drilled crank and him saying the tranny isnt original to the car makes me wonder. It could very well be a manual crank fitted to an auto transmission. Itd be worth it sometime to pull the two apart and check the end of the crank.

Depending on the crank and the car its going in it might or might not be too much hassle to deal with. If its a non-drilled crank going into an originally automatic car then i wouldnt bother with it (this is my situation, its sad because i love manual cars but these motors have a very flat power band, aka: they make a **** load no matter what RPM youre at LOL, so a manual transmission is more of a prefference thing and wont do much at all for performance). However if the crank was drilled and/or you had a car already set up for manual to drop it in id say go ahead. Speaking of which what car are you planning to drop it in?

 

I own a 72 cutlass, it's a convertible with a 4bbl 350. I wanted to beef up my engine so instead of dumping money into a 350 I figured I go with a big block for upgrades.

You have any pics of crank that's drilled? now you got me curious.

If all goes well Im picking up the engine this weekend so it will one of the first things will do, take off the tranny. I have my doubts about the engine being set up for manual since it was only hurst/olds models that came as manual right? I may be wrong on that.

 

A drilled crank will have a "hemi-spherical" style indention in the end of the crank and a drilled crank will have a series of 90 degree "step downs" cut into it. So anything round = auto haha. 4-speed was available as an option on all 455 Cutlaii but the cranks are kinda rare anymore. The Hurst/Olds had the dual-gate shifter which is an automatic with the side slot where you can push it over into 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. There are quite a few modern cars that have something similar to this these days but for the time it was a pretty sick set up. This is what im planning for my build since its got a little more flavor than an auto set up but is good for cruising and wont kill my foot on roadtrips or in traffic haha. This is a dual-gate shifter.
http://www.goodnotions.com/the_garag...to_shifter.jpg

As far as the motor swap goes its a very straightforward process. The 455 will mount right up to the 350 mounts, it'll just sit slightly higher than if it had true 455 mounts but from what ive heard clearance shouldnt be an issue. Im pretty sure all the accessories should bolt right back up. Im not sure about fuel lines, you might need a slightly larger one but im not sure about that.

I'll save you some time and research and give you all of the links i have of the stuff im ordering for my rebuild. This is exactly what im doing with my rebuild except im waffling on going with a Lunati Voodoo cam instead of the Comp, here's the links:
http://www.atlanticspeed.com/product...idcategory=201
http://atlanticspeed.com/productcart...&idcategory=28
http://www.atlanticspeed.com/product...&idcategory=48
http://atlanticspeed.com/productcart...&idcategory=44
http://www.atlanticspeed.com/product...2&idcategory=0
http://atlanticspeed.com/productcart...&idcategory=37

 

4V means "4 Venturi."

It's the technically correct way of saying "4 barrel."

It's the common way of saying it in Europe, and the way F_rd has said it since at least the sixties.

- Eric

 

Thanks for the clarification Eric i was half guessing on that so its good to know for sure haha

PS: feel free to double check any advice i give. I'll give myself credit that i know a bit on the subject but i am by no means an expert haha

 

Here is a picture of the crank for a stick transmission

 

kool links, will definitely check back with you once I start taking it apart.

thanks

 

By the way, i know this is quite a ways off but im interested in knowing what the numbers read on your cam. I pulled my cam and read the numbers and have never been able to match it up to any cam listed so its got me scratching my head. Maybe i'll post a thread about it. Speaking of break-down time, me and two friends got my entire long block completely disassembled in about 8-10 hours, plus time taken to play with the power washer and to make a few trips to the parts store to keep the project rolling

 

As far as I know, the numbers on factory cams were just casting numbers.
The Cam is ID'd by looking at the grinder markings on its front face, and where they are located with respect to the pin.

- Eric

 

Ohhh, thanks. I was looking at the casting numbers this whole time. Maybe thats why my searches were fruitless xD Back to the garage...