My daughter, the child that is a motor head like dad wants a new project, so she goes out and finds a 1953 F100 to build. We drag it home with rust and a mostly stuck motor.





He's not pretty but he's now hers. His name is now Winslow.

We spend some time trying to unstick the engine, but overall we are not successful and end up pulling it out.



Easy to do with most of the front clip off.

Allie begins the teardown and what we find inside is fugly. 1" of sludge like clay in the pan. amazing really!!







Rod bearings are worn right thru to the copper. But only on the top half, bottom is worn but not this bad. Typical for an old tired motor, that has MISSED lots of oil changes in it's hard life.







Shocking that the motor is not all burnt up in the valley nor does the rest of it look terrible.



The conrod bearings are toast, the Mains looks VERY good ( I will find pic) and the motor comes apart easily.

Block checks out good but the crank has .035 end float!! A real clunker when pulled back and forth :-) The crank goes out for refurb but after Magnaflux, we find it cracked. Luckily the local shop doing it has a source for a good used crank and we get that one refinished. It gets ground .010 & .010 and the thrust bearing surfaces are like new.

It's all apart getting done up and now going back together. I will post more later on.

Jon

 

Good for you and your daughter. She probably already knows more about cars than all the tuner guys her age.

 

That's great your daughter is that into the old vehicles. My oldest seems to be heading in the same direction too. But, she is only 8. If not her then maybe my other 2 younger daughters might.... time will tell. Let's see some pictures. Ugly and all

 

Jon,
That is awesome.... both the truck and your daughter! I think it's great that your daughter rags home a truck so Mom can't yell at you!

The body of the truck looks pretty good. The bed looks OK and I don't see a bit of rust on the front fenders!

 

Careful with that sludge, it almost certainly is full of lead that can be absorbed thru the skin!

 

Nice truck I like that you're keeping the Y block. Importing parts was too expensive for me to do the same unfortunately. It was full of sludge too. Make sure and get it boiled clean.
Was the white shirt just for the camera?

 

Allie is why I tried to get my son to learn to drive a manual transmission and learn some mechanical skills. I just knew he would fall in love with some gal who wouldn't give him the time of day because he had soft hands. He has soft hands. Good kid though.

 

My daughters first car was a Triumph Spitfire that we had to rebuild the engine and put a new floor in. She had to help and learn all the terms for the parts and what went where before she could learn to drive the manual shift. She was responsible for all upkeep after that. To this day she still can tell an engine that needs work. I think all the guys were jealous as she knew how to drive a 4 speed sports car.
It’s good for them to learn, you must be proud of her.

 

Thanks for the compliments and support! She’s a real car girl thru and thu. She drives an M3 and her other cars are a Hot Rod 911 that she has built the engine for, and a 944 that she has had as her first car. She also has soft hands, a masters in psychology and profiles for a scary 3 letter gov’t agency.

That is a flatty she’s building, not a Y motor. She didn’t want to make any change to the power plant. She likes the look of the flatty and the are plenty of SBC and SBF transplants to go around. She will also keep the 3 on the tree. It’s different and cool. Also means that it will NEVER get stolen and no one young enough to steal cars knows what it is.

I have 4 daughters and all I can tell you is to start out slow with them and get them involved with you. Not sweeping the floor or fectching coffee or beers for you. Let them choose the music in the garage (it will be horrible) so they can feel at home.

She has been to welding school and can weld mig, tig and gas. She is our renaissance girl.

More to come on the engine tomorrow. Wait til you see it!

 

How true about not being easily stolen.... don't forget the push button starter to fend off would be robbers.

 

Cool truck, VERY cool chick! Great project! Keep us all posted.

 

This is a cool story and look forward to seeing more of the build.

 

I'm project addicted with cars and motorcycles...well anything with an engine. It's a hobby and we have a pretty big shop in MD. We moved from NY to prepare for retirement and live in a very small home now so had to rent a building for all of our other stuff including the cars.

Allie's 911 is here, she lives in DC. Here is a pic of her assembling her 911 engine a few years ago.



Now she is working hard on weekends to pull the flatty together.

Gunky bit not crispy flatty valley. I expected worse after seeing the oil pan. The valley was grimy and sludgey but not filled with burned oil.



New crank in the shop. She has just cleaned it, measured it and oiled it up a bit. The block came up good and had been bored .040 over in the past. The bores were good so the shop just honed it. Flywheel was ground as well. New crank, grinding it to .010 under, cut flywheel cost her $300. The shop is a very old long time machine shop and the owner is like 75 years old. the place is rammed with stuff but he does great work at a very fair price.





We didn't have him do the valve job on the engine. What the FUN in that?? How can we teach and pass on this tribal knowledge if we have everything done for us?? She and I pulled the valves out. What a PIA to do! With everything kinda stuck and I had not disassembled a flatty before it was a joint learning experience. After a few hours of working at it we had them out. It took a bit of cleaning and scrubbing to removed years of gunk but I got that done during the week.

Upon inspection we found 1 badly burned valve. The seat was not damaged at all, surprisingly.



On to valve job time. This may now be a hobby for me, but it was once, many years ago my main job; pro mechanic. Way before the kids came along when first married I worked on cars for a living and I kept most of the tools from those days. As I relive my misspent youth (yoot if you recall My Cousin Vinny) I love using my old stuff to teach my kids and others how to do it.

I dragged the old Black and Decker Valve Refacing tooling out of a dark corner and unboxed it for this project. It hasn't seen the light of day for maybe 30 years and Allie had never seen it. When she showed up that Friday night and asked what was under the dust cover, it was like a bit like xmas or her birthday. She was so excited to see this maybe 50 year old tool. I had is set up and ready to go for her and Saturday morning she was all over it and got to grinding the valves right away.









She did all usable valves as we found maybe 4 that didn't make the cut. I had ordered some extra new ones and we used them when there was any question or too much was being cut away.

More to come later on.

 

Very cool project with your daughter. Cherish your time together. And to end up with a 53 F-100 too! Life is good.

 

Just a nice story , all way around.

I will be following this one with interest !