I have been trying to find a 50's era Hemi locally for awhile now. I found a 1956 354 hemi on craigslist but it is a marine engine. Before I make an offer I just want to know besides the exhaust differences what other differences are there between this engine and one that came out of a New Yorker. And what exactly needs to be done to get it ready to put in my Model A? Thanks for any help!
I'm not an expert but I do have a couple of '92's. Just from the pic it appears that you will need a timing cover, harmonic balancer, and a water pump. Be very careful if this engine was run in salt water although I guess that isn't likely if you are in Co.
Can you get the numbers from the block? The marine conversion on the engine appears to be aftermarket- not the factory Chrysler marine setup, so I'm wondering if the engine actually might be a regular passenger car hemi with the aftermarket marine conversion added to it. If that's the case your probably 'good to go' just by removing the marine gear.By the way, when your looking for block numbers, watch for numbers with the prefixs M, N C , VT or IND to tell you what the block was originaly intemnded for. M being for marine, C or N indicationg Chrysler passenger car, VT indicating Dodge truck or IND for industrial. If it is actually is a Chrysler factory produced "M"coded" marine block though, there a bunch of stuff that needs to be changed to use it in a car. The factory marine hemi block has a couple of additional water passeges machined into the lower front of the block in the timing cover area, that need to be tapped and plugged. Also, the factory marne set-up uses a gear drive cam that will need to be swapped for an automotive style chain-drive cam. Ditto for the distrubtor too as it as reverse ground drive gear to match the factory gear-drive cam set-up . The marne crank needs to be swapped for an automotive piece too, because the the marine crank snout won''t accept a timing sprocket to use with the chain drive cam. Also, the factory marine heads use fat-stemmed, sodium cooled exhaust valves that aren't the best for flow and the heads and intake use water, rather than exhaust gas, to provide carbureator heat.Some or most automotive-style manifold that use exhaust heat, won't proeply cover these additional water passges so you'll need to either block them off in the heas - and also have no exhaust heat to the manifold either because the marine heads don't have the exhaust passages, or swap the heads for standard automitive heads. The good thing about the factory marine heads is that they have adjustable rockers which are very desirable. If you swap the heads for automotive ones, keep the adjustable rockers and swap them onto the new heads. Mart3406 ----------------- P.S. I forgot to add - if you buy it, don't discard the marine gear. The factory Chryler marine stuff is worth good money to a boat restorer - and even more money if it's an aftermarket conversion. set-up, which this appears to be. =================================
That engine doesn't have the complex marine drive deal on the front of the engine so I'd say it's probably going to be a fairly straight forward deal... It would help if you had casting #'s to help ID the block and heads.
Here is another picture of the back of the engine. I emailed the seller to get the casting numbers but I havent heard back yet. Thanks again for the help.
Looks like a car block to be. Especially since it looks like a normal timingchain and harmonic balancer on the front. True marine hemi cranks dont have the step in the crank to mount the lower timing chain gear on.
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