The middle combination would make a cracking fun street motor. Torque for days right where you need it.

As a Big Block Chevy fan, this is a treasure video. Much knowledge to take in about the bad talked peanut port heads. Over 500hp without porting confirmed 👍🏻

Now this is my kind of content! Glad to get a break from turbos even if they are cool.

Eat a peanut every time he says “Peanut”.

I got a 90 454 bored . 030 over , peanut port with port job and milled, flat top pistons, Comp 280h cam, long tube headers, torker2 intake( I think.) Sadly it's never been fired up yet. Started raising a grandbaby , niece and helping the in-laws out. Got several projects that stopped or slowed down. Can't wait to get the Ole Rat in Something. Great Video.

Would love to see a "ultimate tow pig engine combo". Something that makes gobs of torque from idle to a redline of like 4500rpm. 👍

It would be interesting to see the AFR’s with the 268H. To see if the peanut ports (or how much) are holding even the milder cam back. I agree with you that it would also be interesting to see a peanut port head with some work and the 268 ... maybe even an “amateur” porting job vs “pro” ... but really it would probably be more interesting to just see the “what you might do in your garage” porting (some bowl work, maybe some short turn and radius work* at the gasket. *Vizard did some work on this, just radiusing the port inlet vs. port matching.

That torque at 3500 rpm makes a difference when towing up a hill. That combination is nice. Thank you Richard.

This was an eye opening video. I've read that peanut heads are no good for "decent" power (whatever that might be), but I don't recall seeing any definitive testing done to determine how much CAN be made. If you can get 550# ft with a set of peanut ports, why do you need to buy new heads? Depends on the desired application, and that one would be great in a truck that needs midrange power. Thanks for testing.

447 is a lot of torque at 3500 rpm for the streets. I like both mild builds for the budget guys.😎

I am running a slightly different combo. mine is a 396 with the large factory oval port heads. 9.4 : compression. 2.19 intake 1.88 exhaust. Mild bowl and chamber clean up, to match the bigger valves, but no real port work. 2inch headers, performer rpm intake, I a, running the old comp cams extremely marine 276HR cam. Runs 11.8 on drag radials in my 71 camaro 4 speed. So i figure is pushing 520ish HP. But It’s a hell on street tires. It will melt my 265/50r15 bfg’s all day long if you are not light on the throttle in first gear.

Thanks for a great video. I used to watch your videos but quit because they all used aluminum heads. I asked for combos that we're budget friendly and you came thru. Keep them coming!

I appreciate this info so much being that im building both a Gen5 and Gen6 454 . The Gen6 im stroking out to a 496 and shooting for 700-800hp for my 94' C1500 build. For the Gen5 i wanted to build it up but on a smaller budget as I wanted a more streetable ride for my 01' Sierra single cab since im going to be using it daily. I think the 380hp/485htq combination matched with the heads of the Gen6 would be perfect for what im trying to achieve with it. Richard is definitely my "go to" when im trying to figure out what the hell im doing lol. Thanks for the time and effort you go through to give us these great ideas/combinations .

Great video Richard thank you I've always wanted to learn more about boosting horsepower properly and I learn something new every time I watch your videos thank you very much l!!!

Thanks! You just gave me the combo info I am looking for for my Gen IV 454 ! I'm going for the 450 HP combo!

Thanks for this, those of us who grew up with CCR (no, not Clearance Clearwater Revival, I mean hot rodding with Cam, Compression, and RPM) have needlessly tossed some peanut ports for some piece of iron we had to rebuild so it wasn't pretending to be an oil burner diesel.

It’s slow at work right now happy to have a good video to watch thanks Richard looking forward to the live stream tonight unfortunately I might not be there for it to air I will be watching it for sure can’t wait for all the good knowledge about engine stuff 👍

Thank you Richard! I have just what I need to do the 400 hp version and it should sound great and have excellent drivability. Thank again!

This is what I needed to hear. Thanks for all the work.

NICE!!! Bitd my step-dad had some great cars, and I was fortunate enough to drive them. One was a 66 Vette vert with AC and full options. Factory side pipes 427/390 & 4 speed. At the same time he also had a 13k mile 66 Hemi Satellite 4 speed. The lowly oval port hydraulic cam Rat SMOKED that Mopar like it was parked. The Vette would spin the redlines in first through 3rd like it was nothing. I've always been more of a torque guy since then. Yesterday I scored a pair of 90 454 peanut ports at my local u pull junkyard. Last month my friend Joe gave me a 73 454 4 bolt std bore block and 427/396 steel crank. I'm most likely gonna look for a 4" crank but if not I'll do 390 horse pistons and that 268 grind. Then, I need an 65/68/69/70 Impala or maybe a Nova for it. Rat power Forever!!!

Nice, I remember a build that Bryce Mulvey did for Someone at Westech with a C2 Corvette. 480ish inches, his fully ported 049 big valve heads, a fully ported old school (stealthy) C396 spread bore intake and a built Q Jet from some former Super Stock racer he worked with at Carrillo(?) Made around 640ish hp and 589ish tq. Very Impressive for such an outwardly Stealthy street combo!

I found the BBC Stealth intake to actually have runners too large to flow well and the BBC Performer RPM does much better, but on a Ford 5.0 / 302, the Stealth flows better and the RPM runners are larger than ideal.

Pretty much said what I was thinking at the conclusion. The last combination with a slightly smaller hydraulic roller, and put the dual plane back on... should still make 500 HP, and get back a bunch of low speed TQ. I hit a few road blocks with my Gen 5/6 hybrid, cracked cylinder head, but I have a replacement on the way. Hopefully get this thing together over the next few months. I need to find valve springs to work with my mild hydraulic roller cam swap. That's the next problem I have to solve.

that 450hp combo looks killer for a truck. you get great torque for towing and such and some more power for highway passing. the 500hp would be good for the drag strip if you were forced to use peanut port heads

Love the content that you put out. Can't wait for the K24 big bang video

I was going to say put the dual plane back on the 513hp combo and port the heads but then you said it at the conclusion. So I vote yes.

That setup @ 5:35 is a towing dream machine! I want that in my Suburban!

I love the intro part that zooms in on the enormous intake ports on the gasket that are about half supported by the peanut ports lol

Great timing Richard, this is exactly the setup I'm currently building right down to the cam grind (Comp 268), I've hand ported the peanut heads and I'm having a bottom end build with .030 over pistons to raise the compression to 9.3:1 (since I want boost later on without running exotic fuels).

Great video Richard. Perfect for a heavy cruiser jet boat like an open bow. I agree the 450hp version makes a lot more sense. I'm curious how it would work with a log style exhaust.

My nova has a bbc in it, swapped from a truck and it has the peanut ports. I put a jegs dual plane on it and im thinking of having the heads ported to match the intake for better flow and a good valve job put on it. Not sure what cam id like to run yet, id love to have a chop monster cause that sound is the best thing in the world! The car isn't used for much, occasional car cruise, burnout contests, but id like to be able to take it down the strip as a "Street car" as well. Not to concerned about drivability, enough I can get it to town (8 miles, further than that it'll get trailered) but with burnouts and some strip use the motor is gonna live most its life in the upper 5k rpms probably. Just trying to not spend a bunch of money, racing for me is the enjoyment, not trying to win.

Would love to see this test done with a gen 6 bbc, love the videos Richard!!!

169 K congratulations mr Holdener

All goes back to WHAT ARE YOU USING IT FOR!!!! Great Video as always Richard

Just the video I needed to see. 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Never even heard of these. Thanks for the video.

I had that XE256 in a C10 longbed with a 454 with small domed pistons, Edelbrock heads and intake. That truck screamed from idle to about 5200 RPM.

I selected the XE268H for a 350 sbc that had stock cast heads ported out with a weiand intake manifold #8004 also ported out and using a slightly modified quadrajet still made 5000rpm in a motorhome! now I'm playing with a 1979 Mark IV 454 itasca motorhome.

Absolutely, please build the engine you last mentioned before closing off. I'm building the same engine for my 1 ton square body dually. At the moment the PP heads are at SPR getting 2.190" / 1.88" valves, bowl and port work. It's probably better to bore the block .060" over for valve clearance in un-shrouding thought.

Hogging out the peanut ports to match a large oval gasket might be the answer. A fair amount of material would need to be removed but, might allow the high torque numbers to be retained. Would also allow a slightly bigger duration cam to be used. Maybe 230 @ .050 or slightly higher. Keeping a tighter LSA would help maintain higher torque too.

These are the best choice economy heads for towing and off-roading with a 4x4. Torque to spare !

Thank you so much. This is information I can use on my 1980 c30 single cab dually.

I've been waiting for this.. The only gm junk I have left is one of these..

Great video 👍👍 I've been using a tbi 454 for plowing and hauling firewood in a 92 k2500. I ditched the tbi when it would no longer run ,the harness was brittle and falling apart.. It's closer to the first engine in this video using weiand peanut intake, 600cfm carb, 1 3/4 headers 4" single exhaust, small jegs or summit cam with stock valve springs. Stock compression ratio and heads. I'm guessing closer to 300 hp and gained alot of upper rpm range where the tbi just fell off and wouldn't pull anymore. It's for sure more powerful vs. when the engine was stock. It sounds rather hollow though and tired w/250k? miles and lousy 7.8:1 ? Compression ratio stock it was the lowest cr of any big block made. So I've got another tbi engine in the garage which will have more compression. Milled deck, heads should bump it closer to 8.8:1. I wish I had the cash to build it with larger valves, springs and roller cam upgrade, alas it is just a work truck and already has enough power as is 😆. I also swapped to a nv4500 when the 4l80 took multiple dumps and straight axle hp 60 front. W/4.10 gears because the ifs can't handle a snowplow.. I'm not sure what engine I would replace it with other than a 4bt for the fuel savings or a 6.0 ls to get some weight off the front end.. anything else I would probably hate the loss of torque maybe a 400ci sbc would be okay or a inline 6 with all the goodies thrown on it.

At one point I had a 10:1 468 with a comp "magnum" 280H (230/230 @.050 duration)flat tappet cam. Stock peanut port heads, duel plain intake, holley 850, headers, th400 with a "saturdaynight special" converter (2200 stall). In a 78 camaro with 4:11 gears (was also in a 78 T/A with 3.73 gears) but it ran 7.6 in the ⅛ and 11.9 in the ¼ on motor and was well into the 6's / 10's on nitrous. It was great because of its simplicity and it was pump gas friendly but was mild enough to comfortably drive daily.

Cool great scientific work...I was wondering what these heads could do on a street truck...thanks

I’d like to see a vid where you take a gen iv peanut port engine and change nothing but heads, peanut, oval and rec port. All factory iron stuff. because I have one in my 83 c10 :p

Great video!

dang GOOD info for the low$$ crowd. i built a gen4 454 ,30 overbore. 781 heads, 20cc dome piston. & 218/228@.050 .500 lift summit cam k1301. ive always wondered what the dyno would say about that combo.??

Arias has built a few 502 Chevy big blocks with DOHC 4 valve per cylinder heads from the Porsche 928. The Porsche M28 engine has bore spacing nearly exactly the same as the Chevy, so with some welding and drilling, the belt driven DOHC heads fit nearly perfectly. The overhead cams are driven by a short Gilmer timing belt from some sort of Renault car. The belt itself is driven off of a new gear installed where the water pump would normally be, and this gear is driven off of the original OHV cam gear/timing chain. These engines made 550 hp all day long and were actually capable of passing California emissions inspection-

Any insight on which peanut port heads flow the best? The more efficient the air pump, the more power. 👍

I'd love to see some BBC combo vids! I'm on the fence for my grudge car power plant. Turbo/twins, for power adder either way, but LS vs BBC...

Richard, im actually working on porting and using bigger valves on some peanut port heads with flow testing after each change. I did a small amount of porting on the intake and exhaust, I gained 3-7 cfm on each depending on the lift. Im waiting for the email to so I can compare the velocity also. Next we're going to see what bigger valves do. The guy doing the valves and flow testing says we could see up to 20 cfm on just the 5 angle valve job on these heads. I probably should have had heads ported before and tested before I put bigger valves in. I also wish I could dyno test after each mod, but that gets a little spendy. At the least it will be fun and interesting to see how it turns out. Learning is always funn too.

This is very helpful as I have a the edelbrock preformer rpm oval heads and port matched air gap with 750 with the xr300h cam on my 402bbc (300rwhp and 820rw torque. I’m planning on doing a 496 10.5:1 with this top end and the same cam maybe upgrade too a 950

great test. if you have left the flat top pistons in there to have around an 8:1 CR and throw the roller cam in there with a right 106 - 107 LSA would you just be down around 8% in the HP & TQ ? i have a gen IV with peanuts ( 360 castings ) and just want to throw a mild roller in there. DP and headers already in there.

Your 450hp peanut port version with the up grade to the oval port heads would be nice too.

I'm really surprised you made that kind of power with pp heads. Maybe I should'nt have thrown mine away. I used a set of early semi- closed chamber large oval port heads.I put in 2.19-1.88 valves and some mild porting on a 454, in my daily driven street racer 68 Camaro back in the early 90s with much success. Damn, I miss those days.

Seems like CAM and INTAKE/Carb still made great improvement on stock engine, with reasonable RPM. Perfect for a stock truck!

With the xe268 cam version could you spray it with 100-150 shot? Or with those heads would it be wasted since the heads don’t flow like a set of AFRs

Goes to show that you can start with peanut ports and modify from there as you want or need to.

Great stuff

Basically, among the many things we've learned here is, it's really hard to screw up a big block Chevy engine. I'm sure there may be some extreme examples out there but, with all the knowledge available on this channel and others, there really isn't any excuse for putting together a bad BBC.

Hey man when are you going to do the big block big bang test I would really love to see a GEN five big bang test

Have you ever run the GMPP Ramjet 502 intake on Gen 6 BBC? I am upgrading a stock GMPP Ramjet 502 with AFR 290 heads and wondered what the limits are on that intake manifold.

Richard, I do appreciate all your work, it is very valuable to me. Would it be possible to include the BSFC's on your dyno runs?? This info is helpful, especially for the street folks, since it gives a measure of an engine combination's efficiency in converting fuel to Hp/torque.

Thanks for the vid it gives me an idea of where I'm at. Mine is gen V 30 over, +30cc pistons, comp muther thumper, stock valve size but ported heavily, 800cfm carb. Besides my crappy carb the combo works great for street fun. Can hear it on my channel's intro video.

Richard I would like to see a test comparing peanut ports to oval ports to rec port heads. None of the heads would be ported, just a stock comparison.

What kind of Oil pan did you go with for the 500+ HP motor?

Yea I like the middle combo I need that for my duelly but I want the roller cam

Great work Richard! Love your videos. Good motor for a truck. For a high performance car, if you are going to use GM iron stuff, stick with the closed chamber 290's, or open chamber 781's, or 049's they will blow the peanut ports away. I have the stock 290's on my Chevelle 454 SS, they scream.

I currently have a 454 with a comp cams xe268h and 781 heads in my 75 C10 and it's a spunky little street truck

would love to know how to get more power out of these peanut ports in the marine environment. mine just blew up this weekend and is getting rebuilt

We made about 40 hp from a p port head to an oval port back in the day. The hot swap was the rec heads. But gear and cam accordingly. Bv

First time I read about peanut port power it was written by David Vizard. Ever since then I kind of wanted to build one, just because. If you can build a combo of 450-500 hp with parts "nobody" wants...imaging what you can do when your circumstances permit you to build that ultimate stroker motor. If you don't know how to optimize with what you have NOW...you are looking at a big fail. I would like to see a 450-500 combo blend, that would be ideal on a 5500 rpm highway geared combo, cheap fun fun fun! More with less....IMAGINE THAT!

The 450.hp will make a nice boat engine!

I'd like to see what happens when you add a stroker kit to the 450 motor with basically stock peanut Port heads I would like to upgrade the bottom end with the cam at the same time then in the future I could upgrade the heads with oval ports

Intake velocity on peanut ports and 454ci sucking through it is a low end torque monster without extra money spent.

I am curious if a port matched (downsized to match the peanut ports) manifold with long tapered runners would improve low end power any further? Get that epoxy out!

If engine builder A says...this is what I can do with the peanut ports parts you have NOW, with these PROS and CONS, and work up from there when you are $$ ABLE.... Verses builder B who says you should only consider a stroked out LS or a stroked out 640 big block. I am choosing builder A every time. I could have a lot of fun with an affordable unloved peanut pert BB in my drive to the track, 78 Malibu, S-10 Blazer or 68 Impala, but the most fun will be lying to EVERYBODY...when they ask what size engine is inside. If you are builder A, hit me up.

I can't wait to get my engine to the Dyno.

What carb is that exactly ? Do you have a link or part number ? Thanks!

Right on

I don't know of a single Richard Holdner vid that was deserving of a down-vote. Who keeps doing this anyway? 🤣

I'm thinking the air gap intake probably contributed very little over the Weiand duo plane. Those Weiand's are about as good as it gets for a dual plane street intake. Much better than the Performer RPM in my opinion.

Thank you

I wonder how it would have run with the airgap style dual plain intake on it

I’ll do a head swap to get between 400-500whp. But what’s longevity of putting that much more HP into a 454 gen V? I would also like to avoid a cam that sounds to aggressive and still having the option to put 87 octane in it My truck only has 20k miles…(that’s correct) I’m hopping to tow with this truck But I’m not feeling the hype when it’s loaded down being stock

I have a 427, bored .040 over with .19 domes. heads are match ported two 7561 air gap 750 holley. these are 063 heads that have been fully modified, semi open 2.19/1.88 valves fully ported, shaved .100" my cam is a comp 282s solid. 110 lobe sep 236 @ 50 282 duration/561" and wait for it, (STEEL rockers) running 450 RWHP dyno tested.

I put together nearly the same engine (but using stock 781 heads & an Eddy Air Gap), and made more overall torque and horsepower with an Isky 304 Mega cam than with this Comp HR cam!

I'd really like to see a comparison between the peanut port heads and the large oval port heads. I've always wondered if they were worth any extra hp

I’d like to see a 454 30 over gen 6 with speed master heads at 10-1 comp with a pro flo 4 set up and see what the numbers are. This would be, to me, an ideal street engine you can run on pumps gas.

So with better heads and a tunnel ram think you could make that 550tq at 3k and hold it out to 5500rpm?

How about a peanut port, quadrajet, 454. How much torque can you get from 2000 to 5000 rpm test. With any header, cam, and any intake that's out there. I bet the q jet will be snappier at low rpms.

hell yeah- big block Chevy

Old video i know. But im building a 92 pickup now. I needed this. The right cam. The heads i have. Bore with new pistons. And i may play with the heads.

torque rules the street!

I'd love to see a dumb test as far as just how much power you can make with peanut ports sometime. Put them on a high compression 632 with a single plane or something... I bet with big inch, big compression, big cam you could make significantly over 500.

Yeah good topic, Expose the 454!

Would love to find a reasonably priced 454 in GA.

BBC FTW