454 build using peanut ports
 

Ok guys so oil prices are down and work is slow and the boat needs work I was planning to build a 500 hp engine for the boat as my 330 hp gave up last summer what I have now is a gen v with full forged rotating assembly with 30 over twr 2399 pistons gill/merc manifolds, morel hyd roller lifters, roller rockers, a 4150 hp holley 750 cfm, a weiand intake that matches peanut port heads and of course the greatest heads ever the peanut port heads and the rest of the stock 330hp engine I do not have the money to finish off my build the way it should be and I am not going to sit on shore all summer so I am planing on using my heads, intake, carb on the short block I might change the cam to a hyd roller as I have the lifters and such what cam do you guys suggest? What kind of power can I make with this set up I would like 400 but I know I should have atleast 330hp lol yes they are better heads and I would love to have a cam from bob m and yes a better carb and cmi's but that is not in the books the boat is only 21 feet long and I do not do alot of wot driving hopefully next year I can save up and finish this thing off right what do you guys think

I'm no expert, but those heads are done at 4500 rpms. I seriously doubt your going to get to 400 hp with peanut ports no matter what the other components are.

If it were me. I would build the short block with the good parts and hyd roller cam now. Have your top end be the limiting factor. It only takes a day to put on new heads and intake when you can afford it. Make sure new cam end exhaust does not create a reversion problem and destroys a good short block.

Rookie that was what I was thinking good short block and the rest I can do when funds permit

endeavour32 I have read threads on there that guys claim to be making up wards of 430 with peanut heads I would be very happy with 400 from them but then again I guess I can be garenteed 330

Be aware that mismatching components may net a lazy engine in the beginning. Not always, but be aware.

What would be your guys choice for a cam to take full advantage of the power potential of the heads

There is no power potential in Peanut Ports also don't believe what you read! You will not make 430 hp with boat engine using Peanut Ports. You would be doing good to make that kind of power with factory 088's. Do as Rookie suggests, build your lower end with the goal of putting better heads on later. I honestly doubt you will gain anything until you get rid of those heads. Peanut ports stink no matter how you slice it, they are good for what merc used them for. Beyond 330 hp, forget it. You need to also remember that the guy stating he made 400 hp, is with an engine with dyno headers and no accessories. Take your 330, put headers and no other power robbing parts, and I bet you would also make 400 hp.

So for the camshaft just use something that has the same specs as the stock one if I plan on using my roller lifters or just reuse my stock 330 cam

454-502 HO cam. GM number...24502611 510/540. 112 LSA 211/230 dur at .050. the zz502 with 110 LSA would be a little too wet with those short riser Gil exhausts. under 200 bucks jegs and pace performance. gen 5 you can't realistically mess with old ovals that are cheap and easy to find. L29 vortec heads are all over the place and cheap. better than peanuts and the 100cc chambers will get you up to 9 to 1 with those flat pistons. absolutely stuck with those peanuts? do a little port cleanup and gasket matching. electric drill and small stones and carbide cutters. it is SLOW work but free. do some googleing porting peanut heads.

How much do you spend a weekend in fuel? Should be able to pick up some 088 heads for about the same as 2 weekends worth of fuel. I'd skip a couple or boat with a buddy for the month of May to do it right for June. Just me though. I totally get being stuck to a budget no matter how good the deal

I think last year I ran 5 tanks of fuel threw the boat at most. We just usually go for a burn around the lake and then just float around. I can get a set of vortec 454 heads for cheep but are they ready to bolt on? Do they have enconal exhaust valves right from Gm? I don't mind doing alittle clean up of the peanut ports or even the vortec heads but I just don't got the cash to dump a grand worth of work into them

Jd last year there was ice on the lakes until mid may lol

I would prob dig a set of l29s out of a dumpster and bolt them on , before trying to rework the 360s yea lingenfelter got big power out of peanut ports but thats lingenfelter. Vortec truck heads are cheap and the oem eaton valves seem to hold up well on most builds unless your going forced induction or making runs to cuba and back. At full throttle .

Sorry when I go to Cuba I take a plane. Ok so who wants to go dumpster diving and send me a set of l29's

http://forum.grumpysperformance.com/...t+heads#p44642

Everything you want to know....well maybe not.....$....... but is to the point and no guess work.

I freshened up a 454 in a '69 Chevelle a couple years ago. owner didnt want to spend the money on heads so we ran the peanut ports on it. we put a hyd. roller cam in it that made strong low end power because of the heads. it sounded great, pulled hard thru the gears but at 4700 rpm it hit a wall. the only way to turn more rpm was to push it off a cliff. if you pick the right cam it will run good and make good torque but plan to run a max of 4500 to 4700 and then you would need another cam when you do get better heads. build what you really want the 1st time and the expense will less than doing it two or three times because you are disappointed.

Two words--DUMP THEM. ANY rectangle port set of heads will almost double your cfm airflow. Just stick with iron heads. NEVER use alum. unless you have a closed cooling system.

Or you boat in fresh water.

You do know that your peanut port heads do not have inconel exhaust valves either, don't you? Merc only actually installed the inconel (Manley) exhaust valves in the blue Mercury Racing engines that were hand assembled. The black motors ran with whatever GM spec'd for them. Now I guess it is possible that GM spec'd inconel valves for the black motors, but I would have to have it proven to me.

Go fast where I live there is zero chance of salt water only fresh water. I would love to dump the peanut ports but it is not in the budget unless you plan on selling me some heads for cheeper than dirt.

Budman I never knew that Thanks. You learn something new everyday

Stop buying steak. Eat chicken.

Lol :ernaehrung004: i would love to ditch the heads anyone have heads they want to sell for a few hundred bucks a half eaten steak and 2 cans of PBR :boat:

The valve sizes are the same as the 781s ect .guess you could do a quicky chamber cc and grind till the cows come home . Or build a torque monster that would fry the tires right off the back of a 4200lb monte carlo.
Me and a million other people wonder what the world would be like if merc could of got the oval ports for thier base 454s instead of the truck heads .maybe horse trade , search craigslist for a 454 with something else , scrounge the boat shops for a cracked gen6 maybe the heads are good , i have picked up grenaded vortec 454s cleap under 200$ cheap and got buildable heads from them .

i just bought a done set of vortecs from a kid goes to votech school for 300 bucks. no port work but valve job looks good, head had .002 shaved to clean up face. i have a tired set of vortecs, 1 bad guide, 15 kinda loose guides. was some kind of generator or pump engine ran propane. if i gave you the heads it would cost 100 to 200 to get them to alberta. but if you have a votech school nearby there is a source for valve and head work WAY under market. (sitting in a school parking lot..."hey little boy, wanna play with my head?") try car-part.com. it is a boneyard website. harrys auto wrecking in grand prarie shows a pair. no price listed though...

ex valves. i did a thread asking when inconels were needed and the consensus is the stock truck valve is stellite which is the next best thing and very similar. boat engines are after all truck engines. heavy load constant rpm for a long time. race car engines run from 3500 to 7500-shift, repeat-shift, repeat. shut down. 12 seconds total full throttle. how many people you gonna impress running your boat engine for 12 seconds? so the peanuts and L29s both have very stout exhaust valves and they are interchangeable.

I would not worry about forged crank and rods for a 500hp engine, put forged pistons in and some decent iron heads..it will be fine...we have raced(with no failures) cast crank, 3/8 rods, 2 bolt main engines that ran great for many many passes...put that $$$ towards heads..and if its a genIV I would look at the large ovals like 781's make a great marine setup, use a performer RPM intake and decent cam Roll on..

Lingenfelter did get good power out of peanut ports - after he opened up the ports, and put 2.19 / 1.88 valves in them. In other words, he made them close to a good set of large ovals.

Not cheap to do that - you could by Eddy marine heads for that and be at about the same level, but with 90 lbs less on the stern.

I agree with the build the short block to support more power later approach. You'll have to compromise the cam since peanuts won't take much lift, but that is an easy change later.

Derek thanks for the info. I get all of my stuff shipped to sweetgrass Montana way cheeper

As mentioned, why not grab a pair of 049 or 781 heads?

I know it's no boat engine but we're making 600 hp with a set of bowl ported 781's on a 461 BBC in a Chevelle.

it is a gen 5 so I don't want to run mark 4 heads. I found a set of vortecs that I might grab for 200.00 and they mag them for cracks. maybe I will do a 330 on roids kind of build also what do you guys think of 10 to 1 comp with the vortecs. gas is cheeper than dirt and I don't burn much. maybe on 94 oct

L29s give 9 to 1. fine for iron heads 87 octane. your pistons are flat. domes don't work with L29 heads. they have the heart shape that has a flat surface between the valves- right where the domes are biggest. so 10:1 is not a realistic option. also a little less total timing. 30 degrees full tops. and of course you bought the only good intake for peanut heads. if still new in box, you may wanna see if the can exchange for oval RPM or similar...that is if you go with ovals instead of peanuts...

The twr 2399 pistons that I got are 13.8 cc Dome, with single valve relief not flat top. so are you saying that the vortec heads will not work with my pistons?.

I thought 2399 were flat forged. You can grind down the comb chamber to clear the domes. And i think that the l29 is about the only large oval gen 5-6 head.

Ok good so I can still use the vortecs but cut to cut the chambers is that correct. I have a machinest at work and a mill and the rest of the goodies should be able to do it. You got any pictures

demax, there are a lot of people on here who are running the Mk IV heads on Gen V blocks. You just have to use the correct head gaskets. If you do a little searching on this forum, you should be able to find the ones that you need, or give Fel Pro or Cometic a call.

Sounds like a lot of work to grind out the chambers on a set of Vortec's to try to get the piston domes to clear. And after all that, you have to cc the heads to make sure the chambers are all the same size. Are we sure that there is no chance of hitting any water jacket in that area? If those are very small domes, why not just have them milled off by the machinist? This could be done with more precision than trying to hand grind the heads, and I am guessing (hoping) that you are going to have the reciprocating assembly balanced anyway.

After you spend the $200 on those heads, how much are you going to have wrapped up in springs, retainers, and keepers to match the cam? What about a worst case scenario of having to replace guides? I found out the hard way that setting up a set of cast iron GM heads for a high performance boat engine that you want to live for more than a couple hundred hours costs a lot of money, and before you know it you start to approach the cost of a good set of aftermarket heads that flow much better. Sit down with a pencil and calculator and figure up your outlay before buying the heads. Otherwise you might end up with a couple of sets of cast iron GM heads sitting in your garage like I did. ;)

I wouldn't try to go 10:1 on a cast iron head motor - stay around 9:1 - 9.25:1 for safety. You never know when you will be stuck with no other alternative than questionable gas.

Also, the fast-burn chambers used on the Vortec heads generally take less initial timing than the old 1960's chamber design of the earlier heads. The advice of staying around 30* total timing is probably pretty valid.

I don't know what I want to do. I would love to put on a diffrent set of heads. I have read tones on the mkiv heads on the gen 5 blocks some say it works others say it does not. The vortec heads look brand new the owner said he swaped them with aluminum ones and that the heads only have 40,000 kms on them. I was just hoping to grind the heads so that everything clears. Has anyone does this? I don't want to touch the pistons as one day I want a set of aluminum heads and don't want to do a tear down. If I get 200 hours on this engine I will be more than happy. For me that is about 5 years of boating. The heads are 200 I need studs for the rockers that is 100 unless I find used and a set of springs for my hyd roller set up maybe 400 to 450 total and that is in Canadian funds. Someone will say well I can sell you my 088 for 500 and be better off but have you seen the price of our dollar 500 us funds is like almost 700 Canadian put shipping ontop and I got me a set of 088 for a grand with 500 hours on them and still need springs. There is not a lot of performance boats where I am and if they are they got a 5.0 or a 5.3 in them heck some people here have threw hull exhaust with a 4.3 v6

forget the vortecs. they are a come-up if you have a flat-pistoned stock bottom end. they have the fancy chamber that burns quik and requires less timing. nice med perf head...just like the peanut. they flow little better than a peanut. of course 049 and 781 don't flow that much better than a peanut til you port them and up-valve them till they are rect port heads with smaller ports. your bottom end is a mag now. the domed pistons require a larger chamber for fit AND compression ratio. now you want 118 cc chambers. the ski jump in the vortec intake also improves swirl and combustion. but costs airflow at higher rpms. sounds kinda like a peanut doesn't it? your peanuts are paid-for and you apparently have the matching intake. the vortecs are about half the price of 188 gen 6 rect heads. and i assume the peanuts are a known-good item? save the money for a head worth that bottom end you built and drive the paid for peanut set-up.

Ya I am just going to use the peanut ports. Got suggestion for a better cam for the peanut ports

I just re read my older posts a gm 454/502 ho cam I beleve

maybe a set of 1.8 rockers would help? I know jd has a set for sale in swap shop