Hello,

I'm currently going about researching/beginning a swap of a 455 Olds into an 86 Trans Am. For those of you who say "It will cost too much and isn't worth it", here is my background:

I have an 86 Trans Am I got for free, no powertrain, and an Olds Delta 88(mid-70's?) for free also. Since I needed to safety inspect the TA to license it, I want to build it as a drag car. Did a compression test on the 455, cylinders read from 132-142 psi, so it should be worth yanking out.

I've done quite a bit of reading so far on the boards to get info on the swap. I know I can just weld the mounts to the frame, and the trans mount I am going to either weld an extension on the current mount for the TH-400, or custom fab one myself.

I would like to hear from those of you who have done this swap yourselves. First, what kind of exhaust setup are you running? Do stock manifolds fit with grinding? Also, what kind of wiring do you have? The previous owner ripped out the wiring harness from the firewall bulkhead connector outwards.

Right now I'm trying to build the car on as tight a budget as I can with either the parts I can scrounge up or custom fabbing parts. After I get the setup running, then I might throw a little more cash into the ride to upgrade it. A Car Craft-esque junkyard 455 drag racer, if you will Plus, tons of guys I'm sure have BBC setups, I prefer being unique myself, thus ruling out selling the 455 and picking up a 454.

 

Well, one of the things that sticks out is torque arm? How are you going to mount it? are you going to do away with it for something better? You can buy a bracket kit that has the mount for the torque arm to adapt it to a 400 trany.