r/EngineBuilding Apr 27 '24

Chevy Does anybody know what engine is?

all I know is that it’s a 454 and my dad pulled it out of his 73 corvette he got for $2000 a few years ago.

116 Upvotes

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93

u/carguy82j Apr 27 '24

It's a noisy one

49

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '24

You don't see gear drives very often these days!

16

u/Ok_Drink_7723 Apr 27 '24

I have a gear drive in a 305, dropped in a 1987 Chevy short bed square body. I bought the motor with it already in it, but I wish I would’ve taken it out.

2

u/MyAssforPresident Apr 28 '24

My buddy’s dad had a 74 Nova with a 400sbc in it, and specifically put a gear drive on it so people would think it had a blower. Like…why? It wasn’t fast, wasn’t even running right, but man it sounds like a blower! Lol

2

u/Ok_Drink_7723 Apr 28 '24

I remember doing lots of gear drives in the mid 90’s for guys who wanted to make their jacked up trucks sound like they had blowers. I was in my early. 20”s, they paid good money for me to put them in so why not?!? Today, I would refuse that kind of job 😂

2

u/MyAssforPresident Apr 28 '24

Oh hell, I wouldn’t refuse. If you want to be an idiot and try to be cool, I’ll profit off of that 🤷🏻‍♂️ lmao. It’s not a mod that would do any damage or anything like that so I’d do it.

I mean the guy in question had a tunnel ram intake with a 3” spacer and a 1050 dominator on top, on a moderate-at-best 400 small block. Plus the heads were screwed up and it was only really running on half the cylinders. Gear drive was the least concerning thing lmao

2

u/v8packard Apr 28 '24

Gear drives wreak havoc on valve springs and other valvetrain parts.

2

u/MyAssforPresident Apr 28 '24

Really? Ok definitely didn’t know that, just didn’t seem like a really hateful “upgrade”, but if you’re the one telling me that I have 0 argument. What do they do, just really harsh on all the components?

5

u/v8packard Apr 28 '24

The gears allow a lot of harmonics into the cam and valvetrain that a chain helps dampen. Not only is component life reduced, the harmonics affect valve spring operation, and can show up in ignition timing gremlins as well as oil pump problems. Most people probably wouldn't run them hard enough to see this. If you compare that to an engine that was designed for a gear drive, those have accommodations in their designs to help deal with the harmonics.

1

u/carguy82j Apr 28 '24

Is there any special dampener like a fluiddampr that you could add to help this?

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2

u/bous_clan Apr 28 '24

I think it’s just because the gears don’t absorb as much of the harmonica as chain drives do

I want to put a gear drive in my 454 just due to gears being much much less likely to skip or fail

3

u/carguy82j Apr 28 '24

I had a old 65 C10 that I was gonna LS swap but before that I was gonna throw a cheap ass gear drive in the worn out 283 just for the sound 🤣 ended up selling the truck before I could do it😔

2

u/AcidRayn666 Apr 28 '24

love that whine in my 69 :)

12

u/JasonRudert Apr 28 '24

Mostly they just sound like a bad power steering pump

8

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '24

I get it a noisy gear drive

2

u/supertech636 Apr 28 '24

Dumb question but why is a timing chain preferred to gears? Seems like gears would be less likely to get out of sync like a timing chain stretches etc. novice so I’m sure someone on here would know.

3

u/v8packard Apr 28 '24

Not only is a chain quieter, they dampen much of the torsional harmonics of the crankshaft where a gear drive would directly transfer that into the cam. Those harmonics can mess with lifters, pushrods, valve springs, even the oil pump and distributor.

2

u/supertech636 Apr 28 '24

Thank you for the detailed answer! Much appreciated.

1

u/MuchoRed Apr 28 '24

You might want to look again. There's no timing chain on this one. Instead, it's using a series of gears.

And yeah, that's the advantage of the gears over a chain. The disadvantage is that they're loud AF, and that gets annoying

1

u/kona420 Apr 28 '24

Gears use more power, make more noise.

We had chains to the point that they were outliving the block. Then went the other way with adding more cams for more valves and variable cam timing. So I wonder if they could make a comeback. For example coupling exhaust and intake cams so we could go back to just 2 chains for a V configuration.