Irish's pickup from hell, the 454SS.

[Irishman999]

Shortly after moving into a really nice place where life was perfect the mining company my wife and I work for decided to transfer us across the state to a ******** called Bagdad. My buddy hauled the truck up there for me since it has 4.10 gears.

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I set up a nice little garage in the company house we had. I put some massive tires on it to try and gain some better traction but keep it a daily driver. The tires were way to big and rubbed the fenders.

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[Irishman999]

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Here it is broken down at a holiday in hotel in Heber Az. Once a month I would drive half way across Az. to pick up my oldest son. One day since the truck was running so good and consistent I decided to take it on the drive. Right out side of Heber on 2 lane highway I felt something come apart under the hood and saw something fly out from under my truck into oncoming traffic. I pulled over on the shoulder and the belt was all wadded up around the fan, then I realized the harmonic balancer pulley was gone with two sheared off bolts in the balancer.

I walked back down the highway looking for the pulley but never found it. I did find a completely ****** up hybrid car that ran something over and blew out a tire.

Luckily my friend lived in that town and came to the rescue, we went to Showlow and found a new pulley. I got the center bolt and one parameter bolt in and limped it all the way to my dads house in New Mexico.

 

[Irishman999]

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I went back to fix the truck Thanksgiving 2017, I pulled the radiator and drilled out the broken bolts in the harmonic balancer. I put everything back together and it ran great. I decided the next day to take it home, I drove it on the highway for a while and stopped for fuel. When I restarted the truck there was a huge smoke cloud and it ran like ****. I limped it all the way back to my Dads house and we figured the fuel pressure regulator blew out and sent 100 psi through the vacuum lines which caused the vacuum modulator to blow out and feed the engine ATF.

I went back that January to change the parts and it ran better. I was headed to Tuscon with it for the Roadkill Zip tie drags and didnt make it very far. Once on the highway it was done, my dad had to tow it back home.

 

[Irishman999]

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Finally in April I rented a uhaul truck and drove it 12 hours round trip the extreme wind and cold to get the thing back home.

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Once I got it home I started looking for a new big block and remembered a friend of mine had a 396 with all kinds of bad ass **** done to it, he was going to put it in his tube chassis Camaro race car. I called to see if he would sell it and luckily he sold the Camaro so I got the 396 for a steal. My buddy delivered it, pulled the old one out and took it with him.

 

[Irishman999]

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The 396 was everything he claimed it was except far from ready to just drop in. It was sitting in a shed for about ten years but it did have all kinds of good ****. I decided to pull it apart and go through it anyways. The main caps had stock bolts so I installed ARP studs, the rod bearings were way too tight so I changed them. I basically just cleaned the **** out of everything and ordered some parts the rest of the year.

Not a bad deal at all, its got a forged rotating assembly with keith black dome top pistons, an enormous ERSON cam shaft with .680 lift, Erson roller rockers and I had to buy the PRB (formerly ERSON) solid roller lifters and some pushrods. I was to lazy to change valve stem seals on the fresh heads so I dropped them off at the local machine shop so he could do it. He didnt like the valves the heads had considering the lift and double springs so we installed all stainless steel valves.

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Final piece to the puzzle was finding something to turn the massive cam against massive spring pressure. I ordered a summit racing brand noisy gear drive but the machinist said and I quote "you are out of the realm of cheap parts". I used it for mock up purposes and eventually ended up calling all over the country to find the gears to make my ERSON timing chain cover/ gear drive work. That ended with me talking to a guy who worked for ERSON back east somewhere informing me they made that setup almost 20 years ago and finding the rest of the pieces would almost be impossible. He advised me to just buy a Cloyes double roller billit timing chain set so I did.

 

[Irishman999]

So I was ready to drop this thing in and decided I should paint the engine compartment really nice. I had some Onyx black and all the prep supplies I was saving for the doors I got for the truck and decided to paint the engine compartment before dropping in the engine. I had so much fun doing the paint work I completely forgot about trying to make it run.

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At this point all it really needs is basic stuff to run, I was lacking a bunch of small **** like scatter shields for the transmission, a water pump, plugs and wires and just final assembly. I for some reason couldnt come up with the cash for this stuff so I started focusing on painting the rest of the truck.

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I got as far as ordering a new reproduction grill, doing some body work to the fenders and hood and priming everything.

 

[Irishman999]

So after one helacious life changing day last December that includes me tackling and choking out my neighbor I quit my job, loaded all my tools and **** in a uhaul truck and hauled the Super sport truck on a trailer all the way back to New Mexico where I had just hauled it from the previous April. Its been under a foot of snow for the past 2 weeks. Hopefully this spring I can relocate to Phoenix and finally finish the ******* thing.

 

[Old77]

Sounds like a lot of changes have happened for you. Some good. Some less than good. Hopefully you hang around GMSB a little bit more

 

[Irishman999]

Sounds like a lot of changes have happened for you. Some good. Some less than good. Hopefully you hang around GMSB a little bit more

Yeah I kinda abandoned the forum, I've been so busy the last five years. No time for anything but cleaning the house, raising kids, working full time, dishes, cooking etc. Now I got some free time finally.

 

[Old77]

Yeah I kinda abandoned the forum, I've been so busy the last five years. No time for anything but cleaning the house, raising kids, working full time, dishes, cooking etc. Now I got some free time finally.

You should check out some of the builds going on these days. Some pretty neat squares being tinkered on right now

 

[DoubleDingo]

So close to being done and life throws a giant curve ball. Looks like it will be crazy fun when it's all finished. Hope you can get back on track soon. We drove through some of the snow you speak of. Had to redirect from Tucumcari to Carlsbad and still hit some of it on our way to I-40.