well since the 235 had some oiling issues and didnt like the free way and the high rear end,its time to conform for cost reasons. im in the process of building a 79 4 bolt main motor for the 50. any heads ups or info you could give me would be great. im looking for some where to get motor mounts and trans mount. allso looking for a rear end for cheep since im converting to open drive line now. well i guess thats that. and again any help would be great im trying to make this as low cost and painless as possible. Thanks Bryan.
Speedway sells a mount kit to drop the motor in, but talk to Jay...I think there are steering linkage issues with the 49-51 cars that have to be solved before a V8 will fit right. (Hint: a 2.8 V6 is short enough that the steering linkage isn't a problem! )
Well.........its a catalog website game now a days.......BUT that means lots O Cash. Here is a way to do it on the cheap....and if you want to go gold chain later-SO BE IT- first I would remove the ol six/&trans/ &closed rear..... Id remove the stock heater completely and shave the upright braces on either side of engine.you can angle cut the outlet of a stock 350 manifold and re weld it to clear stock steering linlage. cap the firewall with smooth metal.then install the engine and trans you are building with home built mounts. a peice of 3" wide 1/4" plate with a gusset and apeice of 3/4"tube at the bolt location should work there.they should be level with top of frame rail.... the original crossmember can be modified to accept your auto ******. a 73-4-5 camaro rear end is a near bolt in[or a 55-57 also]Rear will work......stock radiator should be cleaned and a shroud added. if the frt suspension is tight and brakes are decent- LEAVE them.........the other way involves many payments to many vendors and it wont run ANY better after doing that!Good luck.....ask for help as ya go -there are lots of people here who know this **** and would probably help you out.
Another hint; a 2.8 won't move the car so you don't have to steer it. hehe!! Hack, I just had to say that, you left yourself wide open. Frank
[ QUOTE ] Another hint; a 2.8 won't move the car so you don't have to steer it. hehe!! Hack, I just had to say that, you left yourself wide open. Frank [/ QUOTE ] Awright...who left the screen door open???
I put in a 350 out of a '76 ElCamino. The stock manifolds clear the steering box perfectly. You do have to shave the braces on the firewall to clear the heads/valve covers. For the cost of building a V8 you could pick up 2 of those 2.8s. You'll need 'em both (one under the hood and one in the trunk) to move the car away from the curb.
Ive done a '53 -the pan cleared the stock ti rods/we jus had to tilt the outlet back and inwards on the driver side exhaust manifold-then re weld with nickle rod ...BLOCKHUGGERS ARE TOTAL **** -by the way
Most pans clear w no problem ,but some kits i have seen (or maybe the installer) put the engine too low in the bay and they hit a bit basically a BFH fix, rear dump exaust manifolds (huggers won't fit ) ,stock suspenson w 1-2 coils COLD cut off the top of the spring,speedway disc kit, 79-84 Monte Carlo Pwr. master cyl.,camaro ,55-7 rear done sevaral of these , best I can tell you is to do a search for 49 - 54 chevy in the search areas , these have been done to death over the years w lots of good tech, makes a very nice car, BTW, I have raced em and rodded em and would'nt hesitate to do it again.IF I could find a cheap w rock solid rockers + floors 2 dr fastback or convert near me (ya right,in Minn?, Ha ha ha )this time around.
wow.. thanks for all the tips but i guess i should have gave you more info on the car.and what trans im using. first im using a muncie m-21 i have. and my *** end is bagged. and the front has cut coils and fatman drop spindles. i forgot about the heater. i would really like to keep the heater.but i can figure that part out as i go. the car is a 3 on the tree. but im converting it to the floor. i figure my clutch linkage thats on there will be able to be modified to work with some tweeking of course. but i was kinda hung up on exhuast manifolds. seeing as how i dont have any to start with any way.those of you that have ran solid home made mounts is the vibration really an issue? not that i give a **** about that any way. just kinda courius. i plan on doing a tech on this when its all said and done. thanks again for all the input. Bryan
Search www.chevytalk.org ,Bryan. This subject comes up at least once a week. But the advice given so far is all first rate. When I was gonna do my 49, I did some research and concluded everything that has been discussed here. Your car is a 50 right? The only potential problem I see is that you have the ****ty early style steering linkage with the thing in the center, like my 49. And the only problem with that is some front sump oil pans won't work. Otherwise, your in like Flint. I think rams horns will work for exhaust, but don't quote me on that. Also, I just happen to have one. It's your's for like cheep or free. Jay
your my hero rocket first u put head lights in with duct tape and now u have a manifold for me you rock lol. congrads on the baby by the way.
Well not having the experience or fab ability at the time I went 'over the counter' on my 53 and order my motor mounts and ****** mounts from R&B's and headers from Sanderson since I could not find a factory exhaust that would come close to fitting.
I built a 406 small block and fab'd it into my 50 chevy sedan delivery. I wanted to use a 4 speed too. I bought a swap meet lakewood ****tershield to mount a good ol' Saginaw 4 speed...bolts up exactly like an M-21. Here's how I did mine. I bolted the engine/trans together and lowered them into the hole with the front clip removed. I positioned the ****** mount over the non-removable '50 ****** crossmember and drilled the 2 holes necessary....hell, now that I think of it, I may have only slotted the existing holes. Chevs-of-the-40's had sent me the wrong motor mount brackets after a 4 week wait so I made my own by chopping down the 216 brackets and welding a hunk of tubing across them..crude and done in anger. I wouldn't go that route again. I'd fab up brackets from scratch. Exhaust manifolds were rams-horn straight dump on the right side and late 60's-early 70's pickup rams horn on the left side. The pickup version has a twist in it to clear something and it almost works in the 50 chevy. Had to do a little grinding on the manifold and a little grinding on the pitman arm and on sharp left turns, they still touched. I used an aftermarket 4 core radiator for a 55-59 chevy pickup. It's about 4 inches taller than the original 50 radiator and reauired me to cut deep into the bottom of the core support to drop that radiator as low as possible to clear the hood. It worked but I hadda give the filler neck a healthy wallop to sink it into the top tank a little for hood clearance. For clutch linkage, I went to the salvage yard and scavenged the clutch cross-shaft and it's bolt-on mounts, complete with the plastic bushings from a mid to late 70's ford f-100. I fab'd up a little mount bracket for each end of the ford cross shaft to ride on and cut the cross shaft in half...removed a hunk of length I didnt't need and welded it back together with the arms pointing the directions I needed to work in my application. I kept the stock pedals..This dance left me with a really strong clutch linkage setup with lots of adjustment. I ran a 12 inch heavy clutch and needed heavy linkage. I trimmed the front body supports down but didn;t remove them. I did remove the entire heater ***embly. I was given a rear axle from an 83 cutl*** olds which measured out to be a little narrower than the stock rear. To compensate and keep the tires away from the inner wheelwells, I used wheels with an inch and a half positive offset...American 15X8.5" I used too wide a tire because I loved the look of them....285/70/R15 whan I'd been wiser to go with some 255 or 265's. I made my rear lowering blocks from notched square tubing welded to the rear axle tubes. It gave me a 4" drop and I drilled the locator holes an inch offset to compensate for the off-center spring center bolt heads...the locators. This centered my wheels in the wheelwells using the stock rear springs. I sliced 2 loops off each front coil and took it out for a test drive..from Omaha to Puyallup for goodguys N.W...drove terrible! I pulled the steering box apart to find worn br*** [or bronze] bushings. I found out chevy began using tapered roller bearings in their steering boxes in '53 so I scored a 53 box, cut down the steering shaft and welded a rag joint receiver onto it, I shortened down an 80 chevy van column [non tilt] with it's modern turn signals and did a little grinding on the factory 50 chevy column drop to make it fit the van column.......looked factory but worked smooooooooth with modern turn signals. After I had it all together for about a year, I needed to do some ****** work. I was stressing about not having a removable ****** crossmember but found out I could get the ****** out by removing all shift linkage, ****** mount and jiggling, juggling and carressing it out the bottom. I even took it out the top one day! To save a little money, I found a brand new Hurst 3 speed compe***ion-lpuss shifter at a yard sale for $5 and bought the mister gasket shifter rod and lever set for an 80 camaro with a saginaw 4 speed. I ran a separate Hurst handle welded directly to the reverse ****** lever. Worked slick and everyone asked me why I had 2 shifterw. "Izzat for your transfer case, mister?" I put many, many miles on this setup with no problems except rear tires rubbing from my own cheapness/stupidity. Hey! Those 285's were new, paid for and I was gonna get my money's worth out of 'em! BYW, it ran HAAAAAAARRRD!
[ QUOTE ] first u put head lights in with duct tape [/ QUOTE ] How'd you hear about that? I gotta dig up the manifold up from my folks, give me a few to find it. Jay
Actually, 70-81 Camaro rears are almost a direct bolt-in. They are the correct width AND the spring pads match up to the leaf springs just fine. I have big block in my 51 Coupe with a Borg Warner ST-10 4 speed and a home made hyd. clutch set up. Good times!
Hey Colorado 51....did your coupe come from the Omaha area? Slammed, light green or white with flames????
Ive got a small block with Sanderson headers in my 53 Chevy. No steering issues and I didnt need to reomove the heater. The fresh air ducts were already gone though so they werent an issue. I used the cradle adapter from speedway that I happened to find in a junk yard and got the frame adapters off of ebay. Worked real slick. I also used a saginaw four speed, the clutch linkage was a challenge though.
This is th other side. You can see the fire wall supports had to be cut down. On this side the block hugger header works fine but on the other side there is clearance issues so you need to either make something or buy the sandersons or use manifolds. John
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