Thread: 454 Engine for sale, opinions

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There is a 454 for sale locally. The guy says it a crate motor from the late 80's. Says it was an LS6 but built to LS7 specs. It has a steel crank, and some rectangular port aluminum heads from Chevy. The guy had the heavy duty connecting rods taken out and some light duty rods installed. I think they did this to make internal balancing easier. I am assuming it's internally balanced since the flex plate and balancer don't seem to be counter weighted. The motor has 12.5:1 compression not sure of the cam grind, the guy said the engine builder took out the LS7 cam and went for a differnet grind, not sure if more radical or less. The engine hasn't ever been run but turns over easy. No intake and no rocker arms. The guy is asking 3000 for the motor. What do you think about the price.
Seems high to me but not sure.

Less intake and rocker arms? my opion it's about $500-700 to high, but you can probably talk him down. Sounds like a good motor.

Why would they take out good rods and put in lighter duty ones? The assembly can be balanced with any rods. Why doesnt this guy know what's in the engine? I personally would pass it up, you dont know what you're buying at all, especially if someone changed parts all around. You dont know what cam is in it now, dont know what heads and chamber size...is there any documentation on what this really is? And where are you going to run a 12.5/1 engine, not on the street for sure...assuming that's what it really is. I would keep looking regardless of the price. If you were spending 500 bucks, that's one thing...but 3K?

Johnny there has an engine you can buy. Fill one of the cylinders up with concret and forget about and you won't even know it's there. hehe. Seems weird from what you told me though and I don't even know much about this kind of stuff yet. Just from hearing about all this stuff he took out and put in. Sounds like he bought another better block or such and used all the good parts on that engine and put crappy ones back in and trying to make it sound like it's some nice engine. That would be like me making a fully blown sweet 383 and then taking it all off and putting stock parts in and saying that it used to be a fully blown 383 but I just took the parts off.... no point to it. 3000 seems high to me and I have been looking around at different 454's, etc.