Surprises tearing down an engine......mine are good, yours?

A friend found a nice Desoto hemi, looked ok, so I figured I'd trade him some work for it...but first I wanted to take a closer look at it....this is what I found

 

My second to last one was good and bad..
It was a SBC..I tore it down because of a massive oil burn problem..When i took of the valve cover's to just give a little look, i had noticed a couple valve guides were shot, bad enough i could see the clearence THROUGH the springs.
So, even though i was bummed i had to tear it down, i was happy in what i found on the inside..
The head's, even though the guides were toast, were aftermarket high perf head's with LARGE runner's and all the go fast goodies..not a cheap set if i was to buy them new..
The guides can be machined and the head's can be saved, so i put them aside for when i build the next "hot" motor.
The slug's are forged, 12.1 piston's, and the cam was a 630 lift solid roller is great shape! Hardened pushrod's, and full roller rocker's..
Even though this motor was hurt when it ran, it still ran very strong..when i tore it down ,i knew why.
Still run's very strong for a street mill even though i had to detune it for street use. Now it run's a solid cam with World Product's heads...roller's etc..

 

Another one....guy had a 454 in an old work truck, he needed money....so I said I'd give him $175 for the motor and trans. He even started it for me. I went over and pulled it out and brought it home, not much oil in it, pulled the intake it had two different heads (one peanut port, one oval), pulled the short block apart, it was 40 over and had a sleeve in EVERY hole! I just honed and reringed it, got the crank ground, new cam, and put some other peanut port heads on it and it's in my beater truck.

 

Hey Trent,
Glad the teardown continues to bring a grin to your mug. Even though I told you I hadn't opened it up, I would have felt bad if it had been junk. Not bad enough to trade back, but bad.

 

Took the engine apart out of my old FED to freshen it up over the winter.(was a turnkey 4" bore 283,carbuerated engine when I got it. Promptly injected it.)
Keep in mind I had been turning this thing 8k.
Had 6 loose wrist pins ,floated steel to steel,stock main bolts and all the main registers had been previously peened and were loose as a goose.
It's a mighty wonder it hadn't blown up in my face.LOL

 

I knew less than nothing about 409s when I bought mine in '91. It was already torn down, and had supposedly had the machine work done.
Going in completely blind, I got lucky and bought a complete 425-horse passenger car engine (less carbs), standard/standard crank, later QB block, dual point distributor, correct oil pan, 2x4 intake, chrome valve covers and -690 heads.
Paid $1,100 for it then...

The rest of my purchases are usually junk.

-Brad

 

I was pleasently surprised when pulling apart the engine in my 57'. I knew it was blown (rod hanging out the side of the block) but when stripping it down, found out it was a 67' 327 300hp with a steel crank that had never been taking apart before and was coded for an automatic equipped vette'. The 462 heads were in excellent shape, as where the large rams horns, intake, carb, etc.

Its too bad the block, and two rods are toast. The pistons are fine, as it the crank, other than needing a grind to 30 under on the rods.

But the block I picked up for a replacement has the wrong caps on it. Doh - align bore is needed, so I might as well replace the caps with aftermarkets splayed ones.

 

I think that I like my "ugly on the outside, pretty on the inside" deal much better.

 

Yeah, I am having fun with this one!

 

sounds similar to my deal racerrick, I bought a running 327 from a buddy for $650.00 that he'd got in a deal on a 35 ford coupe, turned out to be a 300hp 63 Corvette , with a standard size small journal forged crank, standard bore block and fresh 461 "X" heads and a Lunati cam. he also threw in a complete Muncie M20 setup that he said he'd never use and NOS corvette mechanical fuel pump. not a bad haul.

 

67 383 mopar taken down that was "frozen". No real cylinder ridge. Pistons excellent. Had spun two rod bearings on rear two cylinders that got locked up with one another but no internal damage to crank or anything else. Gonna get a good cleanup, new bearings and dropped into something quick.

 

Bought a set of sight unseen "sbc" heads from a friend for $40.
I had been looking for a set of 2.02/1.60's but he didn't know anything about them as he's not a car guy.

I picked them up in plastic bags and didn't look at them until I got home (I always sold all my stock stuff to the local circle track guys and any decent iron head is worth $40)

Turns out they were an old trick-daddy set of Pro-Action heads. They once were one of the premier off-cuff head manufacturers.. now owned by Racing Head Services. These old heads are a little quirky and require a massaged intake, but a new complete set will run over 1k.

$40 + elbow grease and springs
$1k worth of heads

They are now making too much power for my tires....

 

Hmm, it appears that this block is a standard bore 239!? Which has me wondering.....why would it get torn down and rebuilt with 8BA rods but not a bore? Did they have a rod bearing issue with the original rods? maybe they bent a rod? That is unlikely. I cleaned off a piston looking for markings, there are some inside that are cast, hard to tell what they say.

I can also see C8 cast on the cam, havent pulled it yet, need a valve spring tool.

I fell kinda sill knowing this thing would have fired up and ran fine as-is. Rocky is the only man I know that could pull that off without a hitch though. I would always worry too much about the what-ifs!

 

Found this in a 354... guess this must have been the low-compression version...

 

had a friend that tore apart a 350 once and there was a new tube of silicone in the lifter valley ?

 

A BUNCH of cockroaches!!! Seriously. At the machine shop I worked at, guy brought in a 302 Ford that had been sitting in his shed for God knows how long to be rebuilt, and when I pulled the heads, a bunch of LIVE roaches scampered out of the bores!

Damn near shit myself I was so startled! Almost dropped the cylinder head I was holding. Seems they had crawled down an open intake valve and had made their nest there.

Also tore down a big block Chevy, and when I took the heads off, I noticed some goofiness; one head was open chamber, and the other was a closed chamber! And this engine had run for years in the guy's truck. It worked out to about 7.5:1 compression on one bank, and 8.5:1 on the other bank. The guy said it ran smooth and fine...

Nick,
You see some goofy stuff working in a machine shop!

 

May need some sleeves

 

boy ....some people do have all the luck!

 

Is that a Studebaker motor? 232? Cadillac dual intake? Looks pretty darn nice.

 

tearing down my brother 341 hemi found it had 2 different heads
also discovered my 235 is a powerglide with hydraulic lifters

 

years back I made a small trade for my 2 steel wheels for a 305 long block pulled from a van,he said it was just smoking when they removed it and replaced it.......I had jack shit in the steel wheels so why not right?? Well upon removing the heads I found one piston turned 90 degrees and cocked in the bore,YES I checked the crank for movement prior to making the trade but the engine was just in the right place I could rock the crank back and forth.......removed the pan just for kicks,broken rod,squashed rod,broken main,and all kinds of carnage.......never traded with him again. KARMA set in a year or so later as his prized 64 malibu's throttle linkage hung and he couldnt get it killed before rounding a big left hand sweeper and t boned a tree stuffing the engine and tranny under the car.

Another strange story.........
was looking to buy a Holley double pumper 4779 750 cfm and I had a person come in one day with a damn near brand new carb and said he was looking to sell it so he could get what he wanted which was a 750 double pump........I looked at the carb,was exactly what I wanted,he said it was an 850 and too big for his engine and he wanted a 750. The carb he was holding wanting to sell was a 750 dp. I asked if he was sure it was an 850 and he said yeah and I asked again if he wanted to sell.......I ended up with a perfect carb I was looking for and he let loose the exact carb he was looking for..........knowing casting numbers can be your friend.

 

Wasn't that much of a surprise, but this was after the engine seized on my '70 Triumph while I was running 80 mph down I-44. Busted rod, cylinders, and a 1/4" deep gouge in the crankshaft. The rods are aluminum, but that mangled rod cap is cast iron.

I was pretty lucky, as soon as it died, I grabbed a hnadfull of clutch and headed for the shoulder. Never felt it seize, never tried to lock the rear wheel up. The cases were not damaged either.

Rebuilt it with parts from a donor engine in Dec. of .99, been running it hard ever since.

 

Your engine is a transmission with lifters?

 

Got this 354 Hemi on e-Bay.
A little surface rust on the outside, original shipping tag and petcocks, wired to the water pump, new, never fired spark plugs, paint on the original valve springs, rubber divider seal on the valley cover, absolutely spotless inside, looked like it has been machined and assembled yesterday.
What a deal, brand new never started, 51 year old, 1956 Chrysler 354 Hemi. .....
2,500.00 bucks.
HemiDeuce.

 

It's a 58 259. I believe the intake is a Weiand but any logo's have been polished off. (4 bolts with adapters to the 3 bolt Stromberg's)

Thanks!

 

That's a great find! You would probably have a hard time finding a core and rebuilding it for that much. Good score!

Nick

 

I got a 10:1 354 poly that looked exactly like that inside. The junkyard owner knocked the center frost plugs out of both sides decades ago - I figured there shouldn't be any frost damage...

After disassembling it, I see water got inside, froze, and split all four cylinders on one bank - the crack runs right through the deck at the head bolts!

 

Friend of mine bought a boat off of Ebay. Drove all the way to texas from Iowa to pick it up and brought it over to my shop to try to get it running. It had a chevy 305 the seller said "should run just needs some work" It turned about half a revolution with a breaker bar then siezed up. Pulled the heads off and found about 5 pounds of sand and a lot of rust inside the cylinders. Turned out all the wood on the boat was rotten too so near as I can figure the thing must have sunk and been sitting at the bottom of the lake for a year or so.

 

Damn!

I am still trying to figure out this flatty. I have a hunch that was some factory rebuild or something....................