I was thinking of this for something like a Gambler car and I wanted to pick the collective gestalt of the GRM brain trust; out of all the Big blocks what's your favorite and why? Anything from being cheap, to easy transmission choices, to hue upgrade potential on limited budgets I wanna hear it.
429 Ford.
The valvetrain is goofy (it's pretty far offset to the outside, limiting valve size) and they are really heavy and large, and your transmissions options are basically C6 or E4OD (I think?) which is electronic...
But they are a really short stroke, which makes them really smooth, and 429 is a magic number, what with starting with a 4 and having a 2 in the middle. All awesome sounding big blocks are like that: 421, 426, 427...
425 Oldsmobile. Shorter stroke than a 455. I was born into an Oldsmobile family, and drove a 66 Delta 88 with a 425. You'd be nuts to use one.
455 Buick. Also short stroke.
Never use a big Pontiac in a race car. Main journals are way too big for RPMs.
Chevrolet is best supported by the aftermarket.
500 inches of Cadillac can be made very snorty.
460 has E36 M3 exhaust ports, fixable with aftermarket heads.
428 is ancient and heavy as hell, but can be fast.
440 will make the Mopar guys wet themselves, but anything newer than about 1972 is painfully low compression, also fixable in the aftermarket.
AMC is small, hard to buy stuff.
Any of them will be great if they were built in 1972 or prior. From there on, they were tremendously blahh.
Hit the motorhome wrecking yard, find a pre 1973 Travelator or whatever and use the 454 or 440 in it if you need budget, otherwise select your favourite brand and get out your money gun. Chevrolet or Ford are probably the best idea from parts availability.
A big inch small block Chevrolet is a fine option too, unless you are going for volume bragging rights.
I'd go with a big block Chev (396/402/409/427/454). Strong aftermarket support really helps (as streetwiseguy mentions). And, as Pete says, the 429 Ford would be a good choice imo. The Olds 425 is a legendary engine, hard to find, but a good choice as well. I've had a Chev 402, Ford 460, Pontiac 389, and Olds 350 (not really a BB, but the block is much the same with a higher deck). All were reasonably reliable @ about 100K miles or so (had to replace the push rods and lifters on the 460). But my favorite was the Chev 402.
I'd lean towards a big block Chevy for best parts availability. Depending on power target and other aspects, a big block may not be the most effective choice though. Most of them are pretty heavy.
I like the Jag v12 because it produces the most interesting discussions.
Big block Chev is the easy button.
I'd go 500 inch Cadillac if I was going to build something stupid.
Caddy 500 in terms of hp/dollar is the same-ish cost as a BBC up to about 1hp/ci.... depending on how you get there.
Pros:
- Massive cubes means you can do whatever you want with hp and never have to worry about "did I make the torque peak too high?"
- Weighs just a couple pounds more than a SBC
- Parts are ubiquitous and cheap, and since it has a BOP bellhousing, nearly any GM transmission can go behind it
- Mountains of broad torque mean you can easily get by with 2 or 3 speeds. No need for tight ratio splits, OD, and deep rear gears. Seriously, a Powerglide or TH400 and 2.73s will still roast 315mm rubber.
Cons:
- above 450 hp you should probably get rid of the cast pistons, which means forged (no one makes a hyp piston that I know of)
- The entire thing is cast in a very high nickel alloy, so if you're porting heads, buy a lot of grinding burrs and prepare to measure your porting investment in days, not hours
- high nickel block is super-rigid, but harmonics can be an issue above 5500 rpms. Fortunately, you can have 600+ hp long before you have to spin it that fast. Caddy 500s were so low-rpm that they don't have a harmonic damper. Just a cast iron pulley. Going over 5500 really needs a Fluidamper to absorb the vibes.
They're kind of an enigma. In a world where people work so hard to get revs and hp, the Caddy is kind of like using a ziplock bag. You can't screw it up. I built one that made 390hp and 600 lb-ft just off idle with some porting, an intake, and a cam. It idled at 600 rpm. Try that with a 350 and you'll never get the torque, idle will be 1000, and your torque will peak at 3800. You'll need 3.73s and a tight-ratio trans to keep it singing. The Caddy lacks the wild aftermarket support to make them spin, but they never need to. The one I built ran out of breath at 4700 rpms, but who cares.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
429 No. When I was in high school, the farmer I worked for had a Camper special with a 429. It ran poorly & he wanted to rebuild it, even though it had only @ 80,000 from what I remember. We pulled it out & he took it to the machine shop. Turned out the block was cracked. It took them weeks to find a good block that wasn't cracked. Ran good when he finally got it back though.
454 Big Yes. Our daughter & I just rebuilt a gen V peanut port 454 for her 64 C10. Our son found it in a friend's back yard & had been sitting for years. Needed bored but the crank was good. I had never built a BB Chevy but had built a bunch of SB chevys. Found a guy selling a good street cam, lifters, Edelbrock intake & carb because he was going bigger. We added some roller tip rockers because the valve train geometry is different than a SB & the rollers help it last longer from what I read. Looking at the geometry it's surprising to me a stock BB non roller setup lasts very long at all. I also didn't know that the SB & BB distributors are the same. We added an hei. Also found a good used BOP TH400. Just added a new torque converter, shift kit, bigger pan & an adapter plate & it's also great. Anyway it runs great, simple & parts are cheap.
Second favorite is a Ford 460
Pros:
- massive bore and short stroke means more RPM potential. Also means room for more stroke
- tons of aftermarket
- one of the best sounding V8s I've heard
Cons:
- not priority main oiling which can be an issue over 5500 rpms
- expensive to build for power
- heavy
Third favorite is a Buick 455
Pros:
- large (but very expensive) aftermarket
- huge bore, short stroke
- Compact-ish
Cons:
- expensive
- after having owned a couple Caddy 500s, 455 just seems so small.
Chevy 409 - it has a song written about it.
Cadillac 472, but that's because I have one under my workbench. And are we allowed to vote for a Cummins 6.7?
Otherwise I'd have to go with the Chevy simply because it was the go-to for Can-Am, and this is a legitimate intake. It's my understanding that the staggered lengths are due to variations in intake runner length in the head and not to spread out the torque curve. I don't care why, it's awesome.
Favourite: Ford 460 because I owned a 1990 EFI and couldn't believe how much power it made.
Least favourite: Chevy 454 because I own an L29 vortec and can't believe how little power it makes.
Least, least favourite: Dodge 440 just because I hate Chrysler and their garbage products and I'm not even ashamed of it anymore.
I've never owned any of the others.
Big block / small block implies physical size differences therefore:
409 = not a big block, just a wheezing truck engine with a bad chamber design. Don't let the Beach Boys fool you.
Pontiac: No big block at all. All engines are the same physical size except the short-deck 301.
'Nuff said.
ShawnG said:Least favourite: Chevy 454 because I own an L29 vortec and can't believe how little power it makes.
Least, least favourite: Dodge 440 just because I hate Chrysler and their garbage products and I'm not even ashamed of it anymore.
409 = not a big block, just a wheezing truck engine with a bad chamber design. Don't let the Beach Boys fool you.
I'm not a big fan of the big Mopars or the BBC. Incredibly inefficient chambers. Any engine that you have to give it more timing than a trophy wife putting on makeup isn't a performance engine to me.
The Beach Boys had to come up with something to rhyme with "409" but "perfunctory" or "just ok" didn't fit anywhere in the lyrics.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Pretty much all big blocks had inefficient chambers, though.
Buick 455. Short stroke, huge bore, yet still made more torque than any other GM big block short of the Caddy 500. Also, not much heavier than a small block Chevy in stock trim and gets even better with aluminum heads and intake.
Mopar B-series. The 383/400 is also a huge bore/short-stroke screamer but can accommodate an extra inch of stroke without any real fiddling. Guys build 512ci engines out of 383s. A 400 with a 440 crank results in a nifty 452 low-deck engine. Stout blocks, strong aftermarket support, still fairly populous because everyone wants a 440 or a Hemi.
Ford 429/460. Goofy valvetrain but cool canted valve heads. They can be built into huge cubic inch stroker motors on a stock block (I think as big as 572), the aftermarket loves them and the 460 blocks just about grow on trees, they put so many in F-350s and motor homes and stuff. We had a 460 in an F-350 and even at the rated 200hp, that thing would move mountains.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Pretty much everything had inefficient chambers until pretty recently. Even my G13's wanted 40 degrees
I built a 460 for a guy once, and installed it in his 74 Torino, which I gladly did for the correct sum of money - enough that I didn't mind doing it. I never really wondered where this young guy was getting all the money to build such a stupid project, which he clearly did not do on a budget, that wasn't my problem.
Until his Dad came back from Saudi Arabia and wondered where the hell all his money went. Dad was an engineer for Westinghouse on contract in Saudi. His pay was deposited in his Canadian bank account, which buddy was supposed to use only to pay bills and look after the house, because Mom apparently liked to drink and couldn't always be trusted. Turns out buddy was buying sherry by the case, keeping Mom loaded, and partying large with the rest of Dad's money. Dad tried to blame me for ripping off his son and taking all his money. Feeling bad for the old guy, I was remarkably civil to him.
The car was actually really fast
Is there anything neat about the newer GM 8.1L? I like the one in my truck so far, and they're not incredibly uncommon, but I'm also not sure if they have any more or less performance potential than something like a 454. It's tempting to assume that newer=better but it was probably only ever designed to be a truck motor.
For a Gambler car I'd prioritize being able to fix in the middle of nowhere using duct tape and baling wire. So 400 SBC is as close to a big block as I'd want to get.
if it's gotta be big block, I'd go 454 Chevy. because of how long they were used in trucks, part availability is probably best in class.
Is either fuel mileage or total vehicle weight critical to the Gambler?
I would rather hustle around a Mini than a Concrete Truck
Not seeing any Mopar love here.
As a Jensen aficionado, big block Mopars have been my playground in the large displacement category.
Built and installed this in my Jensen CV8 (fibreglass bodied pre Interceptor - think of it as a British Corvette).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:Is there anything neat about the newer GM 8.1L? I like the one in my truck so far, and they're not incredibly uncommon, but I'm also not sure if they have any more or less performance potential than something like a 454. It's tempting to assume that newer=better but it was probably only ever designed to be a truck motor.
The problem with the 8100 was that it was different enough from the old Mark IV engine that parts really didn't interchange, it wasn't offered in anything that really attracted enthusiast and the aftermarket really never offered anything as a result.
NickD said:¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:Is there anything neat about the newer GM 8.1L? I like the one in my truck so far, and they're not incredibly uncommon, but I'm also not sure if they have any more or less performance potential than something like a 454. It's tempting to assume that newer=better but it was probably only ever designed to be a truck motor.
The problem with the 8100 was that it was different enough from the old Mark IV engine that parts really didn't interchange, it wasn't offered in anything that really attracted enthusiast and the aftermarket really never offered anything as a result.
Look to the marine world. They put a ton of the gen VIII 8.1 / 496 engines in boats and performance parts definitely exist in that world.
You'll need to log in to post.
