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Ha Anyone Had A 292 Inline 6 In Full Ton Dually Pickup? Or Had A 292 In General

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blackandgold51

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I wanted to ask this question since I may or may not do something different such as, taking out a 454 carburated in putting in a mild built 292 straight 6 with EFI, Longtube Headers, dual exhaust and a Turbocharger with a heavy duty automatic transmission such as a 4L80e , with 4:10 gears in a 1983 Dually 3/4 ton 4 door .

Not that I hat the 454 I got, however I want to do something different since I had a V8 for awhile.

I remember my uncle had a Jeep Cj or Renegade with 4 drag slick tires when I was little(this was in the 1990s), it had I straight 6 which I didn't know about sounded like a V8 at idle with the custom exchaust he had and it almost sounded like a Detroit Diesel V6 or 8 at high rpm. I had a speed standard.

I asked my uncle did it had a V8 he said, no lol it had a straight 6
 
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Yes its badass. But I think it's a better motor with an nv4500. Turbo can really get out of hand and is very difficult to dial in. It's not going to be a rocketship in a 6k pound truck but it will be different.
 
I never had a 292,my older brother had one in a '66 GMC 4x4 that someone "rebuilt",and after a few months it was huffing so much blowby out of the breather it soaked the air filter,so he had to route it out of the air cleaner housing and stuck the "bowtie" breather filter in a length of heater hose,and run it down under the cab..

It used a quart of oil pretty quickly,and he tired of having to add oil daily..he decided to put in a 350 from a 70's Caprice wagon my sister had that was rotted to death and about to be junked..

He soon learned the 292 was much better at pushing snow--he could just putt along in granny low or second and never spin a tire--the 350 wanted to be revved up higher and would break the tires loose much easier..it did have better acceleration and power,but he liked the 292 better..
He took it apart,and found out some pistons had the rings installed upside down,and a few oil rings were missing the springy expander things!..that was all he could find wrong with it..

He sold the truck though,he intended to put the 292 back in it,but he got an offer he couldn't refuse for it..

The local DPW here used to have a fleet of C-30 mason dump trucks with dually rear axles,most of them had 292's and the SM465 tranny's,and a NP-205 transfer case..they used to plow the town roads with them,some were used to haul logs from downed trees,and haul dirt to the landfill to cover the trash..

Many of them ended up in salvage yards locally,I saw one DPW truck from my town in a salvage yard a few miles away in another town,a 4x4 1980 K-30 with a D60,NP-205 and SM465 that didn't look all that bad other than cab rot,but when I asked the owner of the yard if he'd sell it "whole",he said he couldn't due to it being "untitled"..

I guess vehicles used for town municipalities dont need titles or be registered,they use "official" licence plates that are blue in color,and he mumbled something about it being "too big a hassle" to try and get one titled--could be sales taxes were never paid,being a "city" truck or something ?..this puzzled me,because at town auctions they often sell off used police cruisers,trucks,etc and you can get them registered..

Anyways,once I pointed out to him it had a D60 ,he said "I may just keep it myself to use around the yard"...a month later I saw it sitting on a stand with no engine,tranny or D60,no dually rear end either--it also had hydroboost ,which I thought was weird,but I guess ALL 1 tons had hydroboost back then,gas or diesels..

I would imagine a 292 in a 6000lb+ 1 ton truck wont be a speed demon,you'll need low gearing or a multiple speed transmission to make up for the low HP...

I have seen more than one 292 in a C-40 two ton truck and one in a C-60 dump truck that had a "brownie" auxillary tranny behind the SM465 ,that gave you a lot more gear choices,and they also had two speed rear axles..but you'd be lucky to hit 55 mph wide open in them I bet..
 
obijuank5 said:
Yes its badass. But I think it's a better motor with an nv4500. Turbo can really get out of hand and is very difficult to dial in. It's not going to be a rocketship in a 6k pound truck but it will be different.
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If not a turbocharger then maybe a high flow intake manifold with a good set of heads...I mean head lol, strong mad coil pack with spark plugs wires and spark plugs with a cold air intake. Turbo may me a bonus
 
A Turbo's boost comes on fast and probably at a much higher RPM than a straight six is comfortable with...they are OK in a lighter car,but on a truck you'll be towing with,the turbo may actually hurt performance..

A supercharger would be better IMO--one off some other vehicle like a Buick that some years had could probably be adapted,those will boost the power at lower rpms better..but it may not prove to be worth all the expense and labor to adapt one..

There is a ton of videos on YouTube about 292 engines--here's a few I like.
.8/23/10 Demo runs, It's just a little inline 6 - YouTube

Hot Rod 292 six cylinder - YouTube
 
Or..... Just keep your stock 454. As it's probably better stock then a modded 292.

I have no idea why someone would remove a perfectly good engine to downsize, then talk about suping it up for more performance. It's just dumb. Plenty of things you can do to your truck to make it different. In fact it already is. Not alot of 2wd dually burbs driving around.
 
I studied up on 292's quite a bit. They still intrigue me. More stroke than a 454 but almost 5L of displacement.

Breathing is the problem with them in stock form. They're undersquare--more stroke than bore. You can only get the valves so big before valve shrouding becomes an issue. The head works fine for the smaller displacement sixes (230ci, 250ci, etc) but can't keep up with the air demands of a 292 past a certain point. That's why they're known as low RPM torque monsters but not great racing motors without serious mods.

FI of some sort may help, provided you don't use a TBI unit on a stock manifold. The outer cylinders tend to run lean as I recall due to the runners being so much longer than the 3-4 runner. And yeah, siamesed intake ports don't help.

Mercruiser made a head for the 4cyl version with individual ports, but to my knowledge they didn't do a 6cyl version. In Leo Santucci's book he describes cutting down two V8 heads and welding them together as a single 6cyl head but more mods are necessary to bolt it up.

There was a CNC milled aluminum aftermarket head for the Chevy sixes on the market for a while, but it was designed for racing applications. HUGE intake ports as I recall. Better suited for high RPMs in a lighter sedan than for pulling in a truck. It cost more than a whole square body truck.

The simplest solution would be multi-point FI with an injector at each intake port to get good even fuel distribution, and forced induction of some sort to overcome the limitations of the head. Properly tuned it would do low and higher RPMs pretty well and be a bit of a sleeper, especially in something like a lightweight C10.

Edit: do a search for "lump ports" in regards to these.
 
beags86 said:
Or..... Just keep your stock 454. As it's probably better stock then a modded 292.

I have no idea why someone would remove a perfectly good engine to downsize, then talk about suping it up for more performance. It's just dumb. Plenty of things you can do to your truck to make it different. In fact it already is. Not alot of 2wd dually burbs driving around.
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Yes. However think about this, a 292 straight configuration built with the right gearing to be powerful as abig block or powerful than big block.
And with a dually platform setup.

Plus with the right exhaust set up it can sound almost like a V8. And probably with cherry bombs or Flowmaster shorties sound like a rumbling bee at high rpm while deep and meloe at low rpm
 
Pairing a 292 behind a th400 or 4l80e would probably be a mistake. Both transmissions have a lot of parasitic drag (I was told almost 50hp for th400, no proof) so you'd have to give up a lot of the power you'd have to work hard to make. Like @obijuank5 said, it would be great behind a 465 or 4500.

As @jonrpick touched on, Mercruiser has some neat stuff. Commercial propane applications offer neat parts as well, I believe a higher compression pistons are available for propane.
 
jonrpick said:
I studied up on 292's quite a bit. They still intrigue me. More stroke than a 454 but almost 5L of displacement.

Breathing is the problem with them in stock form. They're undersquare--more stroke than bore. You can only get the valves so big before valve shrouding becomes an issue. The head works fine for the smaller displacement sixes (230ci, 250ci, etc) but can't keep up with the air demands of a 292 past a certain point. That's why they're known as low RPM torque monsters but not great racing motors without serious mods.

FI of some sort may help, provided you don't use a TBI unit on a stock manifold. The outer cylinders tend to run lean as I recall due to the runners being so much longer than the 3-4 runner. And yeah, siamesed intake ports don't help.

Mercruiser made a head for the 4cyl version with individual ports, but to my knowledge they didn't do a 6cyl version. In Leo Santucci's book he describes cutting down two V8 heads and welding them together as a single 6cyl head but more mods are necessary to bolt it up.

There was a CNC milled aluminum aftermarket head for the Chevy sixes on the market for a while, but it was designed for racing applications. HUGE intake ports as I recall. Better suited for high RPMs in a lighter sedan than for pulling in a truck. It cost more than a whole square body truck.

The simplest solution would be multi-point FI with an injector at each intake port to get good even fuel distribution, and forced induction of some sort to overcome the limitations of the head. Properly tuned it would do low and higher RPMs pretty well and be a bit of a sleeper, especially in something like a lightweight C10.

Edit: do a search for "lump ports" in regards to these.
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No lol, no racing just decent power . I'm no a fast driver I do the speed limit. If it says 70mph I do indeed 70, 35 on city streets I do 35 and stay under 35 in a 40
 
Understood. But doing 70 in a dually Suburban will push the stock 292 outside its useful range. Your carb or FI will probably be struggling in "power" mode and your gas mileage will be in the toilet. Like worse than the 454 probably.
 
The 292 would need to be modded to run effectively at higher RPMs. Not racing RPMs, but higher. It's a work engine moreso than a street daily-driver engine.
 
When you start pricing speed parts for a 292 you may think twice about it. Everything is 2-3 times more expensive than sbc or BBC parts. Price out a 4bbl intake and a pair of cast split exhaust manifolds, you'll see.

While I like the idea of a 292, for a dually application it's like others have indicated out of the normal zone for a 292. Even a modified one. Unless you mod the hell out of it with a 12 port cross flow head, port fuel injection and the turbo you might be lucky to put 400 hp to the ground (I'm being generous) for twice the money you could have put into the big block to beef it up.

A 292 hasn't been produced in 30 years and even then it wasn't in the same quantity as a SBC. Therefore the demand for speed parts is small and due to that commands a higher price. Save the 292 for another project in my opinion.
 
ZooMad75 said:
When you start pricing speed parts for a 292 you may think twice about it. Everything is 2-3 times more expensive than sbc or BBC parts. Price out a 4bbl intake and a pair of cast split exhaust manifolds, you'll see.

While I like the idea of a 292, for a dually application it's like others have indicated out of the normal zone for a 292. Even a modified one. Unless you mod the hell out of it with a 12 port cross flow head, port fuel injection and the turbo you might be lucky to put 400 hp to the ground (I'm being generous) for twice the money you could have put into the big block to beef it up.

A 292 hasn't been produced in 30 years and even then it wasn't in the same quantity as a SBC. Therefore the demand for speed parts is small and due to that commands a higher price. Save the 292 for another project in my opinion.
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I will save it for something else in the future :)

And you're correct . Easy to modify a 454 than a 292.

It's the thought though of having a small and uncommin engine but powerfull and someone ask what is under the hood. You tell them and they be shocked!

"Is that a 350 , 454 ? Or what"

"No it's a 292 straight 6"

"What!, What the hell?"
 
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beags86 said:
Or..... Just keep your stock 454. As it's probably better stock then a modded 292.

I have no idea why someone would remove a perfectly good engine to downsize, then talk about suping it up for more performance. It's just dumb. Plenty of things you can do to your truck to make it different. In fact it already is. Not alot of 2wd dually burbs driving around.
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You're right though, it's just the though of having a smaller motor with a power of a V8 , and when a person ask you if it's a 350 or 454, they will be shocked after you tell them what's really under the hood of lol
 
We had an IHC 2 ton truck at the junkyard that used to have a box on the back--we cut the sides off it to make a flatbed,so we could haul scrap and junk cars easier,just drop then on the bed with the fork loader..
That truck was an early 60's "Loadstar" and it had a 501 cubic inch straight six in it..thing was a torque monster!--and it had a 4 barrel Holley carb,factory...it got about 5 mpg,but it could pull or haul anything ,but not fast,it had a two speed rear axle but in high range the top speed was about 52 mph...the engine was LONG and huge,I bet it weighed close to 900 lbs...you could lug it down in high gear and not need to downshift it as long as it was still rolling..

I tried looking up a picture of one of those engines on google,couldn't find one ,I guess they were not too common...
 
blackandgold51 said:
"What!, What the hell?"
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Couldn't have said it better.
350/454/Buick 455/I6?
OD/no OD?
Carb/EFI?
Diesel/Gas?

& now what would just be different?

Have you looked into these?
flux-capacitor.jpg
Make sure to get a GenII that runs on table scraps though.
Should cover all your bases.
Just be careful not to hit 88 mph. :whistle:
 
Do a basic rebuild on your 454. Get to 8.25:1 or so, with some large ovals, a decent intake, headers, and a qjet, and just be happy.
 
Yeah just like everyone else. Be happy with normal.

To hell with it. Blow that big block up and swap it.
 
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