Technical Opinions on engine run stands and engines sitting?

looks heavy duty

 

Over build it and you never have to rebuild it.

 

As to letting engines sit for a long time. I don't know about fresh engines, but I have a story about running units. About 20 years ago, I heard from a friend that a bunch of his buddies had scored a nice '51 Mercury 4 door out of Montana and were going to mount the body on a 1977 continental chassis they had. I asked what they were going to do with the rest of the car. He took me over to see them, and there was the Merc, sitting on it's side, with the engine upside down in the mud next to it. After some negotiations, I got the engine for $400, which was what a core Merc was worth around then. I loaded the engine in the back of my truck, took it home and put it in my shop. Ten years later, I moved to my present location. I loaded the engine and put it under the stairs in my new shop.

Two years ago, the engine in my '51 Ford started making some funny noises, so I decided that I should pull the Merc out of storage and rebuild it. I mounted it on my test stand, and lo and behold, it turned over easily when I put a breaker bar on the crank pulley. After that, I decided to check the compression. I put power to the starter, and it showed all eight cylinders at over 100 lbs! No stuck valves, no funny noises, nothing bad. So what's next? Try to start it. It fired immediately and settled down to a 1000 RPM fast idle. In the end, the engine ended up as being in excellent shape with good oil pressure and ran at a reasonable temperature. The end result is that I cleaned it up, added some aftermarket speed parts, and installed it in the Ford. It has been there for a year and runs good and strong.; no smoke, no funny noises, nothing like that.

Bottom line? An engine in good shape can withstand many years of storage. My storage was not optimum, but it was inside all of the time. Also, had I not had my test stand, I probably would have just taken it to the machine shop and spent a lot of money having an engine in excellent shape rebuilt. I was incredibly lucky with this deal. I'm sure it doesn't come near to making up for the untold thousands of guys out there that go burned buying a "good running flathead" that turned out to be an oil burning, cracked piece of shit.

 

I chose to buy my run stand. I wanted a good one, but didn't want to invest all the time to fab up everything. Too many projects going on.

As far as the engine sitting, my shop is heated, so I've never had a problem with any of my things rusting / seizing / etc.

 

Wish I'd thought to get one of those for my engine stand. LOL

 

2 hours and the scraps out of my metal barrel made my test stand.

 

Some times you get lucky on a stored one...or one not run in years....I'll be checking a fresh built banger out in the future....

 

My ol Henry J sat for 26 years and it started right up.
I will report on a FREE 283 overhauled 15 years ago and never installed, when he lets me pick it up.