Hey im new and im putting in a pontiac 455 in a third gen as a project and i was wonderin wat i got against my friends lightly moded 06 wrx around 250 hp? He is all talk about imports and i want to shut him up!

Any kind of mild build should net you nearly 500 ft/lbs of torque, (may vary by year of block). The 455 is one of the most solid large cube engines made, your biggest limitation will be the added weight, getting traction, and your ability to drive (no offense meant, I just don't know how experienced you are). If I can take down a moded STI with my average small block Chevy, your 455 'Bird should have that WRX straightline.

ya its going to be a mild rebuild. hopefully i get enough traction. and im not that experienced. right now i have a 91 trans am, but im trying to buy a earlier 80's t/a or iroc to put the 455 in. i just hate when he brags bout how his daddy and mommy bought him this car and pay for the mods that go in it!!!!

yea i understand....uhh if you traction u shuld Kill em easy..auto or stick?

A lot of being able to drive is to drive, practice a lot. Learn to roll on to the throttle instead of mashing it through the floor. The 455 will be a hell of a torque motor, and just mashing the throttle will cause you to do nothing but turn your tires into molten soup, (which is a lot of fun and highly recomended in the right setting). I know what you mean about that kid and his parents buying him the car. Back in '99 I was finishing up my first third gen project, (an '89 Iroc), and a friend of mine had his parents buy him a brand new '99 ss convertible for his graduation present. He talked a lot then when I got irritated with him I would just tease him about driving his parents car, and that usually quieted him down a bit. Then when my Iroc was on the road we went to the Pamona drag strip and I wasted him bad, as you would expect a high 8 second car would a stock fourth gen SS. Never another word from him, especially since all together i had less money in my car than he did in his, and I got all the attention at the cruise nights. Don't worry man, victory will be sweet and well worth the wait and effort.

Your rear end doesn't stand a chance. By rear end, I mean differential, not hiney In other words, 455 + 7.5" diff = being towed off the starting line.

Dan

i dont completely agree. it depends on the tires your have and the gear ratio. if you change the stock gears out for anything higher than 3.73 i highly suggest getting a diff cover that has a reinforcement on it to stablize the pumpkin. but unless your going to be seriously racing your rear should be fine

sorry i couldnt find my post i prob plan on saving for a moser 12 bolt 30 spline.

Hey, just to update what the kid has done to his car his parents bought him a down pipe for his turbo. How much hp does that add? P.S.- He doesnt even have a job.

you'll kick his *** up and down the road.
by the way, will chevy big block aluminum heads work on a pontiac 455?

nope

dang, oh well. my friend might be buying a pontiac le mons with a 455. damn dude, talk about a big engine.

455=gobbs of torque

have you started on this yet? id like to see it!

its the same size as a 326, just with a bigger bore and stroke

i'd like to see pics of that too. turns out my friend isn't interested in buying the le mons any more. its such a heavy car. I can't really blame him.

All import bashing aside dont underestimate a WRX or any car for that matter regardless of what country it comes from.

He has a factory turbo system that can support better than 300 AWHP easy and more if he had a knowledgable tuner. Simple boltons like that down pipe can lead to major gains that N/A cars can only dream of.

He has AWD and unlike many older systems it's fairly bullet proof up to several hundred HP.

The AWD makes hard launches in all kinds of conditions dead simple. On a prepped track you might do better than on the street but short of ice sprayed with PAM he can hardly do any wrong short of bogging it.

Luckily for you he's atleast as heavy if not heavier than you.

The 07 and older imprezas also have a lot of squat built into the rear suspension and with soft factory suspensions can lend to a lot of rearward weight transfer in a car thats still essentialy FWD thus transfering weight to the wheels that will see at best 50% of the available torque.

Also working for you is the extra weight and drag of the AWD system it's self. After the launch unless he's making truely impressive numbers the car will transfer 100% of the available torque to the front wheels and the rest will just be along for the ride. If you cant beat him out of the hole you might chase him down at the top end.

I have seen a 5,000 pound Caddy with a ten bolt and 500 cube motor running in the single digits so the 10" is not nearly as weak as it's rep.

10 bolts are fine. you can beef them up for reasonably cheap. my dads 84 berlinetta went through a lot of 9 bolts in 2 years though. and that was when it was new, only about 55k miles. I guess the Borg Warner rear axle wasn't all it was cracked up to be. lots of posi issues from what he says.

20 bolt for a 455?? no way if you plan on taking off hard you need a 12 bolt or better, if your going to run a manual trans ( dont recomend 5spd) like a t-56, rock crusher or aftermarket 5spd, you should get a ford 9". i just put in a ford 9" and im not making nearly as much torque as a built 455.

if you do race this guy do it from a roll or 60+ they are gutless on the highway, they pull like a honda because of their low gears.

he will probably wipe the street with you on a take off unless you have suspension mods and slicks.

Irational myth mongering Just like the myth that a stock 3rd gen motor can break a perfectly sound 10 bolt rear.


Really people you cant believe everything you read on the internet.

For anybody interested in knowing the truth the reason the 10 bolt has such a bad rep is because one of the first things someone would do to these cars when new would be to instal a set of stupid low rear gears.

The problem is that in order to make these gear sets fit the 10 bolt case the pinion had to be reduced in size, because the ring gear couldnt be made any larger.

Small pinions break much easier than large ones and the 10 bolt OE gear sets are not all that large to begin with but with OE type ratios the rear is actualy strong enough to survive behind big inch motors and massive torque.

Even a 9" ford gets significantly weaker with ultra low ratios.

Since I plan on auto Xing and tracking the car I might instal ford 9" bearings since our's do seem to fail consistantly when put under excessive stress. But thats about all I anticipate having to do besides regular pm.

best cenario for a quick street 3rd gen? Lots of torque, reasonable final drive ratio and something better suited to a light weight car with a strong motor than the 700R4. I like the 2004R my self as it has a much better gear spread and can be built to survive practicaly anything you might throw at it. At best the 700 seems to safely handle 500-550 HP, <thats about where a stock 200 from your grannies Regal starts to fail and they only get better.

ill post some pics but i have a thread in engine swap

dude, I don't know where you came up with the 250hp from, but a bone stock Impreza puts out about 375hp. Put that with an AWD platform and a 5 or 6 speed gearbox and you've got a ROCKET. I believe the only way you will beat him is if you run a blower and some super sticky tires. Those boxer motors are hot!

sorry but i believe you have your facts mixed up, an "impreza" is the non turbo awd model, they dont even make 200hp. the wrx is turbo, makes around 225hp and runs a 14.5 quarter mile, then there is the wrx STI, which is of coarse AWD and has 300 flywheel hp, it genarally runs a 13.3-13.5 quartermile, about the same as a 98-02 fbody with an ls1 and 6 spd.

also the wrx's are 5spds or autos, the sti's are all 6 spds.

hope this helps, do a google search on it.

http://www.cars101.com/subaru/impreza/wrxsti2006.html
scroll down...

oh, sorry. I was talking about the STI's.

do you have any references for this? I find that hard to believe. I know this is the Theoretical and Street Racing forum, but this is pretty damn theoretical considering the car and drivetrain don't exist yet

Well, according to the september 2008 issue of SuperStreet Mag, thats what they said. Again, im talking about a bone stock Impreza STI.

Subaru probably paid them to cheese up the ad a little....

as i said, bone stock sti puts out 300, not 375

Here is some pics from the build so far. i also have a th400 tranny to with the engine. just need a car if anyone wants to or knows of anyone who wants to trade a mid 80's iroc or t/a for my 91 305 ws6 let me know.

what color will it be?

The engine and heads are gonna be gloss ford red. and the car i want black. trying to go red and black color scheme

ah, I see, black with red accents. very nice. got a little suprised when I read FORD red. lol

well if they made a pontiac red i would choose that instead. lol

there was a chrysler red it looked the same as ford red.

lol, I hear you there. doesn't pontiac have a color?

ya a ugly robin egg color.

oh yea, that is pretty ugly. GM corperate blue is a really nasty color.

they also have a metallic blue that looks pretty good, the old school pontiacs had the robins egg color i believe

http://fiedlerh.home.att.net/enginecolor.htm

yep it makes me wanna puke.

really i didnt know that? does duplicolor make it? red is my favorite color though.

neat. I'm gonna stick w/ chevy orange though.

i believe they do!

DE 1616 Pontiac Blue Metallic

Dupli-Color® Engine Enamel with Ceramic
DE 1601 Ford Blue
DE 1602 Universal White
DE 1604 Universal Gold
DE 1605 Ford Red
DE 1606 Ford Dark Blue
DE 1607 Chevrolet Orange-Red
DE 1608 General Motors Blue
DE 1609 Chevrolet Blue
DE 1610 Pontiac Blue
DE 1611 New Ford Gray
DE 1612 Gray Engine Primer
DE 1613 Gloss Black
DE 1615 Aluminum
DE 1616 Pontiac Blue Metallic
DE 1617 Ford Green
DE 1618 Detroit Diesel Alpine Green
DE 1619 Chrysler Green
DE 1620 Chevrolet Orange
DE 1621 Old Ford Blue
DE 1622 Chrysler Orange
DE 1631 Chrysler Corp. Blue
DE 1632 Chrysler Industrial Red
DE 1634 GM/Chrysler Low Gloss Black
DE 1635 Ford Semi-Gloss Black
DE 1636 Clear
DE 1638 Cummins Beige
DE 1640 Plum Purple
DE 1641 Grabber Green (Lime)
DE 1642 Daytona Yellow
DE 1643 Torque ‘N’ Teal
DE 1644 Racing Green (Hunter)
DE 1645 Ruby Red
DE 1646 Trophy Blue
DE 1650 Cast Coat Aluminum
DE 1651 Cast Coat Iron
DE 1652 Hemi Orange
DE 1653 Red

if u like it go wit it that wat i think

yea, thats what i think, just because it came that way from the factory doesnt mean you have to keep it that way, i never liked the robins egg blue, but i always liked the metallic blue, of coarse when i did my 428 for my 76 bird i went gunmetal grey.

i did go with that. check out page 3 of my sig.
DE 1653 Red (they make red?!)

ya but it depends also wat shade you want.

yea, i thought you might have had shade in mind