Re-Building A Junkyard Pontiac 400 Motor For $2,000 - HorsePower S12, E11

[Music] hey we're kicking off horsepower this time with a little ride in the country not a pleasure ride mind you i'm on a mission to find a motor right down here on the lower 40. [Music] you see by word of mouth i heard a good candidate for our next engine build project might be right out here something that's out of the ordinary not another 350 chevy something cheap and something we can turn into a decent daily driver and i think it might be waiting under the hood of that wagon yeah 73 catalina that used to be powered by a pontiac 400 engine one of those unsung heroes of the muscle car days it was overshadowed by its bigger cousin the 455 but during its production life from 1967 to 1979 the 400 provided power to everything from the le mans to the trans-end [Music] plus it was a solid foundation that could handle some pretty serious performance upgrades i think this 400 is going to do just fine for what we're looking for oil looks good it doesn't look like chocolate milk thank goodness oh and since the car's been sitting up all winter want to make sure it's got antifreeze in it that means the blocks probably pretty good now you can usually negotiate a better price if you pull the motor yourself which means lots of tools and a friend hey tommy where's the tools i thought you grabbed them tell me oh they're back at the shop sorry he's having fun take the grease off and the paint noy v8 powered forklift around why bother with a pontiac 400 well first of all just like the 409 we built last week this is a cool part of american muscle car history and to tell you the truth i love small block chevrolets but it's going to be nice to work on something a little different plus they powered everything from gtos to trans ams from firebirds to catalinas like the one this engine came out of now since these motors had such a long production run of 13 years you can still find them all over salvage yards now our goal with this 400 is to rebuild it add a few performance parts and wind up with a fresh one for two grand or less if you're going shopping for one of these yourself here's how you can tell what you're looking at on pontiac engines they stamp the displacement on the side of the block and that's on 70 and newer models and as you can see this one is clearly marked to 400. here's how to tell what date it was made the letter d is for the fourth letter of the alphabet so it stands for the fourth month april next is the day of the month the 11th the last digit is the year three for 1973. we'll get started tearing down this motor up front and with the belts out of the way we can remove the pulleys [Music] then the power steering pump the [Music] alternator and the water pump next let's get this nasty old fuel pump off the motor although we will need to replace the harmonic balancer that wasn't too bad we plan to reuse the timing cover definitely not that chain i think i heard mike say something about a few performance upgrades and well here's where we got to have one the factory two-barrel carburetor has got to go in favor of a better performing but not expensive four barrel which also means of course an intake manifold swap all right lesson one kids change your oil often the distributor can come out next and then the valley pants oh that's beautiful too and we'll do a low budget swap on our rockers push rods and guide plates there we go nice and dirty now here's a little trick push the lifters up and out of the way to remove the cam then just knock them out through the bottom before we pull the heads off here's something else i want to show you pontiac puts casting numbers on their cylinder heads located on the center exhaust ports and on the casting boss now this lets you know what head you're looking at plus the valve and combustion chamber sizes ours is a 4x head with a 4h which lets us know that we have a 196 intake and 166 exhaust valve with a 98 cc combustion chamber okay professor pontiac are you done i'm i'm done by the way he found that uh fancy id info by doing an internet search now after we get the heads off we'll attack the bottom end and maybe keep our date with the machine shop now we've got the mechanic mime over here wearing gloves and not doing any work [Music] [Music] yeah we can reuse this anybody pursue [Music] since we're using these rods over again we're going to go ahead and stamp them so we know what cylinders they came out [Music] of [Music] okay as soon as we get some of these things cleaned up we'll be ready to take them to machine shop now we weren't kidding about pinching pennies on this project in addition to the block crank the heads look at all this stuff we're reusing well the real fun starts in just a few minutes stay with us [Music] hey our pontiac 400 block is back from the machine shop and ready to be filled with our rotating assembly now the guys down at butler performance did all the machining and they started out by going 30 over on the bores line honing the mains installing new cam bearings and finishing it off with brand new freeze plugs as we told you earlier we're on a stingy budget with this project so we're using the stock crankshaft we just have the guys at butler turn it and balance it for us we're also reusing the stock connecting rods however they did resize them and add these arp bolts the pistons are from seal power they are new and their size 30 over now for bearings a set from federal mogul and no cutting corners with the gaskets a complete set from mr gasket now the stock oil pan was way too trash to reuse so we're using this basic stock replacement in case this is your first trip around the block so to speak here's what this bearing design is all about oil gets pumped up through the block through one of these holes into the slot and the groove here in turn feeding the crankshaft which has holes in it and it in turn lubricates the rods next is a rope seal these have a tendency to leak all the time so we want to try to prepare it so it doesn't so what you want to do is go ahead and smash it down into its groove and carefully remove it put some silicone in the groove put the seal back in until it squeezes out and wipe off the excess now you want to trim the seal down flush with the block either with a razor blade or a pair of wire cutters you can push one side down to its flush and then come over here and trim the other side then just prior to putting the main cap on you want to put a couple dabs of silicon on each end of the rope seal and then put them on after installing the crank do not spin it because it will move the rope seal next comes the main caps okay now it's time to put the silicone on the tips of the rope seal and bring them out to the end of the cap to help seal it smear just a little bit lube up the bearing and install it okay now we'll torque all the mains to 100 foot-pounds except for the rear main which goes 120. start from the middle work your way out next we'll finish up the pistons and rods and then install them in the block to move oil through the block we're going to use a standard volume oil pump from melling which also comes with a pickup and a drive shaft now the clearance between the pickup and the pan is critical so we're going to show you how to install this on the pump and then make the proper adjustments to get the proper clearance okay the easiest way to install this is to get a wrench that fits the tube and set it right here on this little rib get a hammer and just whack them all with the pump bolted to the block we drop the pan on and gently tap it to make contact with the pan rail the pickup hit the pump so we positioned it just beneath the pump plate then we marked the location of the pickup now we can measure the pickup height and pan depth to check for proper clearance finally we can weld the pickup to the pump next we can bolt up the oil filter adapter that we are reusing and we'll fasten it down with some pioneer hardware hey here's something you want to make sure not to forget when you're putting together a pontiac v8 on air conditioned models they used a three-piece dipstick on ours we're using a two piece the first one gets pressed into the block the second one gets bolted to the third main cap now if you get everything together the oil pan and everything and you forget that you're going to be cussing in your garage well stay tuned because we're going to add some color to this pontiac v8 right after this break [Music] hey we're back with our pontiac 400 build and ready to drop on the heads now the ones that came off of that engine they had a small valve and push in studs not to mention they were little on the rough side so the guys down at butler swapped us out for these 6x heads they have a larger intake valve and screw-in studs now they went ahead and did a valve job and put on new springs now these heads are pretty readily available they come on all 75 to 79 350s and 400s with the heads in place no reason to cut corners on the head bolts these are arps and we're going to torque them to 85 foot-pounds our camshaft specs out at 214 on the intake 224 on the exhaust and that's at 50 thousandths lift now it's a hydraulic flat tap it and came from howard's cams as did the stock replacement timing chain and next we can replace the factory fuel pump eccentric and original oil slinger the old timing cover looks like new with fresh paint then we can drop on the new oil pan and get it ready for some fresh pontiac blue paint after our paint is dry we can start installing our valve train which consists of flat tappet hydraulic lifters and push rods from howards [Music] and a set of 1.6 rock arms from pioneer then we'll lube the fulcrum ball drop them into place and adjust the rock arms these inserts need to go in before the water pump to maintain pressure then the flow cooler water pump can be installed with a bead of silicone to seal it we can drop on the valley pan supplied by butler next up is the intake that we got from edelbrock now it's a dual plane performer that fits pontiacs from 326 to 455 cubic inches we can slide on the stock replacement balancer we got from pioneer and lightly tap it with a hammer since it's not a press fit we're using some old mickey thompson valve covers from a past pontiac project now being this is a budget build that will save us some money so after the break we'll put this on the dyno see what kind of numbers we have [Music] horsepower is back and now it's time to give our pontiac 400 a right into the dyno room for finishing touches before we let it make some noise it was a budget build that started in the bowling yard and ended up in the horsepower shop with a complete tear down and after machining the block a rebuild using some old parts like the crank and rods upgrades like a new street cam a little paint for cosmetics and then finishing up the top end which included a new intake so we could feed our 400 with the reband four barrel carburetor finally getting it ready to fire up but for that to happen it's got to have spark so no cutting corners here we're going to load it up with a set of these denso iridium plugs and fire it off an hei distributor from excel with a built-in supercoil now to deliver juice to the plugs we got a center of their 8.8 millimeter wires in keeping with our low budget theme however we went to our local o'reilly auto parts store for a remanufactured 750 quadrajet a little paint did wondrous for the factory pulleys now it's time [Music] all right after doing an rpm sweep to 5400 rpm we made 310 horsepower at 4 600 and 411 foot-pounds of torque at 3 300 rpm now that's a lot of torque down low making this thing a really cool street motor yeah to think this motor was only rated at 200 horsepower from the factory all he really did was a basic rebuild with a couple of performance parts like the cam and intake and of course we stepped up to a four barrel best part is we brought it in for a little bit over two thousand dollars are we good or what we're good we're good [Music] it's hard to believe that america's first octane booster hit the market in 1975 and 104 is still helping engines live longer get better fuel mileage and make more horsepower well now they have maximum 104 which is double the octane boost now this helps the fuel system stay cleaner and get rid of detonation you know those annoying knocks and pings it's pretty easy to get a hold of this stuff just visit your local o'reilly auto parts store it's amazing how many wheel designs are available out there these days and if you like the timeless classics well you got to give it up for the ever popular halibut sprint probably the most imitated wheel design in recent history these aluminum babies have found a home on the drag strip road course as well as downtown main street prices start at around 300 bucks well here's something to give the tires around your wheels a high gloss and long lasting protection its mother's tire shine and it protects against the ravages of brake dust and oxidation let's give it a shot you just spray it on and distribute it evenly then just wipe away the excess after a few minutes and enjoy a long lasting shine well looks like we've polished off another edition of horsepower this time we'll be back next week so why don't you join us

Channel: POWERNATION

Views: 587,786

Keywords: Car, PowerNation, howto, how-to, diy, automotive, cars, trucks, automobile, do it yourself, automobiles, auto, junkyard, pontiac 400, engine rebuild, horsepower, engine build

Id: dMUyDiPE5YA

Length: 18min 15sec (1095 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020