GatorDog72

What are your plans for it? Going racing?

Wow, this is an awesome thread! Great pictures too! The level of detail and quality of this build is outstanding. This is going to be one super nice SS. Im looking forward to seeing the end result. Great work, good luck with the build!

A little duct tape and it will be back in action in no time!

Scott- thanks for the heads up on the crank socket! I ordered it, just waiting for it to arrive now. I also received some other parts earlier this week. I decided I wanted to run a rocker stud girdle. I was told that it was a good idea to use one with a solid roller cam. I assembled one of the heads with all the hardware, rockers, etc. with the girdle attached to make sure everything would clear, and now my valve covers hit. I have the tall Moroso stamped steel covers and they need about another 1/8" to clear the girdle. I will have to send these back and get different ones... anyone running a stud girdle know of a set of covers that will fit? As far as the head studs go, I just bought the 8 longer studs I needed. The only ones that are different are the holes next to the exhaust ports, they are 1" longer than stock height. Once that crank socket gets here, I can get the cam dialed in and move on to putting this thing together. Hopefully we will hear it run in the next few weeks.

Lots of shiny new parts! Sounds great too.

Sam is right. I must have been thinking of the Gen 7 8.1L engine

Sam- I will definitely have to degree the cam. I do have an adjustable cam gear in 4 degree increments. If its within a couple degrees, i'm just going to leave it alone. This will be a learning experience as I have never done this procedure before. I watched a few videos on youtube on how to do it. So far I ordered a moroso pro wheel, its the largest degree wheel I could find. Also a comp cams dial indicator with magnetic base. My engine uses solid lifters, so i'm all set there. Any advice is very much appreciated! So far I have learned a lot. I have had lots of engines apart before but I have never done anything close to this build.

Just got done messing around in the garage, here's an update. I stopped back into the machine shop and they replaced my rings no problem, even though I accidentally broke one taking it back off the piston. Don't work on engines in a hurry, only bad things can happen. I successfully filed and installed the new rings to the pistons without breaking any this time. (having the right tools helps a lot) After that, I installed the pistons into the engine. I bought a summit racing piston ring compressor- the type that is specific to the bore size. Best $25 ever spent. That thing made installing pistons super easy and saved a ton of time. I still need to torque the rod bolts to spec, because I realized I don't have the socket I need in 12pt. Doh! I decided to just move on to the cam. I installed the cam without issue but I had to call it a night when I ran into another problem. The two little half-moon keys to index the crank gear and harmonic balancer are the wrong size. I will have to get new ones the before I can go any further. I am also waiting for different head studs to come in the mail. Some of mine are too short. (Wrong head stud kit, originally for OEM iron heads) Its always the stupid little things that hold up a project...can't wait to hear this thing run! I will update as soon as parts arrive.

Im not positive, but I believe the gen 6 block is a tall-deck engine. Intake manifolds are different from a standard to a tall deck 454

What you have should work just fine. Make sure to give them a shot of grease at every oil change.

Does it bubble or gulp with the engine running or is it only when you shut it off? Is it violent or just small bubbles?

I would start by replacing the filter element in the canister, it looks like Year One has it. Hope this is what you are looking for. Heres the part number- Filter Element- 9054N Charcoal Canister- 2159N Good luck with the fix!

Thank you for all the replies/support everyone! I stopped into the machine shop today and they are going to get me the right set of rings. Very strange, it was a brand new, sealed box of rings and had two different sizes in there....must have been boxed wrong. The top rings were definitely for something with a larger bore. These were a set of Liberty Performance Components racing rings Hopefully I will have the new rings by this weekend so I can get the short block completed.

Today I finally got around to fitting some rings and ran into a problem almost right off the bat.... The first ring I filed was the 2nd ring down on the piston. That went perfectly. It fit nicely inside the bore with no overlap before filing but with a very tight end gap.( <.010") I really didn't have to file much off at all. After that, I moved on to the top compression ring for the same piston. This ring wasn't even close. Heres what the overlap looked like.... probably 5/8" or more. This can't be right... I'm thinking my machine shop gave me the wrong compression rings. Anyone know whats going on here??

This is where im going to need a little guidance. I know im going to need some sort of a roll bar/cage to stiffen the chassis up. Im going to keep the stock suspension for now and just put in some boxed trailing arms and adjustable shocks. I plan on running 28x10.5 slicks at the track and DOT slicks on the street. I have a few questions about rear end options, i'll start a new thread for that.

The domes on the pistons are 18cc and the heads I had milled to 118cc. Static compression worked out to something like 10.5 to 1. I want to keep this thing on pump gas and i think im pushing the limits on whats safe to run. Heres a cool pic of the giant 2.300 intake and 1.880 exhaust valves

Well it was supposed to be a mild build, but it turned into something way more extreme. When I bought the core, it came with a set of 781 iron oval port castings I was going to rebuild and install with a mild cam and a q-jet. After finding out how much it would cost to redo and port the heads, I decided to just save up money and buy new ones. I ended up going with AFR 325 cnc ported heads, a comp cams solid roller cam 248/254 duration @ .050, .653" lift, and a 1050 ultra dominator carb on a single plane eddy intake. The bottom end is a 4.25" stroke 4340 forged crank, 6.385" forged H beam rods, and 4.280" bore forged aluminum pistons from SRP. Right now im in the process of file fitting my rings. The block needs to be at room temp for this and when its -5 in my garage it makes it sort of difficult. The purpose of this build is to get my Monte into the tens at the track and still be able to drive the car to work in the summer.

Hi guys, just wanted to upload some pics of my engine build. I found a short deck 454 big block engine searching on craigslist one day for a decent price. It knew it was in pretty bad shape, but I took a gamble and bought it anyway. Once I got this thing home, I realized that the engine was in far worse shape than I thought. This thing was seized up hard! I soaked it for about a month with a mix of ATF and PB blaster and finally decided I had to smash the pistons out with a hammer. Every bearing in the engine was smoked. Some were so bad they were spun 180 degrees from where they should be. Not having any clue what I was about to get myself into, I brought this thing to my local machine shop to see if it was worth messing with. They shot blasted and magna-fluxed it and they said with some work it would make a great engine. I bought an internally balanced 489 rotating assembly from them and had tons of block work done. They bored .030 over, align bored and honed, and zero decked the block. I will be doing the final assembly. Im saving money right now to buy the final parts to make it all work. This was supposed to be a budget build, but I got a little carried away. When its finally done, this engine should move my Monte Carlo pretty well. Here's some pics of what I have so far. I have a ton more to upload too!