How to Wake Up a 88' 454?
02-26-2016, 11:02 PM
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Staging Lane
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How to Wake Up a 88' 454? Hello, just helping my dad on his project. He has a 88 dually one ton truck. It sat over winter without antifreeze and popped a freeze plug. He wants to build the engine to wake it up a bit to help sell it easier and for more. What do you reccomend running for it?
The th400 is getting a transgo at the moment. Truck only has 80k miles as it was a farm truck. We have no HP goals or budget atm. Less than a grand we'd hope.
Thinking switching to carb, waking up with a cam and headers. Would that be good enough to make it faster than my Prius? lol. I dont' know anything about carbs. Also have any specific reccomendations. He mentioned something about compression being so low however I'm guessing it'll be a bit expensive to start changing the bottom end.
The th400 is getting a transgo at the moment. Truck only has 80k miles as it was a farm truck. We have no HP goals or budget atm. Less than a grand we'd hope.
Thinking switching to carb, waking up with a cam and headers. Would that be good enough to make it faster than my Prius? lol. I dont' know anything about carbs. Also have any specific reccomendations. He mentioned something about compression being so low however I'm guessing it'll be a bit expensive to start changing the bottom end.
03-02-2016, 11:22 AM
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Is it currently a TBI setup? Switching to carb would help but the intake and heads suck *** on TBI motors, very poor flow. If you're going this route I would do intake/heads/carb swap.
03-02-2016, 12:50 PM
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You CAN go intake only but you're leaving a lot of potential HP on the table for not a ton more money. Obviously everyone has a budget they need to work within but the TBI heads are widely regarded as pretty much the worst GM ever made as far as flow is concerned.
03-02-2016, 01:09 PM
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Speed is money so it just depends on how fast you want to go. Just doing intake and exhaust w/ a mild cam will absolutely wake the motor up. Heads are very low compression - I believe like 8:1 so that limits potential. Basically anything you do will be an improvement over stock form.
03-02-2016, 01:18 PM
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Not sure he hasn't really given me a budget for the truck motor. I think it costs more than he realizes and it would just be easier to put the tbi back on and sell it there's nothing wrong with it. But here in KY people pay sooo much for trucks.
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04-02-2016, 01:03 PM
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The best bang for the buck would be a 268-272 advertised duration cam. Try to score some L29 Vortec 7400 heads or some early fully closed chamber 396/427 heads with 98-101cc combustion chambers. Good to 5500-6000 RPM. The small chamber on a flat top comes in 9.0-9.5 at compression. An intake will help to.