Stock footage of Pontiac Engine casting and machining. You can see the complete process from casting a 455ci engine followed by the production machining, balancing and engine assembly.
From a chevy guy since i first turned wrenches at 8 years old,. The pontiac way was just a facinating treat to experience, in a barn find 68 gto i bought and restored. Crank journals are narrow and huge diameter, includes a windage tray. Great cam in the 068 grind. Obviouslly gobs of nascar proven ways went into it Ran like a grandmas car at idle. So smooth. And pedal to the floor smoldering the tires through the first 3 gears. And back to grandmas idle. A cloud of air @ 120 mph with 355 gear.
Always admired Pontiac. Grew up watching the GTO change from year to year. A friend of one of my adult sisters had a 66 Catalina. Beautiful and a boat. You knew they made motors when you saw all those Pontiac ambulances back in the day. Just thinking about it makes me feel old. Pontiac ambulances. Man, has the EMT business changed.
Cadillac, Buick and Oldsmobile also made ambulances and hearses back in the day. What a lot of people don’t remember is that the full size station wagons back in those days could haul and tow as much as a 1/2 ton pickup back then. A lot of them could fit a 4X8 sheet of plywood in the back. I can remember a friend whose dad used to tow a small camper with a Chevy Nova 4 door with a straight 6 with no issues pulling or stopping. Try doing that with any modern car today. Today’s cars make more horsepower but they lack the torque which is more important for daily driving a vehicle.
I enjoy seeing these engines get rebuilt, but it is fascinating to see how they were built to begin with. It's impressive how many computers they had back then to ensure a precise engine build. I like how Pontiac machined in combustion chambers, rather than leave them a bare rough cast. It is extremely rare thing.
Crazy to think that all Pontiac V8s of that era came fromthat central foundry in this video. Theres a decent chance that my 1968 Catalina 400 engine and my 1970 Lemans 350 engine went down that very same line and were assembled by some of those very same people.
literally fifteen minutes from me,,,the chinese bought that foundry,was dismantled and shipped,,,the neighborhoods surrounding the foundry were always covered in a soot like material with iron in it,,,destroyed paint on cars,,,,ahhh the good old days
That's a lot of QC for an engine that typically lasted 100k miles due to the low quality oils and metallurgy compared to what we have today. There was definitely a lot of pride in workmanship because they had to just to make it useable.
Sulphur in the fuel back then caused wear as well. I worked in a shop that did rebuilds after the government made the fuel companies sell low sulphur fuel - as an emissions reduction measure. There was a marked and increasing drop in the amount of work we got after a few years.
Can speak of sulfur removal in modern fuel processing. North of LA, near the path that Amtrak takes, is a refinery with *huge* piles of bright yellow sulphuric.
@@skylinefever : True. Lead is good for engines. Not so good for the environment, but it is good for engines - it reduces exhaust valve erosion. It also raises the allowable compression ratio, which improves power output and fuel economy. Taking lead out of gasoline made good sense in the USA, which has a high population density, two or more cars per family, and most light trucks and all vans running on gasoline, making gasoline lead a major source of lead in blood. In other countries, e.g, Australia, which has a low population density, few cars per family, and all trucks and vans running on diesel, it was completely stupid to ban lead in gasoline. Taking lead out made no noticeable difference to the amount of lead in human blood as it was not the major source. But it reduced engine efficiency, thus causing more gasoline to be consumed and therefore more CO2 emission. It's right, proper, and extremely desirable to protect the environment, but the way greenies and politicians go about it, they make the problem worse.
What an excellent vid. What an incredible time it was. My 389 4bbl is still going - untouched. She has a little valve wear but nothing serious. I love my Pontiac.
Those computer systems and machining systems are still way ahead of there time . Back when people wanted to work and pride in their work and shit was American made with pride
Little did they know, that within a decade, that a 'GM" motor would be a Chevy engine painted black and shoved under the bonnet of a BOP car in lieu of their own engine to cut costs
I work at the foundry site in Pontiac, Mi…. The foundry is long gone, USPS distribution center there now. The complex next door still stamping out parts.
@@darrellsomers5427 : Current Chevrolet V-8 engines produced today have nothing in common with the traditional small block Chevy V-8. They are two very different platforms. Not one part is interchangeable.
@@darrellsomers5427 I never say they stopped making crate engines based on original small block designs, rather I said traditional SBC engines share no parts with currently produced V8's. The LS engine that replaced the SBC & today's V8's are far superior in every way.
@@skylinefever I had a 1972 Oldsmobile 98 given to me as my first car in 1979. RIGHT when Carter's lame inept idiocy gave us a major gas crunch. It had a rocket V8 455 under the hood. Back in 1972 my dad came home from 'Nam, saw what my mom had bought - took the exhaust resonators off. We used the car for a few family trips. Cozy luxury comfortable. Mostly, it sat and our daily driver was a 1967 volkswagen squareback (original blue, resprayed lemon yellow). Dad liked speed so he rode his Yamaha R5 350B or Kawasaki H2 MkIV to work. There I was at 10 years of age maintaining that car. Brakes, oil changes, installed a janitrol aircraft heater in it. That gave us INSTANT defrosted windows, warm car, warm seats. Not gonna say what government aircraft the heater came out of nope. It burned MORE gas! BAH! There's plenty where THAT came from, all we need is a thinking HUMAN that LIKES America for President and this whole gas thing will clear up. (Sound familiar?) That motor wound up getting rebuilt a little mean n nasty and put into a Datsun B-210 with a Mustang II front-end and no back seat or rear hatch space. Foolish, that build. It cost more than a new car to get it drivable. Frankenstein's monster, I learned how to weld! My dad loved it and stole it from me and bought me an Alfa Romeo GTV6-2.5 mile miglia quadrafoglio. He said I was going to kill myself with the Datsun beast. He was correct!
@@twoponchos I miss the camraderie that was so strong in the foundry. People really stuck together and helped each other out. It was a very dirty place to work but you got used to it. Eventually I worked in every plant in Pontiac Motor Division. I started as a millwright apprentice in the foundry in 73.
That's cool. You may have helped build some of the Pontiacs I've owned over the years. Currently I have a '73 Trans Am which I bought from the original owner back in 1987.
I've always wondered what a Poncho 400 or 455 would do in a modern performance application with today's advanced engine management systems? Some of Pontiac's heads flowed great from the factory; just imagine with modern port injection and ignition? You could run 11:1 comp on high octane, because today's computers could retard the timing before trouble starts. And of course, they could tailor the response curves far better than back in the day. 500+ net hp on pump gas? I'd believe it.
I like this point in time for many reasons, life was simpler and better back then. You could afford to buy a house, kids didnt shoot schools up and 65 year old grandmothers didnt have full sleeves and tramp stamps )
For those unfamiliar with the true Poncho engines, be aware that the first production year for the 455 was the 1970 model year, before that was the 428 (which replaced the 421). They were torque juggernauts...mostly due to their over-square stroke. Pontiac also thought through power-and-compression far better than most other car companies of the day...they really only had two pistons: a flat top and a dished. Depended on the displacement, but normally this resulted in an 8.5-to-1 and a 10.25-to-1 compression. Pontiac's 'true secret to power' were the heads...where Mopar or GM had 'a few head castings', Pontiac had over 40 different castings...and you could literally 'dial in your compression' desired by simply changing your heads! You could, with minimal fuss, drive an 8.8-to-1 car to the track, change the heads and race an 11-to-1 engine, then change back and drive that 8.8-to-1 back home! Of course, the 'true high performance heads' (closed chambers, no emissions, large valves and runners) were 'small chamber heads'. They were denoted by a number cast into the siamese ports in the middle (such as '46')...elimination of Pontiac eliminated this 'racer-convenient' feature, and instead, made racers 'rebuild' or 'stock various engines' to accomplish the same 'compression change' ability. Pontiac was WAY AHEAD OF ITS TIME!
GM should have never dropped Pontiac. Buick and Oldsmobile, maybe. But not Pontiac. Pontiac was and always has been the innovator. They lead. And, in my opinion, GM cut off their nose to spite their face when they culled Pontiac.
Sadly Pontiac destroyed all the tooling in 1985 in a deal with the Feds. They weren't the only manufacturer to do it either. Big brother wanted to make sure that the muscle car engines died. They never foresaw the aftermarket stepping up. We owe a lot of thanks to all of the aftermarket. You can get more and better heads now then you could in 1970 when these engines were in full production.
@@1967davethewave that is a sad bit of news concerning the government. I know you have Butler and the TPI ram air 5's today but it would be nice to have the factory originals.
@@bluesman7475 I couldn't agree more. I was 16 in 1983 and I got my first car, a 69 GTO. By the following year due to abuse by me I spun a rod bearing. My dad had it towed to the local GM dealership. My dad had always been a huge fan of the 455 S.D. So he said we could just order one from Pontiac. Unfortunately they didn't sell complete crate engines. You could buy the 455 S.D. block fitted with pistons, the S.D. heads ready to go, the crank was a separate part and the rods had to be purchased individually. I remember those 455 S.D. rods were like $60 a piece. That was a lot in 1983. My dad said he would talk to his buddy to get him to put it all together for us as neither of us were mechanics at that time. I have been a professional mechanic since 1986 though. In the mean time my dad was reading through a Hot Rod magazine and saw an ad for Racing Head Service in Memphis TN for a crate 454 Chevy that dyno'ed at 450hp and was only $2100. He had me call them and ask it they could build a 455 with the same horsepower. They said sure, for $2750. Well, it came as a complete long block and would have dyno papers to prove it's power and it was going to cost almost the same as piecing one out from GM. But it wouldn't be a 455 S.D. As a matter of fact, when it arrived much to my disappointment it was a '73 vintage 455 with 4X heads. They were ported and it did include a dyno sheet showing 451 horsepower at 5100 rpms. It was a beautiful build but I really rather would have had that 455 S.D. I started saving and was going to buy one eventually. By the spring of 1985 I had saved enough about half of what I needed. Then my dad told me what was going on with the replacement engines from Pontiac and how they weren't just discontinuing them but destroying the tooling as well so no body could purchase it and make more. It wasn't until that fall I found out from my auto mechanics teacher that the Fed was trying to discourage the Big 3 from making replacement engines for the older cars.
Makes me wonder if this level of care is put into modern engine production or if they just want it out the door as quickly as possible. There are a ton of modern cars that have been having serious premature engine failures even with religious maintenance. Chevy displacement on demand engines, kia 4 cylinders, bunch of stuff from Ford etc all come to mind
Sometimes a manufacturer will rush something into production without working out the bugs. That is why some engines weren't very good. Also, it is why you never should buy a new car the year that variant arrives. Modern engines can be (And usually are) made more precise than this. However, if the design is flawed, no amount of precision technology is going to save it.
Most of the 4 and 6 cylinder turbocharged engines are failing around 100k miles due to the additional stresses of the turbos, and Hyundai/Kia (same damn companies, really) have some beautifully designed vehicles that could be as good as Toyotas or Hondas, but they seem to stop just short of really building in longevity and reliability. Too many damned plastic parts are also a major culprit, especially in the engine bay with all of the heat. *SIGH* I still think the 1970 Full sized Pontiacs were terrific cars! I had two neighbors with the Bonneville Broughams with the 455 under hood and another next door neighbor with a 1970 Catalina with the 400. I loved the beefy sound coming out of those exhaust pipes from the factory. Thanks for sharing this unique video all about the big block Pontiac engines!
@@JohninTucson Yes, a badly made turbo 4 or 6 is a disaster. However, when done just right, it isn't so bad. I think about how many Volvo bricks had turbo fours. I also think about how the engine in a Nissan 300ZX Turbo usually just needs the right maintenance.
You I been a mechanic for 55 years and for 32 of them I worked with my Dad who had a 35 year head start on me. Wanna hear a quote spoken in exasperation by him to me? "Boy - the guys designed these things to be practical to produce. To give a required performance. To not weigh too much or use up too much time or costly materials. They had to satisfy their buyers - not you. They were designed to run until they were out of the warranty period and for a good long while after that. NOW THE WARRANTY RAN OUT TWENTY YEARS AGO ON THIS THING AND YOU WANT TO DOUBLE IT'S DESIGNED POWER OUTPUT. Just shut up and work with what you got or buy something better, OK? You sound stupid when you say shit like that !"
@@patrickshaw8595 I don't know what you're supposed to know, but what I know is I saw a video showing me an SD block compared to a regular 455 HO block and they are a little different. The video I watched showed a little more bracing in the lifter galley's. So, there is SOME difference.
