Customs 1956 Chrysler New Yorker Custom That’s Been 30 Years in the Making

Sorry I missed this comment. Thanks for the info.

 

Made a little progress today. Should have the motor pulled tomorrow and dropped off to Billy on Monday. Trying my best to make that happen. I’m heading to India Monday afternoon for work and will be gone for a couple of weeks.

I was able to get everything disconnected today minus the transmission and wiring to the starter.

 

Got the engine out and over to Billy's shop last night.

I get back in town in a couple of weeks. Going to clean up the engine compartment and fix a few things like the plate behind the master cylinder and notch the cross member to get more clearance for the headers. Also, just an overall refresh with paint and paint under the hood while it's off.

 

Planning to paint the engine black, keep the intake bare aluminum and polish the rocker covers. What do you guys think? The blue:green they used in Chrysler Marine hemi’s is cool too

 

Sounds like a good plan to me!

 

Made it back from India a week ago. Billy started digging into the Hemi this weekend. So far the rocker shaft assembly check off as good. He pulled the passenger head and was working on removing the drivers head when we spoke earlier today. Hoping to have the tear down and inspection wrapped up this week.

other than that, I haven’t had any garage time to work on cleaning up the engine compartment.

That’s it for an update

 

Just read/looked at the whole thread.Good luck Matt and keep up the great work !

 

thanks for the encouragement!

 

I just got the message below from Billy


“Lifter faces look good - implies cam OK also. Pretty big scar in #2 cylinder - possibly broken ring during assembly. Looks too big to be trash

I think this thing is bored +.030 now. Might be able to bore that one hole & put in 1 piston. Other option might be sleeve

I’ll get it completely apart and look over the options. May take another day or two. I think it may be possible to get just one piston if necessary”

Not the best news but not the worst…kind of lines up with what I thought I was hearing—something rubbing in one of the cylinders.

 

Have it sonic checked, .125 over can often be done. I like my walls to be as thick as possible, sleeving the one cyl. is a good option, machinist can tell you if the others need boring to .060 or if good enough to just go with oversize rings. Boring one cyl is not recommended....

 

thanks for the input. Agree on not boring one cylinder.
Depending on how everything else looks, when he’s done tearing it all down and finished his inspection, then we are going to meet up and build a game plan. Hoping to get away with .060 over with new pistons/rings. Might switch to 10:1 compression or stay at 9:1. I will know more in the next few days.

 

Here are a few photos of photos from back in the day. These are probably 2000 or 2001

 

This one is from about 2005 ish at my brothers house

 

Hemis can use same gas as a wedge with 1 point lower C/R. You can run today's Regular garbage gas with 9:1, 10:1 might, or might not, put you up in the more expensive Plus.

 

yeah I thought about that. I’m fine running plus or premium fuel. If I’m dropping new pistons, might as well get a bit more power while I’m at it

 

Egge cast 9:1 is a bit cheaper than forged 10:1s.

 

Ok, got an update for you guys. The engine has been torn apart, measured and assessed. The game plan was established and we are off and running. Should have everything back together and in the car in about three months.

This gives me time to clean up the engine compartment and wrap up some other things that need attention while the engine is out of the way.

The findings:

• There was some trash in #2 cylinder that scored up the wall pretty bad. This is likely the squeaking noise I heard.
• The cooling passages had a ton of crap inside which is likely the cooling issue.
• The previous builder used grade 5 main bolts with lock washers
• The crank had a few dings from assembly that caused excess wear to the bearings
• cam and lifters looked great and will reuse them--remember the engine only had around 1,000 miles

So here's the game plan:

• Hot tank and deck the block, sleeve cylinder #2 and bore to .040 over. The other cylinders will be honed another .010 over to be .040
• 10:1 forged Ross pistons, new rings, pins...etc.
• Resized connecting rods, new bolts, polish rods and replace the bearings
  
• New main studs, align hone and new main bearings
• Polish crank and balance rotating assembly
• Rocker arm assemblies sent off to Rocker Arms Unlimited for a rebuild
• Heads getting checked out by head shop and waiting for recommendations
• Cam and lifters looked good, running them as is but putting new bearings since we are hot tanking the block
• bead blast all the aluminum, clear with flattener so it's not glossy, everything else gloss black

It's hard to see in this photo, but you can see the score at the bottom side of the photo

 

• Keep in mind each lifter has to go in the same hole it came out of.......

 

Decking the block, I'd check to see if the 2 decks ae equal distance from the centerline of the crank, and if each deck is square top to bottom & front to back.

 

100% Billy reminded me of that when I started looking at them. He has them located in his tray to indicated exactly where spot they go back into

 

Great idea. I believe the machine shop is checking that.as part of their effort spent. I will double check with Billy to see if they are.