No worries, whenever you get around to it, thanks,

 

Today I pulled the cab and the tranny...

http://rs1128.pbsrc.com/albums/m499/...h=480&fit=clip

Literally unbloted it and slid it off the frame. The wife helped guide it, but if you aren't trying to salvage any of the cab, its really a one man job..


http://rs1128.pbsrc.com/albums/m499/...h=480&fit=clip

 

Here's the pics I promised you. Keep in mind though that my truck has a 351M.

 

Appreciate it. Will be doing updates tomorrow, including my finds when I opened up the engine.

 

Can't wait to see those updates! Has your wife been helping you with the truck?

 

Absolutely. Got the 73' going for her to start driving today too.

 

Geez, your not exactly suffering from a lack of space, I was happy that I got enough room in the shop today to walk around the truck.

 

Im pretty lucky in that regard, I was actually thinking of doing this under the barn, but passed experience tells me that until it is clean, it's better to work out in the open.

 

With any build, you run into things that you didn't expect. With this one it is the engine. The lil 302 didn't smoke or burn oil, had good compression fired right up. The only reason I decided to rebuild it is because there was a little tap up top and I wanted to do some bolt ons and maybe a cam.

Well, opened her up and found a few pretty major issues. First being the factory cam had a bunch of flat spots worn into a few of the lobes and two of the lifters had a concaved bottom worn into them. No biggie, planned to replace it anyway, and figured maybe the worn lifters were the culprit for the tap.

Biggest issue was with cylinder number 6. The piston was scored as was the cylinder wall. So much for just a home honing job. Looks like its getting bored. Next issue should Was kind of expected. Every rod bearing showed copper and the rod journals on the crank have wear marks. I plan to have the rod and main journals polished and resized at the machine shop, but now the connecting rods need to go as well.

Original budget for the motor was $1500. This would be fairly easy to stay under seeing as I originally intended to just use the short block and build around it. So far, it's looking like $1500 in just parts plus machining the heads, block, crank and rods. Looks like its gonna eat into my paint budget, so I am guessing Mildred will be sporting a new flat black paint job for the year. Lol.

 

Geeze it sounds like the p.o. starved that poor little engine of oil at some point in it's life. Well at least now it's in good hands and will be taken care of.

 

Concaved lifter next to good lifter...



#6 piston...



And it's home...

 

So, good news and bad news. With approximately $500 in machine work and new pistons, the $1500 budget for the engine build is shot to hell. Good news, more displacement.

As far as progress, the steering box, engine perches and tranny crossmember have been removed and the frame is almost grease free. This weekend I should get the frame completely cleaned and wired wheeled so I can start painting.

 

Not a lot of progress to show. Block, heads and crank are at the machine shop. Got some goodies at the swap meet yesterday...

 

Did you go to the swap meet in Springfield Missouri? they had one yesterday as well.

 

The intake, and valve covers were purchased awhile back via Craigslist for $130. The Demon 625 CFM was an Advanced Auto Parts purchase with my Speed Perks rewards making up almost half the balance. The rest was swap meet fodder, including a EZ wiring harness (not shown) for the wife to go in the 73'.