Before I get all wound up in this thread, and yes, I have searched, DID 283's at a certain point come with the crank drilled for a bolt? I'm working on a verified 65 Chevy II engine, rebuilt. It certainly has a damper, and not a hub like earlier engines..... This is just for my knowledge, and nothing more....... Going to swap pulleys, and found the crank bolt. Possibly crank drilled when rebuilt=IDK..........
To my knowledge only the hi-perf small blocks got the crank drilled and tapped at the factory, never heard of a 283 being d&t.
'66 283 in my A pickup, the crank is drilled and tapped and the balancer is bolted on. I just assumed it was factory, but the engine was installed prior to my acquiring the car, so I don't know the entire history.
In my looking for information about 283s since acquiring one last year, somewhere along the line I came across people talking about a drill bushing that centers in the balancer hole to allow drilling the crank with a pistol drill. It needs to be sized for a 25/64 drill bit. And a 2nd bushing to align the tap. And because it's being done with the damper on, and the hole doesn't go internal to the engine, it can be done on an assembled engine. The crank in my 283 is untapped and I am going to make those bushings and tap the crank over the winter. Think it thru and you should be able to make those bushings. I'd post a picture or two or a link, but haven't done it yet, and I really don't remember where I read it.
On my 283 I'm going to lazy out and buy the kit to drill and tap the crank without balancer. My 283 crank IS currently out of the block but tool I looked at supposedly seals off everything and even has a little groove to channel shavings away from engine
I borrowed a jig from a friend and drilled and tapped the cranks in both of my cars. Didn't pull the engines, just did it in the chassis. .bjb
So the 1959 El Camino 283 engine that I bought from my model A the crank was not drilled, 1963 283 that I had while I was rebuilding the 1959 283 that came out of a pickup truck (I never ran its numbers) that had power pack heads and some other truck type parts and it had a slightly larger counter-weighted crank (meaning heavier) and it was drilled... I don't know for sure if it was factory or not but if it was done it probably was done 50 or 60 years ago (I honestly believe it was factory I don't think the engine had ever been opened or touched) because that engine look like it had been dunked in an oil bucket over and over and then driven down dirt roads for 50 years. As others have mentioned there is a kit you can buy to drill your crank... If you are not building a high performance engine but a real mild Street engine I don't think you have anything to worry about and I would leave it as is.
I have a 1967 283 out of an Impala. Last year for the 283. Mine isn't drilled. So if there were some that were drilled they were by application as mentioned above rather than by year.
I've disassembled countless 283s over the years, and have never seen one with a factory drilled crank snout. 57 to 67 years after the fact, anything and everything could have been done to these engines in the field.
Some of the amazon kits are junk. 12Bolt.com has a decent one, currently $57 for fixture, drill bit and tap. They use a "W" size bit for a little more thread engagement. https://www.12bolt.com/store/p164/C...olt-283-327-250-235-261-230-215-194-Tool.html
Let's see, a 283 with a "counterweighted" crank, how did you come to that conclusion? And it has never been disassembled!!! I'm 70 so I'm easily confused as of late.
Squirrel has said it seems they started to bolt them on when the long water pumps started to be used. '68? Gary
My 327/350 hp engine (L79) has an NOS steel crank that is drilled and tapped, these engines were first offered in the 1965 Corvette and Chevelle models.
Unfortunately I don't have it anymore so I can't show a photo, there was definitely a size difference I will tell you what I think. I still have the 1959 engine, I am doing everything on a pretty tight budget (it's not a race car if I get 270 horsepower I'll be ecstatic) so machine work I have tried to avoid especially when it comes to buying stuff like Pistons and what not, so I put new rings, bearings and used the .40 over pistons stat were in it already... I sort of know the history on the 1959 engine, it has been in hot rods for at least 40 years and has been beat on probably the entire time I bought it from a really cool guy in San Diego that replaced it with a 350, realistically the 1959 needed to be bored out probably .020 but because I was/am on a budget I was trying to avoid spending real money so instead I found another engine off of Offer Up in Anaheim, the guy got removed the engine he bought a 1963 Chevy pickup (I never saw it) somewhere in the Central Valley and he drove it home to Orange county (300 ish miles) and he said the engine smoked bad so he removed it as soon as he got it home for an LS swap... I believe I paid $100 for that engine and it did technically run when he pulled it so I figured I could freshen it up on the cheap instead of the 1959 engine, I was hoping that between the two engines I now had I could take the best parts of both and make one good engine (while still buying bearings and rings and a lumpy cam because it's got to sound good even if it is a sled lol) then sell off the other engine as a basket case for 50 bucks or so... Long story short I disassembled the 1963 and just like the 1959 it was a mess inside, if I had to guess it probably never got routine maintenance I don't think I've ever seen an engine with more carbon underneath the valve cover, what is crazy about the 1963 engine is the crankshaft was near perfect when I used the micrometer so I was going to use the crank in the 1959 block and that is when I noticed it was physically bigger (as in heavier) having larger counterweights and it had a pulley bolt drilled. The reason why I said I don't think the engine had ever been opened because it still had the original bearings on the crank that's not to say that somebody had never been inside of it. I am making a lot of assumptions here but I assume more than likely what it was, it was a cast crankshaft and the engine was slightly newer than what he said (probably 1966 or so, where the early 1959 engine I believe was a forged crank, from what I read online including the site the later (near the end of production) 283s sometimes got a cast crankshaft. I would assume a forged crank would be smaller but I could be backwards and I could have sent the better forged crank packing along with the rest of that engine, truthfully I do not know for sure. again I didn't read the numbers on the "1963" engine I just took what the guy said for gospel and I have no idea why I did that because normally I research everything 10 times but up until that point I assumed a 283 was a 283 and there was no differences other than some different cylinder heads, turns out I was wrong. Now that being said I have no clue I am only speculating on what happened, this is the first small block Chevy I've had since the early 1990s when I was 15 years old (I am 46 now). What I ended up doing besides wasting a lot of time and money, I took the 1959 crankshaft to a little machine shop place here in Riverside (California) called Ivans machine shop (a really nice guy, if someone is on a tight budget he is reasonable compared to Dugan's which is around the corner from my house. I've taken a few things to Ivans and he's done great work and they/he turned it for $100 bill and I had them purchase the correct bearings for the turned crank and it was about the same price as RockAuto for the parts then I assembled the engine in my driveway, it is now sitting on the garage floor in the way on a harbor freight furniture dolly wrapped up like a mummy, all ready to go in the car, I haven't fired it up hopefully I did a good job. I have no fear of getting dirty or using a micrometer dial Caliper or dial indicator or doing work myself and I don't really get mad if I screw stuff up it's part of the learning process now that being said I have a weird feeling the small block Chevy is going to smoke a bit but it should have good oil pressure because the bearing tolerances are perfect. As for the "1963" 283, I sold off to a really nice older gentleman that I have bought and sold parts off of quite a few times over the last 5 to 10 years, I don't know if I can call him a friend yet but he's definitely a close acquaintance, I believe he had that engine fully rebuilt and it is now in a Model A but don't quote me on that I haven't seen him in a few months, if I think of it when I do finally see him I will find out if he knows if the crankshaft was cast or forged. So anyways my long conversation stems down to I think one crankshaft is forged and one crankshaft is cast and that is the difference in the counterweights I could not tell you how to tell the difference but in the case of the later cast crank it was drilled. My 1959 engine it is not drilled I just put the pulley on it and I'm going to run it, I figure it'll be good enough, if the engineers in 1959 at Chevrolet thought it was good it should be sufficient for a stock engine with a cam and 4 barrel.
For the record, all 1955-63 small block Chevrolet V8 crankshaft were forged. 1964-67 passenger car 283s got cast cranks.
The cast crank '64 283 i pulled from an Impala had a factory bolt....and it was just a 2 barrel cast crank engine. Everything under the hood was factory original as far as I could tell, looked completely unmolested. Swapped it into my '70 Chevelle as a teenager in 1985 after the "rebuilt" 350 that was in the car when I bought it spun a bearing 3 weeks after I bought the car.
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