The new engine is the best yet. It pulls hard on only a 100 shot. Honing with the deck plate torqued to 55 ft lbs did the trick. Mike at TA performance recommended this for a 4.1. The heads only torque to 65. My last block had a lot of distortion in the bores on the rear cylinders and always had blow by and lower compression on the rear. This one is even on all cylinders. I think the plates were torqued to 80 on that block. I was going to use iron heads and then switched to GN1 after it was honed. My fault. My only problem now is the converter only has a .025 flywheel to converter gap. I have to pull the trans out and do some grinding on the neck where it goes into the pump. I got a rubber freeze plug to put down the neck to keep the metal out. The converter is a TCS with a billet case and balloon plates. I can't just grind the pads. I have a JW converter also, but that one needs spacers it has so much clearance. The new block must be a little different, although this converter was always on the tight side. I don't want to hurt the thrust bearing, so no more running it until I fix this problem.
Pontiac would have had to do all the emissions testing to use the 305 HO, which they couldn't justify for ~1200 cars.
