Caveman-455

i just rebuilt my 455 with everything except the actual block , rods and pistons ,.. 5 minutes into the cam break in period the motor locked up .. so if this stuff is worth anything and somebody might want some parts on a budget , l might sell all the new parts to help fund a new motor ,.. can you guys tell me what this stuff is worth and if anybody is interested in it ?..all parts are brand new with literally 5 minutes run time , i can probably provide sales reciepts for it all to show that its new


im also willing to sell the motor or heads or intake ect ect if anybody is interested ,.. is a '75 motor -J heads . everything except the crank still looks good on it

Edlebrock comp cam & lifter set , bought 2 months ago from Jegs- like i said it has 5 minutes run time on it so it does show some slight scuffs on it , but its still in perfect spec

http://www.jegs.com/i/Edelbrock/350/2152/10002/-1

750 Q-jet w/ electric choke-
http://www.jegs.com/i/JEGS+Performan...15801/10002/-1


Sealed power Rocker arms- these were also brand new with 5 min run time ,..still has the assembly lube on them !! ( lol )

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SLP-R-856/


starter

waterpump

stock flow Melling Oil pump and brand new shaft

hdi distributor and new yellow plug wires

Octania

Wow, bummer. That's a bit of a gamble to start up with that cam again.

I heard this happen to a friend, some kind of Ford Dolt built his 455, and neglected to CLEAN the crank out after the regrind, before the install. Grinding residue went right to the bearings and toasted 'em tight within minutes.

Why not just get a new crank kit, tear it down 100%, clean everything, and reassemble?

a mere $500 at rockauto.com

Caveman-455

you single handedly just kept my boat olds powered ! thank you for the link to rock auto ill be sending them some money soon :-D

never mind people , cheap parts are not for sale anymore , blame that guy ^ LOL j/k :-)

oldcutlass

Just do a good teardown and cleaning, flush all the oil passages, and check/ replace bad bearings. Did you figure out what caused your failure?

Caveman-455

i have a few guesses of what caused it ,.could have been from running it with alot of water in the oil , or running it WOT with a cold block , or just from neglect ,

ill go ahead and tell you guys the whole story and maybe yall can help me pin point where it went wrong

lets go ahead and back up to 1993 , my dad wants to replace the blown up 425 in his boat with a 455 that was out of his dads car ,.. my grandpa owned a '75 olds 88 455 with only 50,000 miles in it and the car had literally only ran WOT maybe a total of 5 times its entire life up to that point ,.. so as you know at this point the motor was still brand new and not even broke in yet .

so my dad buys the car and has local friend in Midland TX swap out the motor from the car into the boat ( only $26.00 for a motor swap in 93 , still have the original receipt from when they put the motor in there !! LOL )


so after that the boat was 95% ready to run but for some reason my dad never got it running again untill almost 10 years later,.. so the motor sat for years out in the harsh weather under a wooden motor cover .. . in 2000 he gets a friend to help him get it running ,.. they had to soak the motor in ATF fluid for weeks to loosesn it up that way they didnt (hopefully) damage anything on the initial start up,..after a few weeks they finally got it running but it would only rev out to around 2000 rpm and was blowing a shlt load of smoke out of the exhaust ,.. after a few weeks of that the motor finally loosened up and seriously sounded and ran like a brand new motor then ,.. after that we took it to the lake a few times over a couple of years and then parked it again back in 2004 because we wanted to repaint the boat ,.which has led to a full restoration that is still going on to this day ..

so from 2004 untill a few months ago the motor had just sat there again, but we did start it a few times each summer to try and keep it alive .. now that i think about it im not sure if it was good or bad for it to start it up


so fast foward to febuary of 2012 , the boat is 85% done when all of a sudden my dad passed away from a long fight with lung cancer . after that l was passed down the boat as it was the project him and l had worked on for so many years together ,.. i brought the boat down to Austin TX where i live now and got the boat running and took it out for its first maiden voyage since the restoration started ,.. everything was going fair but for some reason the motor never heated up past lake temp (70*),.. it turns out that my dads friend that worked on it last removed the thermostat on the cooling setup for the boat,.. so raw 150psi 70* water was being forced into the engine from the waterpump AND through the thermo housing ,.. so it had pressure on both sides of the block and blew the gaskets after about 15 minutes on the water,. during this time i did a few short WOT runs and some crusing ,... then all of a sudden it lost all the oil pressure and started knocking real bad from #8 cylinder ,.. and then it quit running all together,. and when i tryed to start it back up it wanted to backfire out of the carb (),.as soon as i got it home i found a broken lifter and tons of water in the oil

after some reaserch i was told that alot of water in the oil will cause the pressure loss ,.. so i tried to get it running again the cheap way by fixing my cooling setup with a 160* thermostat , i also went ahead and replaced all the lifters and cam , got a new oil pump and shaft and of course all new gaskets ,.. got it all put back together and running good , the motor got up to temp no problem and and oil pressure was around 20 psi hot at idle ,.. then 5 min into breaking in the cam the motor locked up


and this is where im at now ,.. what came first the chicken or the egg ?




was the engine already on its way out from sitting for so many years in the 90's ?


was nothing wrong with the engine until i ran it with no thermostat ? i nderstand on a car it will just run cold ,.. but on a jet boat you have 150 psi of unregulated water going through the motor at every point it can go into

or was it a combo of #2 ^ and the engine running WOT while it was not even 100* ?