Hot Rods Pontiac Superduty 421 experts

If you worked at that depot on williams Lake rd., then maybe I sold you cigs or whiskey or condoms. I worked at Thrifty Drugs during high school. Drove a 64 Tempest with 421.

http://www.theoaklandpress.com/article/OP/20130815/NEWS/308159909

Speaking of Ostrander:

 

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Never saw any of Jacks hot rods so thanks for that.
Regarding Waterford, you might have known: Thom Langs, DougDenio, Smoothie, Bill Burnett, Ed Baba? They were in your genre.


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Sound familiar?


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When I was young my uncle who was a senior in high school had a 66 GTO with a 62` super duty 421 with 4 speed. Complete with with factory dual 4 bathtub intake. There used to be a well known farmer in Missouri years ago that built Pontiac powered pulling tractors and he put this car together. It even had a set of M/T aluminum rods in it.

It was stupid fast and mean. This would have been mid 70`s. I still remember hearing the car coming from several blocks away. Used to street race it and went thru rear ends constantly.

He had it about a yr and decided to sell it. My dad asked him why and he said it was getting to expensive for a kid in school with a part time job. My dad told him it'd be cheaper if he'd take his right foot off the floor. In which my uncle replied " Bill I'm 18 with a fast car and a 4 speed where else am I gonna put it?" My dad laughed and said good point. The car sold a couple weeks later....

 

Regarding the early '60s Pontiac Catalina Super Duty cars...... I did some work for a guy who had one with a blown engine. Engine was disassembled in the trunk. It had the long cast-iron headers. The thing that struck me as odd was that the passenger side header had a heat butterfly. We usually removed those from our cars to prevent back pressure. Seemed odd that Pontiac would go to all the trouble to cast those beautiful manifolds and then restrict flow on one side with a butterfly valve. I see that various versions of these cast headers are reproduced now.

Here is the 421 aluminum Super Duty version with cutouts (the '63 cast iron headers I saw did not have cutouts).......

http://www.ramairrestoration.com/po...um-d-port-421-super-duty-factory-headers.html

When I was in the service in the '70s (2nd tour of duty), I had a '65 GTO ragtop with a '74 low mileage 400 engine. My goat was totaled in the base parking lot by some goofballs in a '66 Mustang doing their Cheech and Chong thing.

Pulled the engine, built it up at the auto hobby shop on base when we were in port and eventually swapped it into a black '56 Chevy 2dr sedan along with the Muncie 4-speed and power brake unit from my GTO. The Poncho powered '56 was the best driving '55 - '57 Chevy I have built so far. I ran a 12-bolt rearend from a '69 SS396 Camaro behind the Pontiac engine. After I figured out that Pontiacs made inordinate low and midrange torque even with the lumpy Sig Erson cam I was running and you didn't have to rev them like a Chevy to go fast...... I swapped the 3.73 gears for 3.07 highway gears and my Poncho powered '56 loved that......

Adios, old friend (totaled on passenger side and frame was so rusty it had stress cracks and the body flexed noticeably, she was originally a Connecticut car and road salt had taken its toll)......



New home for the big Poncho mill......



Would have loved to have had cast headers on that car, but the Poncho mill was a tight squeeze in the Chevy engine compartment and I had to run '68 Firebird passenger side center dump manifolds on both sides to clear. Got lucky and found a couple with 2-1/4" outlets, increased to 2-1/2" at the head pipe and ran 2-1/2" duals with low restriction hemi mufflers......



I set the '56 up to handle. Big TransAm Firebird sway bar up front, Chrysler Cordoba bar at rear, heavy duty radial tuned shocks and radial tires with 8-1/2" of tread width front and rear......





'74 400 Pontiac short block, Sig Erson cam, big valve, small chamber '69 428 cop car heads, '66 iron tri-power intake with '70 440 MOPAR mechanical secondary Holley tri-power carbs. These were the over the counter high performance replacement carbs MOPAR dealers sold to replace the OEM vacuum secondary 6-pack carbs. These have the small rectangular fuel bowls for added clearance because all 3 carbs ran metering blocks. I hand built the air cleaner using a '70 Datsun 240Z filter element. With 3.07 highway gears, you could ease into the throttle and cruise up to 90 MPH on the 355 cfm center carb. When you kicked in those 500 cfm secondaries though, all hell broke loose......



Happy Motoring,

Harry

 

Now here's a guy that thinks outside the box, not one to follow the typical street machine format. Sounds like it was a great car with a well thought out combination.

 

In 1962, I was 14 years of age.A younger friend(age12) had a neighbor who had a 62 Super Duty 421 Catalina with aluminum frt end and aluminum bumpers.The engine had 2 -4 barrels but was ordered from Weaver Pontiac in Waco,Tx with a heavy duty 3 spd.Bill Newton(the owner) was kind enough to take 2 young kids for a thrilling ride late one night down Texas Ave in College Station,Tx.Years pass by and a friend acquires the car less engine; used to sit in his backyard and us gear heads used to "lean on the aluminum frt clip" to antagonize the owner. If we only knew how much that car would be worth later in life,it should have been "saved", but it was just another car back in the 70's.

 

"I used the same air filter on my 421 tri power and the air cleaner that I built looks almost identical to yours. Great minds think alike."

Thanks, Norm. Do you have some pics of yours? Would love to see how it is made.

I made my base from 1/8" thick aluminum. Had to make 3 'D'-shaped pieces to raise the flat base above the carbs so bowl vents weren't obstructed. Stretched some rubber 'O'-rings over the carb airhorns to seal the air cleaner base. AutoZone down the road from the sub pier (it was 'Auto Shack' in those days) provided the 240Z filter element. I made the top from 1/16" brushed stainless.

The original version used polished brass wing nuts and flat washers, but hood clearance was so tight I had to run the plain cad plated hex nuts you see in the photo.

The reason hood clearance was at a premium is that the '66 Pontiac iron tri-power intake was somewhat of a high rise design and I used a piece of solid aluminum plate 1" thick to adapt the Holley tri-power carbs. I drilled and countersunk the 12 Rochester big base pattern holes and used countersunk screws to fasten the plate to the intake. Then I laid out the 12 Holley pattern holes and drilled/tapped them. Last step was boring the throttle bores to match the Holley carbs. Holley carbs had larger diameter throttle bores than the Rochesters with centers spread a bit farther apart. So I drilled a pilot hole and then used progressively larger drill bits until I had all 6 of the 1-3/4" throttle bore holes done. Bolted aluminum plate to intake and carefully drilled down through plate and manifold so there was no misalignment of throttle bore holes.

This wasn't a modern high tech 'CNC' kinda deal. Did it at night on a small drill press in the shipfitter shop aboard the tender whilst at sea. Marked the drill bits with tape so I wouldn't drill too deep and hit plenum floor. The old top heavy WWII era sub tender with her overhead cranes was rolling quite bit, but I managed to get it done.

The other thing that limited hood clearance was that I scrounged up 6 mid-'60s Ford 2bbl water heated carb base plates (same pattern as Holley 2bbl) and stacked 2 of them under each of the Holley tri-power carbs. I ran engine coolant from the front of the intake through the 3 upper plates that were right under the carbs and from the rear plate, ran it over to one heater core outlet. The water heated/cooled Ford carb base plates helped atomized fuel and also kept carbs from getting too hot. This helped drivability quite a bit.

The 2nd set of (lower) base plates were only there because the Ford plates had a little offset that needed sealing (upper plates were run straight up with water plumbed through, lower plates were run upside down to seal the upper plates and I cut off the lower plate water nipples and plugged them with small freeze plugs for appearance).

The passenger side Pontiac head had a pressed in plug at the rear with a 90 degree water nipple, so I used that to run hose to the 2nd heater core outlet. This cleaned up the upper side of the engine and I didn't have to run 2 heater hoses down the passenger side from front of engine to firewall.

Final version of this intake...... Sorry, photos were lost in '83 hurricane...... But with the diminished fuel volume in the smaller rectangular fuel bowls, I was experiencing fuel starvation of the 500 cfm end (secondary) carbs at WOT. So I removed the tubing manifold you see in the photo there and made a long round fuel log like the one Ford used on their 406 Holley tri-power carbs (which also used the small fuel bowls). And I also replaced the 5/16" pickup unit in the gas tank with one for a '57 Chevy dual quad engine (these used larger 3/8" fuel line) and ran new 3/8" fuel line from tank to stock Pontiac mechanical fuel pump. Problem solved.

Regarding the air cleaner...... I experimented with running sans hood and stacking 2 and even 3 of the 240Z filter elements to solve airflow restriction at WOT. This solved the flow restriction issue but I did not want to butcher the hood, so I built a closed air box for the carbs and ran a couple 4" diameter fresh air hoses from each side of the radiator back to the air box and I put filters at each fresh air inlet. Kind of a ram air deal. Space on either side of radiator was limited because I ran a huge cross flow desert cooler radiator. Worked well, though.

Best regards,

Harry

 

Thanks, Fordors. She was a great car and a joy to drive. You are right. My first car was a '53 Henry J. Stuffed a '53 DeSoto hemi and '54 Dodge transmission into it. Had her running by my 16th birthday (1963).

Happy Motoring,

Harry

 

Most of the guys I knew were older than me and/or owned a car business. Jerry Sidock - Hi Performance Auto on the Dixie, just a short ways from where Stapletons slot track was. Or Louie King - I built a couple of motors for Louie, "then he got all Ford" and got a big block Mustang.

You were more likely to find me at Joy Fair's place. "the winningest driver in ARCA-sanctioned history".

Fritz (cannot for the life of me remeber his last name) owned Clarkston Auto Parts and good friends with my cousin Dick Branstner, so I relied on him a lot for getting exotic parts.

And then Pete Marriot - first worked for Haupt Pontiac, then ran dynos for GM until he retired. He was my main parts supplier for SD Poncho stuff.

In fact, I believe it was Pete I traded the heads I got from Delorean.

 

The engine is currently out of the car and I will see if I can get some pictures of the intake, air cleaner, fuel log etc.

When I originally built the engine I couldn't find an air filter that would fit. I finally talked the counterman at the local NAPA store into letting me into the back room with a tape measure. That is how I found the 240 Z filter element.

 

I unearthed the 421 and took some pictures. The engine has been out of the car for a couple of decades. Please forgive the slop job with the RTV; I was in a hurry when putting the air cleaner together and that is all I had at the time. The ugliness is invisible when the air cleaner is installed.

 

I see him around town allll the time..... He REALLY gets around friskily for his years!!!!

 

That's a beautifully done 421, Norm. Really like the air cleaner and fuel log. I used to get the parts counter guys to let me go in the back and measure things as you did to figure out what might work. That was before computers, back when they were also fellow gear heads and worked out of parts catalogues. Are you going to drop it into something and run it? The 421 would be a great engine in something light. Or even as a high performance replacement engine in a '55 - '57 Pontiac car.

My fuel log on the Poncho powered '56 Chevy was pretty much the same as yours except that I didn't have a return line to the tank. And because I was running Holleys, it was on the drivers side. I will be building another similar fuel log for the tri-power intake I am working up for a 292 Chevy inline 6.......







My apologies for the photos being in reverse order. Computers are a mystery to me. Just view them from bottom to top and they should make sense. What I am doing here is converting a sidedraught intake to mount Weber DCNF downdraught carbs. I have 2 identical sidedraught intakes here and the modified one will form the outboard half of a 2-piece intake. Both intakes being joined at what was once their sidedraught carb mounting flanges. Had to go this route because the sidedraught setup would interfere with the steering column and master cylinder in my '57 Chevy. And it gives me an opportunity to rebuild and put some carbs I have here to good use.

This will be 'one last' build for me. Will be 70 in November, G-d willing and knees and legs make working under the car pretty much of a challenge. Still have pretty good upper body strength, so I made a knotted rope and hung it from a beam so I can let myself down onto a creeper and pull myself back up that way.

I have a stock '57 Chevy 210 4dr sedan here. Been sitting up in my garage for decades and I thought I'd build a big 6 for it just for fun. I've done the V-8 thing in '55 - '57 Chevys every which way over the years (small blocks, big blocks, even swapped a 1960 413 MOPAR police interceptor engine into a '55 Chevy business coupe once in addition to the Pontiac swap into the '56.

So now, I just want to have a little fun and do something different before I get too old and gimped up to drive the '57. It will be an old school build circa late '50s - early '60s. Not so much because I am following HAMB guidelines, but because I just want to do it that way. Right now, I am scrounging up the parts to swap larger '59 - '64 Chevy drum brakes onto the '57. No modern store bought disc brake conversions here. I will run a good set of speed rated radial tires, though. I consider that a safety item for a 'driver' now of days.

Best regards,

Harry

 

I had the 421 in a '62 Studebaker champ pick up for awhile, until the cab rusted off of the frame. It has been sitting since. I was planning on selling the engine at one time but my sons pitched a fit saying that they wanted to put it in something someday.

Here is a picture of my latest Pontiac attempt, a dual quad 455 that is going into a slightly off topic '69 GTO.

 

When I had my Speed Shop back in the Day there was a Guy that worked
on Pontiac engines & he was a Guru on Pontiac if you like them
he was the Man.
He had a Shop in L.I.C., NY & I think his name was Nuzio Auto or
something like That
I know when I had a Problem with one of them I would Call him
and He would give me what things to check out
He made Pontiac's Run.

Just my 3.5 cents

Live Learn & Die a Fool

 

Nunzi's Automotive. You're correct, Pontiac guru

 

I wrote to him. No reply.
Anyone know if he's still kicking?


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Haven't talked to him in awhile but try these 718-837-1135 --- [email protected]---

 

Sweet! Offy 360 degree intake? Cast aluminum Super Duty headers? Dig it!

Make sure you have sufficient filtration area so as not to restrict flow, though. I have found this chart to be useful......



http://www.ramairbox.com/

The chart is for determining height of a typical 14" round filter, but you can use it to determine equivalent filter area in sq. inches for other shapes and even flat rectangular filters used in some of the newer EFI type cars.

Best regards,

Harry

 

Nunzi Romano? Shop in Brooklyn? Yeah, he's the man when it comes to making Pontiacs run. I corresponded with him about 20 - 25 years ago. Was thinking about re-creating my Poncho powered '56 Chevy and was looking at cams.

Best regards,

Harry

 

I'm planning to stack filter elements depending on how much hood clearance I end up having.

 

That should do the trick, Norm. Let me know how it works out.

I will have to take a close look at hood clearance once I finish the intake I am working on for my '57, as well. Would really like to avoid butchering the hood if I can.

Best regards,

Harry

 

That would be Vance Heck out of little town in central Ohio. Not sure of his brother's name. They were in the mobile home moving business as I recall. Great guy.
I've seen the aluminum frame you speak of. They also did some fiberglass parts as well (fenders, hood?). I remember two different 1962 SD cars, got to sit in one of them.

Here's a shot under the hood of the SD car:


Note: I just went back to read the entire thread and recognized that other's know the Heck's as well (Vance and Phil). Great thread, by the way .

 

Thanks for your input and interest. I'm finishing a total nut and bolt restoration of my 1961 Ventura.
It will have a date coded Jan 1962 SD with the solid lifter, Mickey Thompson aluminum pistons, correct coded 2x4's and aluminum pulse flow exhaust system.
I looked for this engine for 13 years.
So I hope to be ready for the Mecum auction in November to be held here in Las Vegas. Unless someone wants to buy it before that.
We will see.


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It sounds like your uncle had one of the 58 Bonnevilles with factory fuel injection. They were 370 cu in and I think they were something like 335 HP. The guys use to put that engine in the 58 chieftain 2 doors and ruled their stock class at the drags for many years. I'm told the new [65] 'cuda with a 273 fit right into the top of that class and was faster than the Pontiacs.
I'm using a 370 Pontiac [it's a '57, 347 block bored .125" over] in my 34 ford coupe with later big valve heads [screw-in big block chevy studs and guide plates], Jahns pop up pistons, dual AFBs and A Lunati cam. I can't wait to drive it! Hoping for 345-350 HP. I'm using a single AFB on it to run the cam in. Sounds great!

 

BTTT

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Dig it! Now that you mention it, I still have the passenger side grab bar from a '68 Firebird I owned many moons ago. It would probably look out of place in my otherwise stock appearing '57 Chevy, though......



Strange how things work out at times...... The Chevy will have a heavy duty Borg Warner T-85 overdrive transmission out of a '65 Ford pickup......





To adapt it to my '57 Chevy bellhousing, I scored a gear case from a fellow who had parts from a couple disassembled '61 - '62 Pontiac Super Duty T-85 3-speed transmissions listed on e-Bay......





The Pontiac T-85 gear case (these did not have overdrive) will interchange with the Ford T-85 overdrive gear case, but I must drill one additional hole in the back of non-OD gear case.

When I go through the Ford transmission, I will substitute the Pontiac gear case when reassembling. The thing I wasn't able to locate though, was the Pontiac T-85 front bearing retainer and input shaft. So I will see if I can substitute an early GM T-10 4-speed input shaft with same tooth count as the Ford and a matching T-10 front bearing retainer.

My T-85 being a truck transmission, it has a lower 1st gear ratio (2.97:1) than the passenger car T-85s (2.45:1), so the Pontiac input shaft wouldn't have had the correct tooth count anyway.

If the T-10 input shaft and bearing retainer won't fit, I'll have to turn down the Ford truck bearing retainer to GM size (so I can use GM throwout bearing and collar will fit centering hole in GM bellhousing). Will also have to make a bronze pilot bushing having GM outer dia., Ford inner dia. and a bit longer than stock, as the Ford truck input shaft is a tad shorter than GM.

Will let you know how this works out.

Best regards,

Harry