Extremely strange find, hillbilly engineering? Update

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79elky454ss

Greasemonkey
Sep 30, 2007
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ohio
Anyone following my 454 engine refresh (bearings,cam,timing set,oil pump) may remember me asking about #s stamped into the rods and caps. Well someone was in my engine before me, and whad they did was EXTREMELY strange. In rods 1-6 there were +.001 bearings only on the caps not the rods (they have gm #s on them) rods 7-8 (under the oil pickup) had entirely stock bearings. Why would someone put 2/3 set of one thousandths undersized bearings only in the rod caps? I guess it is halloween,strange things happen. I am going to plastiguage the rods w/the new std. bearings to be safe
 
All I can think of is that people do strange things to keep old pickup trucks running. It may have had low oil pressure and copper showing on the caps, so they did it to build a little oil pressure and keep it running for a little while longer. Pickup trucks are not like cars. They are tools and people will do lots of make do things to use a tool for a little while longer without replacing it. The only cars I can think of that see as much odd engineering would be taxis and pizza delivery cars. I have done quite a few "novel" repairs to keep people on the road and delivering pizza...lol
 
I have done some wierd sh*t like that at a "Backyard" style shop that i USED to work at so the boss could sell the car. I am surprised everything has held together
 
I torqued the new bearings with green plastigage and all squished between .015 and.020 so Its all good I guess.
 
Thats kind of like when my buddy bought his 84 Cutlass with an Olds 455 and when we took it out to rebuild it there was so much stuff jacked up. The cylinder walls had been rubbed down with sandpaper, the heads had some regular grade 8 bolts on them and some head bolts and there was a hole in the oil pan that was plugged with silicone. :shock:
 
Elky hope you had .0015-.002 cause at .015-.020 it would do strange noises

just pulling your leg !
Dan
 
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