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I got two military engines for my truck today. Once is a rebuildable core, with all the parts. It was left in the rain and the block and head mateing surfaces are rusty, but that is machineable. It has a transmission on it which is not froze up so I can rebuild it.

The second one is free turning and still assembled. It has a rebuild tag on it dated July of 74, and lists the rod and crank having been turned .010 over. The cyllinders are listed as being standard so it was not bored out.

I am going to go over this engine with a microscope and may swap it into my truck and get the Plymouth Industrial 218 out of it.

So two engines, one probably a runner, with a good transmission for $150. We actually had to pull the engine out of one truck and that was a learning experience for me in and of itself.

Thanks to my club buddy for hooking me up with this deal!!

Sounds like a good deal. Nothing like having a good supply of critical engine spares

refit1701 wrote:I got two military engines for my truck today. Once is a rebuildable core, with all the parts. It was left in the rain and the block and head mateing surfaces are rusty, but that is machineable. It has a transmission on it which is not froze up so I can rebuild it.

The second one is free turning and still assembled. It has a rebuild tag on it dated July of 74, and lists the rod and crank having been turned .010 over. The cyllinders are listed as being standard so it was not bored out.

I am going to go over this engine with a microscope and may swap it into my truck and get the Plymouth Industrial 218 out of it.

So two engines, one probably a runner, with a good transmission for $150. We actually had to pull the engine out of one truck and that was a learning experience for me in and of itself.

Thanks to my club buddy for hooking me up with this deal!!

The 2nd engine you spoke of will have the rod & main crank journals ground to .010" undersize, not over as you said. Most likely the cylinders were bored & sleeved to put it back to standard. If the workmanship was of high quality, that's great, a sleeved engine will run & perform better. Never just assume anything about condition, like I've said many times before, a compression test with reveal volumes. If it's been a long time since it ran, take the necessary steps & try to get it running. Once it has run for a while (few hours), do the compression test to learn lots about the real condition of things. I wouldn't consider swapping it in until I did this.

You got it Charles...we are planning to run it on the shop floor for a while to see what it does. Interesting about the sleeves, I'd never thought about that.

I have no clue about when it last ran, it was a civil defense truck after it left the service, going by the paint job it had.

Now we will need to rig up power, water and such to get it running. The other engine has a starter so I'll pull the transmission and move the bellhousing and starter over.

About a test run
When I did up a Ford FE big block a while ago I wanted to run it in before the install. I used 4x6s and put the whole deal on wheels. I wanted the tranny and the over drive unit on for testing so this is what I came up with. As it turned out it saved this crippled some work as the rear main was leaking and it was an easy fix before it went into the 64 Ford custom 500. What I built as a test skid is here as a video.

http://crayonmedia.com/wayne/BigMotor2.wmv

That's an impressive rig you built, Wayne. That's a whopping big engine too!

Thanks John, Another reason I built the test bed was that the project was a 60s vintage resto drag car. Since the car weighed in at 3850# I had to build a torque monster. Which turned out as expected but I needed the money and sold it. The MPG were about par with the M37. It went to Sweden of all places (strong Euro I guess). I used proven gauges for testing-- oil pressure, coolant temp, vacuum, tachometer and a wide band O2 sensor to set the base idle mixture and got close with the (no load) primary jets in the 3 Stromberg 48s. It was a great winter project as I could push it outside for testing.

A few pics:

Rebuild tag on the "good" engine.



Good engine up front, core engine in back.




Doesn't eveyone's shop look like that? This is my buddy's shop.