Featured Technical Odd Engine Swaps

27 "T" with a Cord engine

 

Now days { 2025 },when asked,I tell it like it is; If ya want to drive a lot*put a V8 in that's not over the top hopped up, or hard to get parts for.
It's a bit of PITA,to keep 1956 Y-V8 running n parts $ are 4x plus the cost of SBC V8.
That being said,I still drive my old 28A Bob Tailed Roadster,i built for Sr high school. I keep it as it was in Sr high school 60,61,62,,Other then my Headers are now chrome.
Back in mid 50s,when looking for a V8 to use,I was not dead set on a brand,but did want a OHV V8 < that ran,with the tranny hooked to it>Low $ as could be found!!
A few I liked better then others,yet main thing was cost.
I really liked V8 Rocket 88* and also I liked Studebaker V8*; Looked for near 2 years.
As fate have it; I got a Thunderbird Y-block* w tranny that ran well { low mileage} out of a crashed car,close to my house. My buddy Steve, his Dad had hit a tree a few years back,an parked out back of his house,were Saw Grass grow tall,n covered it up on back side of his big lot. His plan was to fix the crash,but got a new car,an forgot about the crashed one. Tell I ask.

 

In the early 1980's my dad and I pulled a Pontiac 195 4 cylinder ( half a 389) out of a MG roadster that was in a junkyard in eastern NC.

got it home and pulled it down.. had a helluva overbore and Jahn's domed pistons in it. (they were HEAVY),
I think the overbore would not allow any more cleanup and that block still "may" be around... but doubt i can find it.

I'd like to have driven that MG with that engine... We were sand dragging a Jeep with one of these engines... and now I'd like to find another complete engine.

 

I have a buddy that ran a small junk yard that was in love with Fords. He also loved those 50s Chrysler Hemi motors. After he closed the junk yard, and started driving a dump truck, he collected a really solid 48 Ford coupe, and a 354 Chrysler Hemi. He spent many years tinkering with putting the Hemi into the Ford coupe. The last time I saw it was probably 10 years ago. The Hemi looked like Ford put it there, the motor ran in the car, but he was still tinkering with some odds and ends that he wasn't happy with. I see him a few times a month, I should probably ask him if he still has the Ford project how it is going. I suspect he still has it, he doesn't get rid of much. He has build a few long term projects over the years, always very slow, but always well done. He gets easily distracted with the current project of the year. The guy is way laid back, not much bothers him.

 

A couple of others have come to mind from days past,

A classmate had a '56 Chev with a 347 Pontiac when we were in high school. I don't know who did the work but it was very well done and pretty fast for the era.

And a couple of years out of high school a younger friend asked me to take a look at the "weird" air cleaner that was on the really rusty, really rough Olds he'd pulled out of a neighbors back yard. We had driven past the moss covered thing for years and no one had paid attention to it until he did. He popped the hood on it and I told him that he really needed to save that J2 engine.

He was needing an engine for a '56 Pontiac 2-door so a couple of months later the 371 was in the Pontiac. It was a real sleeper on the freeway... the good old days.

 

I’ve seen just about every engine in a replica cobra, which I think is appropriate since the cobra started as an AC Ace with a ford v8 swap.

Cobras that stand out include
Jaguar I6
Viper V10
Ferrari V12
Grand National turbo v6
2JZ I6
Ford 300 I6

the inline engines are always interesting when a cobra has a side pipe on only one side.

 

Hot rod engine swaps have been one of the most common themes in hotrodding since day one. As newer stuff came along like the sbc it became commonplace to pull your old flathead and up the power. Excluding me because I posted a 70's engine in a 36 is disrespectful towards the younger people trying to participate. I could understand if it was a ls or something but what I posted was in no way visually offensive. If it was then half the discussion in here is also visually offensive to whatever ideal is being inforced.

 

OK, I'll play along...
Currently have a 500ci Caddy in my 49 Ford truck.
Contemplating a 429 Caddy for my 62 Studebaker truck.

Way back when we stuffed a tri-power 371 Pontiac with 4spd Hydramatic in a 68 Ford truck.

 

A 392 hemi in my 51 Ford, a tight fit, but I remember seeing a list of engine-transmission adaptors for an amazing range of combinations back in the early sixties in the big hard cover Hot Rod book. Many are/ were never common, but adaptors were made for almost everything. Frame to motor mount adaptors were not made for nearly as many combinations, so motor mounts were commonly just fabricated by the installer/owner. This car had a 354 hemi in it since the sixties and got the 392 mid-nineties-ish.

 

A 46 Willys Jeep engine in my Belly Tank.... its a long term Willys owner thing. JW

 

Totally agree here, and I remember Baskerville saying the same thing eons ago. His magazine bosses hated him for that, because junkyard motors don't sell the speed parts Hot Rod advertised. My Willys has a nearly stock 289 Galaxie engine that I personally have put 100,000 nearly trouble free miles on. Speed parts are not engineered to the level OE stuff was, and was never intended to go that kind of mileage.

 

Hello,

I found a corresponding thread from way back to showcase the latest photo shot of a famous, drag race, street car (truck) at Lions Dragstrip. (Charlie “The Painter” Ettein’s yellow, pickup truck...a Los Angeles local.) It looked innocent enough with all of the stuff on it, but when it fired up and made a run, that was impressive.

I was able to shoot a quick photo of the newly updated truck at the first edition of the Lion’s Dragstrip Museum in Long Beach. It is the 2017 updated style, but pretty accurate in its early form. The rest of the paraphernalia would be added later in the final display. I had to shoot and run as the saying goes.


Jnaki

A little history first:
DRAG NEWS 1959
A blown Chrysler engine with an automatic transmission used over 100,000 miles of daily driving, what an amazing feat. (A 5000+ lbs. truck slated for C/Gas... Our 671, SBC, 40 Willys rivalry/competition in the making... including the idea of extra weight in the rear to make the class rules.)

Grist Brothers A/gas + Painter's truck B/Gas + Doug Cook C/Gas + Bones Balogh D/Gas quite a list of known racers to most in drag racing.
Lindley-Hampton FED + yellow painter's truck.
1959 Lion’s Dragstrip Charlie Ettien on right side of staging lane. (yellow)

Note:

Our weight set up for the Willys was a couple of large, 1 inch steel plates, welded in to shore up and cover the whole rear trunk area. We welded extra pieces right over the rear axle. We easily made the weight rules for C/Gas in 1960.

The yellow old truck 671 Hemi versus blown Cad motor in the 59 El Camino… sorry, photo only and not actual film of the races…YRMV



A surprise under the hood and at a stop light… Yikes!

 

Not an unusual swap but a good story.
My grandfather bought a ‘67 Plymouth Belvedere brand new, with a 318.
In 1971 he gave it to my dad to drive to college and bough a new car for him and grandma.
Dad promptly blew up the 318 dragracing and swapped in a 440 from the junkyard, without mentioning anything to grandpa.

A few weeks later Grandma took the new car to town and grandpa jumped in the ‘67 to go to the curling rink and unexpectedly laid rubber for two blocks!

 

I friend put a ford FE (ford guy) in a 65 gmc truck, his line was they put Chevy motors in ford all the time. He had a few people tell him they did that from the factory too.

 

i guess the cad 472 is a ford truck, a stude in a rambler and a amc in a chevrolet truck the last one cause i had to have my truck and that is what i had at the moment. a wide array of different gm engines in the different makes of gm. i guess i like odd.

 

1954 Chrysler 331 Hemi in my 51 Mercury!

 

Yup - elbow deep in this one now for that reason - 195hp 283 in a '51 ford

 

In mid 70's High School auto shop: we swapped a 327 with fender well headers into a Jeep. It was lifted with big tires and was capable of pulling the left font tire off the ground during launches.
I also helped a friend swap a hopped up 327/Muncie with Mr. Gasket Vertigate shifter into a bone stock 64 International Scout. His parents had handed him down the truck and he wasn't having the 4 banger. It was gray with a white top and the bumpers and steelies were painted white. Added traction bars and had a lot of fun surprising people. What a sleeper!

 

GMC 302 in a 1930 ModelA coupe

 

Be careful what you say, that odd engine is off topic.

 

I know, but I didn't post the engine, just commented about it. Thanks

 

When I worked for a truck leasing company, our Cummins rep drove a mid 70's Buick Skylark with a 4 cylinder diesel engine out of a refrigeration unit. I rode with him from Cummins HQ to Indianapolis one time. I think it took about 2 miles to get up to 55 on the Interstate. But, he said it got something like 50 mpg.

 

62 poly dome 318 in a 64 c10

 

As mentioned, lots of memorable ones from when I was a kid were due to necessity, whether it was parts availability, what you had on hand, or the need for more power with OEM reliability. Big GM luxury engines in pickups were pretty common, Cad 472, B-O-P 455s. I recall an International Scout with a 289 ford, International pickup with a 390 Ford, mid-fifties Dodge firetruck that had some variety of hemi replaced with a 392 International truck engine for a local volunteer FD were a few. Leaning a bit off topic I know.

There was a Pinto with a Model B Ford engine (yes not a typo, the B in the Pinto not vice-versa) in Oct. 1980 Hot Rod. Obviously I won't post pics unless this moves to OT section.

303 Pontiac SCCA TA engine in Simca, although calling it a "swap" isn't really accurate since it had a full tube frame:




I like this RB Mopar / 55 Chevy combo:

 

Back in the 70's there was a 392 Hemi powered '57 Chevy hardtop in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Saw it at several local shows. If I remember right, it was running a 6.71 Blower.

 

One guy that came into the NAPA I worked at way back had 2 square body Chevy trucks he swapped 400M Fords into.
Claimed it almost a bolt in.

 

Now that I do like!

 

Odd engine swap? Check out this one. I posted this earlier on a Model A thread.

uch gorgeous looking Model A's. I hesitate to show you mine. It's unique because I got it when I was 13 years old-- I'm 81 now. As kids my buddies and I chopped the top. We used hacksaws and a million blades. When there was no clearance for the hacksaw one guy would hold the blade on the inside of the car and the other on the outside and with superior coordination some cutting progress was made. My uncle Ted who worked at Standard Oil "brought over" from work some new fangled locking plyers that made the tedious cutting faster and less painful. The plyers clamped on each end of the hacksaw blade made the easier and more accurate. I think we invented the mechanical sawzall.
We didn't know what we were doing but we knew what we wanted. Our welding supplies consisted of an acetylene torch and a bunch of coat hangers. Some old dude told us that the paint on the hangers acted like flux--sounded good but we didn't even know what flux was. We welded the top back on. When we fucked up, we ground the weld down and did it again.
There was serious rust along the door bottoms and we learned from Pat Hartman, the head of the paint and body department at Calumet Auto Parts, this miracle repair technique where you would take this quarter inch galvanized mesh, stuff it in the hole in the door and slosh a two part mix of smelly putty over the screening, shape it. sand it, and you were done. It worked like a charm and it's still good today.
I drove the car for years. First as a hopped up banger and then with a 265 Chevy and then I guess I grew up and parked the car for 50 some years.
About 10 years ago I decided to get the car back on the road. I rewelded the top to keep it from falling off, new wheels and tires, finished the channel that we started, installed a hydraulic brake set up from a 39 ford, refurbished the 101 Halibrand quickchange, and installed the hottest 4 banger that ever existed. I installed a 19 degree turbo Offy hooked up to a 39 ford transmission. This was the spare engine from an Indy car I used to own. This final version of the Harry Miller designed offenhauser in race trim, injected, on alcohol, pushing 100 inches of boost produced 1100-1200 horsepower. In its current configuration, running on pump gas, blowing through webers, it's producing much less. I installed this engine in this car to piss off my elitist Indy car friends.

 

wow - some more engine pics please!

 

My buddy Bob Sloan built a 51 Riley with a Cadillac Northstar. He used a complete drive train including the front K member from a mid 80's Caddy in the Riley and made it a rear wheel drive. So the engine assembly was behind the seat. It was sort of a mid-engine vehicle. It was actually the second 51 Riley he built but the first one was much more conventional and had a V6 from a T-Bird Super Coupe under the hood.

The portion of a Freightliner cab-over you see is coming out of the wall of his tavern. You could set at a table and look out the windshield.