HELP NEEDED.

Hello, everyone I'm looking for some experience and advice. We pulled the 292 y block from my brothers 1958 f-100 yesterday. The plan was to clean, paint, gasket, replace distributor, new exhaust, and drop it right back in. Here is the problem, we pulled all the plugs intending to do compression test using an impact on the balancer bolt and couldn't get the crank to spin. The rotating assembly is so tight it takes pretty good effort to turn the crack shaft with a breakover bar. Then thinking maybe we had resistance on something on the top end we also removed the rocker assemblies and pushrods. This did not change the force required to turn the crank. Oh by the way the flywheel has also been removed to mount the engine on the stand. Most of my experience is with GM, Jeep, and more modern ford engines but it makes no sense to me that the crank and piston requires so much force to turn over with no compression or valve train resistance. Is this normal? What should I be looking for? Right now the engine is on a stand with pan off so it could be visually inspected No obvious damage can bee seen looking at the crank, rods, piston pins and skirts, or bottom of the cylinder walls. By the way the truck ran when we backed it into the garage to pull the engine. Any advice experience tricks or knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

 

IMHO- check the cylinders for rust..... secondly check the torque on the crank bolts and rods..... I've seen more than one engine where someone thought the bolts were loose and tighten them up.... also check the crank/rod bearings to ensure they are the correct thickness....