I was thinking about my old car a little bit more. Actually that motor was not +.030, it was standard bore with just a simple re-ring and bearing job. I honed that one out in my driveway. I re-used the original pistons and and rods in that motor. That one didn't want to rev much past 5K. It just didn't pull hard past that so there was no reason to rev it any higher.
The '71 T/A that I had was the one with the +.030 TRWs. That one had stock rods also but they were side beam polished, shot peened and they had aftermarket rod bolts. It was also a balanced rotating assembly. It had ported 455 HO round port heads, a comp 292 hydraulic cam and the factory aluminum HO intake manifold. It also had a quadrajet and HO/RA manifolds. I thought the cam in this motor was less street friendly, almost a little too much for the way the car was set up. It was an auto with a slight stall and 3.55 gears. That motor liked to rev up to 6K and I had it there many times. It actually didn't run much better times at the track than my GTO did, maybe a tenth or two faster.
Both of these cars had the shorter style RA/HO manifolds, not the long branch. Both cars also had 2 1/2" mandrel bent exhaust systems all the way to the back bumper.
