[Sirrotica]

Originally Posted by turbo69bird

I can tell you that I own the Stephen Pontiac car, I also own a short block they had prepped and sitting on the shelf a friend bought it in the mid 70s from them after they shut down the program. The rods that are in it are similar to the 63 sd rods not cast junk, these were in one of Mc carthys book as mystery rods. Made in 69 but similar to 63 sd rods. So apparently they had some idea that the cast rods were JUNK - and had a Work around for it. Now I can’t say they ever raced this block crank and rods in the car because they raced the. RAII block prepped by merkel that was in the 68 RAII car as far as I know but it shows the spare they had prepped was prepped w forged rods not cast

I'll be 70 in January, been playing with Pontiacs since 1970, when I graduated from high school, and started my chosen profession as a mechanic. Please don't mistake me as a damn fool that doesn't know my ass from 3rd base.

I assume the car/engine ran better than 12 seconds, the guy in the video said, as soon as you had a car running 12 seconds the rods broke. Lots of difference between a 12 second car, and a old pro stock car. I'm not so naïve, I know full well when you're running a flat out race engine, you're not going to run cast rods in it. I'm well aware of the limits of Pontiac cast rods, but they are not so brittle that as soon as a car breaks into the 12s, they fold like a lawn chair. As a matter of fact Pontiac strengthened the big end of them in 1967 by adding an extra strengthening rib to the upper portion of the big end, previous rods don't have that rib.

I ran a dirt track claimer class for $225, (67 GTO in the second picture in my signature pictures in victory lane) I wasn't going to chance someone claiming my car for $225 with forged rods in it, so I made do with prepped post 66 cast rods with good bolts. Engine ran in that car for 2 years, and when I sold the car, I sold it to a guy that put it in a 68 Firebird street car.

Moving up a class 2 years later is when I was going to build a 455 with RA IV heads, the forged 455 SD rods were going into that engine.

The rods you describe sound like RA V rods, they were forged, but still not as strong as they looked. They looked like they'd hold up well, but whether they weren't heat treated properly I'm not sure. I believe McCarthy's book said they really didn't hold up that well, from what I remember, my book was loaned to someone back in the 80s, and I never had it returned.

Pontiac did have rods that went to the race teams that were supported out the back door, but you couldn't go to the parts department of the local dealer and buy them. The only good rods that were available to the public were the 455 SD rods, and you could only buy 4 at a time, and you had to have the VIN for an SD T/A to buy 4 of them. That policy was later relaxed, and full sets were available, I still have 8 NOS SD rods in my garage that I bought from Jack Shaw Pontiac in the late 70s through a friend, same friend that never returned my book. Those forged rods were tested for hardness as there was a rumor that some of the SD rods weren't properly heart treated, so I wanted to know before I used them in that 455, that they weren't from a bad batch.

Now in your eyes, am I qualified to speak about Pontiac rods, and their inherent strength now?

[Dick Boneske]

I'm 80 years old--bought a new '64 GTO when I was 21 years old. I have a few comments from my Pontiac experiences that were not mentioned in earlier posts.

First, I've owned six GTO's, three Firebirds, four Bonneville's, one G8 GT, three Grand Prix's, and five Pontiac wagons--all Pontiac powered except the '04 GTO, '08 Grand Prix GXP, the '09 G8, and '88 Safari wagon.

I submit that the weak point of the Pontiac V8 was timing chain. My ''64 GTO failed at 57,000 miles, two of the wagons failed at a little over 60,000 miles, and my '62 Grand Prix failed at 65,000 miles. Only one of these was the infamous plastic cam gear. I changed three of these along the roadside--one in 15-degree weather. It took a while, but I learned to change the timing chains soon after the 50,000-mile mark as a preventive measure. I have not heard of other engine brands' timing chains failing this early.

The only rod failure I experienced was in my '64 GTO at Great Lakes Dragaway. The engine was a '67 400 with a stock bottom end, 670 heads and a Lunati solid roller cam. The car ran 12.70's to 12.90's. Previous to the Lunati roller, I shifted at 5500 rpm, but with the roller, it ran strong to 6000 rpm. About four runs was the end of that engine.

Regarding high performance parts in the early '60's, we all knew Pontiac made Super Duty heads, cranks, rods, etc., but these were sold only to race teams with connections to a dealer like Royal Pontiac or Gay Pontiac. Even the factory mechanical linkage for Tri-Powers was not known by "little guys" who raced their Pontiacs on weekends. We bought linkage from hot rod shops and drilled out metering jets we found in junked Rochester carbs. I ordered a '67 Ram Air Firebird in April 1967, waited until June, and was told by Tom Nell they could not release the RA Firebird because of California emissions restrictions. Strange, since there were Ram Air '67 GTO's sold in Milwaukee all that summer.

Sorry for the rant, but I grew up with Pontiacs and thought I'd relate how the Pontiac world looked in the 1960's. Today, we're perfectly happy driving our two '64 Goats to car shows and my hobby of restoring Tri-Powers. I've done several hundred and am able to buy parts more easily than I could in the '60,s!

[Dragncar]

Why, because Chevrolet F#%@ed us every chance they had.
PONTIAC, PMD had the biggest balls in General Motors. Has the first muscle car and the last.
Pontiac continually proposed cars-engines that would have ate the Vette alive. Remember the Opal GT Vette looking thing ?
It was a PONTIAC design and was to compete and overtake the Vette. They had planned RAV 428 engines with cast aluminum tunnel rams and forged 3" main 4" stroke cranks. They did make some of those cranks and Beswick had one of the intakes burn up in the barn fire.
Chevy nixed that project and PMD sold the rights for the car to Opal. You know that bump in those cars hoods ? It was because the only engine Chevy would let us have in it was our OHC 6.
Pontiac had a 10-1 round port 455 in the works, a LS6 454 street killer.RAIV valvetrain. It was to have 4 bolt 455 block, N crank, SD rods, TRW pistons, RA cam, RA manifolds and 90cc SD 455 heads that even had the pressed in tubes on intakes ports. 2 sets of those heads were made, 96 casting. Whitmore had a GM tech guy bring a set to his shop and held them in his hands.
That engine got nixed by Chevy and that effort by PMD became the last gasp 73-74 SD 455 but low CR.
Do not forget the planned 1970 427 SOHC Hemi modular block engine with RAV crank. There is reason to believe that effort inspired Fords mod engine.
Its CHEVY,CHEVY, CHEVY who screwed Pontiac and kept us from having the great cars and engines we should have.
Its also why I hate Chevys in Pontiacs.
Chevy sux.
PONTIACS RULE.

[Jay S]

Back in that 60s to early 70s era did you guys that bought your Pontiac care if the engine’s had Arma steel rod’s instead of forged? Would Pontiac have sold more car’s if they all had forged rods?



I thought the story at the end with the blower was pretty cool. I could picture myself sitting in a parking lot and watching that. Show-off gone wrong. Lol

[Sirrotica]

We knew the limitations of the rods, and as far as cranks go, I've only broken one. Myself I blew up enough engines that I learned where the line was, after I found the line, I stayed on the right side of it (the expensive lessons are learned well).

I also learned that the factory bearing clearances were too tight for extended abuse. Add 1-1.5 thousandths, put a good oil pump in, and the problems went away. Don't try to crutch the tight bearing clearances with thick oil, it doesn't work. Before I knew better I had a blueprinted 400 with stock cast rods over 7000 RPM. The rods never failed until it dropped a valve, then the rod broke after it hit the valve, breaking the piston. The rod flailing around with the wrist pin still attached did eventually break, and ventilate the block. The bearing still looked fine when I took the rest of the rod off the crank for autopsy.

Tom S has mentioned he has bent cast rods, and they didn't break, I also have twisted the rods a good bit, and they never snapped off. People act like they're as brittle as china, or glass.

A Stratostreak engine makes power lower down in the RPM range, and the design lends itself to torque being made down low. Torque moves cars, gear the car for that in mind, and keep RPMs at a moderate range where you don't stress the rods right up to their design limit, and the engine will live. Too many people gear Pontiacs like they'd gear a chevy, then they're surprised when the engine breaks prematurely.

My problem when I was young, most of my friends ran chevys, and I listened to them when it came to building my own cars, and engines. When I started following recommendations that Royal Pontiac, and Milt Schornack told us about in their magazine articles, I was much more successful.

[tom s]

Well,I’m 78.Raced 1962-1972.Started with Jess Tyree out of Bill Barry Pontiac.We knew early the 58-62 forged rods were not up to the task.The SD rods were avail to us in 62.Tyree was hooked up with M/T and had access to factory Engineering pieces.The writing was on the wall in 63 and M/T jumped ship in 64.Jess like a lot of pontiac racers ended up putting BBC in the funny cars.IMHO,every effort after 1963 was small,lot of back door engineering stuff but nothing like what GM allowed in the early 60s.The die was cast to have Chevy be THE performance arm of GM.Accept it.Tom

[mgarblik]

"Armasteel" is still cast iron. But it is special malleable cast iron. Much like a steel fastener it has an initial tensile strength of the alloy itself. Then when highly stressed, or stretched, it has an elastic zone. Then it has a deformation limit that it can stretch to or bend to and not break. Finally, it has it's deformation limit and we know what happens next. Sirrotica and others have said they have pulled bent, not broken cast rods from engines. I have as well. Sunnen has a rod straightening fixture you put the rod into and bend it back straight, resize the big end and put it back in the engine. Does that scare the hell out of you? I have done the process plenty of times in a stock rebuild, no issues. In a race engine, even a claimer, little risky. Pontiac as a manufacturer, was not stupid. In a given year in the mid 1960's, you are talking about 8,000,000 connecting rods a year. If a couple thousand crazy hot rodders over reved their engines and blew the rods out of the block, they should have bought quality aftermarket forged rods for the engines before getting stupid with them. Simple as that. Expecting a stock connecting rod to go way past it's design spec. in a race engine with no prep is stupid, IMO. Take the stock rod, add a little extra oil clearance, add ARP or SPS fasteners, and have the big ends sized +-.0001 and go racing. Respect the quality of the material and it won't break IF you also respect the red line. Pontiac had a safety margin built into many of their parts. Factory redline on almost all the 3" main engines was 5200 RPM. A torque engine. Add 10% margin. Now 5720 RPM. Always stay below 5800 with everything else right, rod failure would be very rare IMO. As Sirrotica said, treat it like a Chevy and zing it up to 6500 RPM over and over, your asking for what you get. If you modify the engine to make power up there, you need aftermarket rods to live in the "Chevy world" Chevy engines are so weak down low, they need to rev to the moon to make any power. Don't believe me, drive an early Z28 sometime. They are so flat and balky below 3500 rpm, you can hardly drive one. But they will zing to 7500 RPM instantly. Many Pontiac engines are at peak torque when a Chevy small block is just barely driveable. A cast Armasteel rod wouldn't last long in a Chevy engine.

[Tom Vaught]

Originally Posted by Dick Boneske

I'm 80 years old--bought a new '64 GTO when I was 21 years old. I have a few comments from my Pontiac experiences that were not mentioned in earlier posts.

First, I've owned six GTO's, three Firebirds, four Bonneville's, one G8 GT, three Grand Prix's, and five Pontiac wagons--all Pontiac powered except the '04 GTO, '08 Grand Prix GXP, the '09 G8, and '88 Safari wagon.

I submit that the weak point of the Pontiac V8 was timing chain. My ''64 GTO failed at 57,000 miles, two of the wagons failed at a little over 60,000 miles, and my '62 Grand Prix failed at 65,000 miles. Only one of these was the infamous plastic cam gear. I changed three of these along the roadside--one in 15-degree weather. It took a while, but I learned to change the timing chains soon after the 50,000-mile mark as a preventive measure. I have not heard of other engine brands' timing chains failing this early.

The only rod failure I experienced was in my '64 GTO at Great Lakes Dragaway. The engine was a '67 400 with a stock bottom end, 670 heads and a Lunati solid roller cam. The car ran 12.70's to 12.90's. Previous to the Lunati roller, I shifted at 5500 rpm, but with the roller, it ran strong to 6000 rpm. About four runs was the end of that engine.

Regarding high performance parts in the early '60's, we all knew Pontiac made Super Duty heads, cranks, rods, etc., but these were sold only to race teams with connections to a dealer like Royal Pontiac or Gay Pontiac. Even the factory mechanical linkage for Tri-Powers was not known by "little guys" who raced their Pontiacs on weekends. We bought linkage from hot rod shops and drilled out metering jets we found in junked Rochester carbs. I ordered a '67 Ram Air Firebird in April 1967, waited until June, and was told by Tom Nell they could not release the RA Firebird because of California emissions restrictions. Strange, since there were Ram Air '67 GTO's sold in Milwaukee all that summer.

Sorry for the rant, but I grew up with Pontiacs and thought I'd relate how the Pontiac world looked in the 1960's. Today, we're perfectly happy driving our two '64 Goats to car shows and my hobby of restoring Tri-Powers. I've done several hundred and am able to buy parts more easily than I could in the '60,s!

THANKS FOR ALL OF YOUR TRI-POWER EFFORTS, DICK.
A REAL PLEASURE WATCHING YOU CARS RUN AND RECEIVING THE PARTS YOU HAVE HAD MADE OVER THE YEARS.

Tom V.

[Dick Boneske]

Thank you, Tom. I enjoy the hobby.

[rasilverbird]

So the argument is that the aftermarket industry never took to Pontiac because Pontiac had crap parts? Wouldn't that create an opportunity for the aftermarket to capitalize on? Seems to me that there would be another reason other than that.

[Formulajones]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

Don't believe me, drive an early Z28 sometime. They are so flat and balky below 3500 rpm, you can hardly drive one. But they will zing to 7500 RPM instantly. .

Sorry but that's an old wives tale and more internet folklore.

Here's my bone stock DZ 302 on the chassis dyno and as you can see the torque curve is actually very nice, relatively flat, makes near the same torque as it does HP. Peak torque like most any other decent engine around 4000 and carries it through the curve. Makes about the same peak torque as it does HP too, 282/277

For the record it daily drives very nice and will lug around in high gear at slow speeds no problem

If people know their history they weren't really built to compete with the big dogs on the street, even though they did very well anyway. They were to homologate the engine in SCCA racing back when they had a 305ci limit. On a comparison level, the only other engine apples to apples would be the boss 302. If you really want to compare how SBC did in comparison to the other manufactures on the street we should probably start with the more common 350 and up engines, or maybe even 327's. The 302 is in a class of it's own that had a certain purpose.

[unruhjonny]

forgive my ignorance, but I thought that the first issue was factory bolts on the rod ends;
Then after that the rod was deemed the next weak point.

I have read time and again of people talking about the factory rods like they were all defective or something, but not too long ago, there were very few aftermarket options.

What really prompted me to speak up was some of the comments would suggest that I should have grenaded my Firebirds 70-YZ engine ages ago;
I am guessing the arp bolts had something to do with it...

Or maybe I just didn't abuse it as much as the guy with the supercharged GTO?
(from the video)

[NeighborsComplaint]

Is there nothing Uncle Tony isn't an authority on (besides bathing, dentistry and budget 318 engine building)? Give me a break. Sorry, I don't find the guy informative, knowledgeable or even mildly entertaining.

[Jay S]

Back when I watched the video and fast forwarded to the section of the video that was listed in the first post, I didn’t take time and watch it all, and have never watched a full episode. So I can’t really comment much about his ideas, but about that point I started watching he was pointing out design flaws, it was ford FE’s front sump as the cause of a lot of bearing trouble, and praising the rear sump engines as better. Then explained Mopar’s were mostly all designed for slant six’s as the reason they could not use a rear sump as a design flaw.. Some real expert insight there, many modern V8’s have front sumps, LS platform to a mopar Hellcat. I guess today’s engineers didn’t watch his show.

[Sirrotica]

He now has 2 new videos of Why the oldsmobile rocket failed to fire," and a conspiracy theory of why all the flat tappet hydraulics lifters are failing. I haven't watched the olds video, but I did watch the lifter one.

According to his sources, all the lifters aren't new any longer, they're used rebuilt lifters from old engines, being sold as new......

His theory is that someone is raiding core engines for their lifters, rebuilding them, and that's why we're having so many HFT lifter failures. His buddy knows this for a fact, and his buddy is going to make a video exposing the whole scheme of used lifter rebuilding, all he needs are the tin foil hats.

His kernel of proof is, that he had a mopar engine with fixed adjustment valve train, and when he installed the new lifters there was no pre load on the inner lifter plunger with the stock valve train pieces installed, so the height is too short, therefore the lifters are remans, plucked from old engines, and refurbished.

This guy is as bad as some of the clickbait on the net, he has answers to questions that no one asks. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, you can baffle them with bull-hit.........

I guess if your core business is failing (auto repair), you can make a living by telling tall tales on Youtube for the payment from your videos.

[mgarblik]

I forced myself to watch 3 more Uncle Tony Video's about Non-Pontiac topics. Thinking I might be too biased by the Pontiac topic. Same results for me. While the guy has a folksy manner and has the look of an old motorhead with lots of hands-on experience, his arguments and conclusions are very superficial without much insight as to WHY certain parts and designs may have been necessary or required for production vehicles. Just because a production part or chassis design isn't ideal for drag or road racing, doesn't mean it's a design flaw or defective.

Overall, he seems to be a cut rate Scotty Kilmer. Mildly amusing, with a few useful nuggets deeply hidden in allot of opinion and light real world experience. In Scotty Kilmers case, it has made him a small fortune. Uncle Tony saw an opportunity?

[NeighborsComplaint]

Originally Posted by Jay S

Back when I watched the video and fast forwarded to the section of the video that was listed in the first post, I didn’t take time and watch it all, and have never watched a full episode. So I can’t really comment much about his ideas, but about that point I started watching he was pointing out design flaws, it was ford FE’s front sump as the cause of a lot of bearing trouble, and praising the rear sump engines as better. Then explained Mopar’s were mostly all designed for slant six’s as the reason they could not use a rear sump as a design flaw.. Some real expert insight there, many modern V8’s have front sumps, LS platform to a mopar Hellcat. I guess today’s engineers didn’t watch his show.

To the best of my limited knowledge, here are the oil pump, pickup and sump locations for various "muscle car era" engines:

Ford FE ... oil pump located left front of block & front sump
Pontiac ... oil pump located left rear of block & rear sump
Mopar B/RB/Hemi ... oil pump left front, pickup & sump center/rear
Mopar LA ... Oil pump left rear, rear sump (A body only)

In each case, the pickup was located at the sump so I don't know what Tony is yammering about. Here's an OEM replacement Mopar B, RB, Hemi pan (center/rear sump - center/rear pickup):



... and a Ford FE replacement pan (front sump/front oil pump):



On the subject of rods, it is a pretty simple engineering decision for what is the optimal (cost vs performance) material selection. If operated within the manufacturer's design guidelines (RPM range), all goes well. Chevy got the forged rods as a carryover from the small block days. Buyers moved up from the small blocks to the big blocks and assumed they could wing them just like they did their old 327's. The forged rods were insurance "designed in" from the engine's inception as an NHRA and NASCAR platform detuned for the street. Pontiacs on the other hand, were street engines that were upgraded for drag racing and an ill-fated NASCAR effort.

[Nobuddy]

Uncle Roger is much more amusing and interesting than Uncle Tony.

[Formulajones]

But it's on the internet so it must be true.......

[Matt Meaney]

the picture of him sitting on the john lapping in valves on a hemi head still cracks me up to this day. (about half way down the page)
https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/....545274/page-2