# #98 Cylinder heads odd balls?



## 66242 (Mar 1, 2015)

I have a set of 1971 #98 heads off of a 400. The sites I've seen with charts on ID ing heads say they should have small valves, these heads have 2.11 intakes with large chambers. And they should have been on a 455. Like I said I pulled these off a 400 that had never been apart.
Thanks, Jay


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## 05GTO (Oct 6, 2004)

They may be a set of 96 heads that were incorrectly cast.


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## Pinion head (Jan 3, 2015)

98 casting heads were used on YG coded 455 big car engines for 71 model. Have only found this engine in relatively bare bones '71 Bonnevilles. The YG coded 455's were few far and far between even in the mid 80's. Having a Pontiac engine core program going for over 2 decades, I usually came across the '71 YC coded 455 engine in a good 20-1 ratio over the lower horse YG coded '71 455's. interestingly, the first '71 YG 455 I ever pulled in the mid 80's was an extreme early 483677 block cast G080. A factory screw-up, assembled with factory 4 bolt caps, still have the shortblock.

As factory cast and the chamber fully machined by Pontiac, '98's are a 115 cc chamber head with 2.11 intake valves and press in studs. Not much demand for this chamber size head, know at the warehouse I have several pair of '71 66 casting 455 heads off '71 YC engine cores. Personally I wouldn't build a naturally aspirated 455 with them, but have sold a few pair of 66's to restorers needing cheap dated core heads for their 71 455 Dport GTO's. The last 10 years there has also been more interest in budget turbo and budget supercharged 455 engines and a few builders have used cheap 66's, 7M5's, 4X-1's in their builds to keep C/R low on 4.25 stroked 400 and 464+ cube 455 block combo's.


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## 66242 (Mar 1, 2015)

So, what are these heads worth then?


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## Pinion head (Jan 3, 2015)

if I had them, they would most likely go in the pallet rack at the warehouse and then when we're out hitting Pick-N-Pulls for later model parts, if I ran into a 70's Pontiac V8 with some 5C-7's or 6x-4's, I'd pull those heads. After checkout and getting WHACKED hard for a core charge , within a few weeks the 98's would be finding there way back to the same yard so I could get my core charge back...most likely $50. Since metal went up in the mid 00's, these type yards, ESP the LKQ's bend one over pretty good for cores. All through 90's and early 00's I never had to pay core charges in 3 local Pick-N-Pulls as they were happy to have me pulling Pontiac 400's as a core buyer. Unfortunately, I just don't see much demand for the 98's. Cannot tell you how many big chamber press in stud Pontiac heads I've scrapped, but it has been a bunch.


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