My 10 year old son Gary is building a 57 pickup from my lefover parts
collection...including the stock chassis from my 57 Suburban. We got
the engine out of it's hiding place, and onto an engine stand, last
weekend. It's now apart, and at the machine shop (where I work part
time to support my oletruck habit). The engine was standard size still,
but had been "overhauled" in the old time tradition...of not doing
things right. There is about .010" taper in the bores, two pistons were
in backwards, the caps on two rods were switched, and one rod had a
standard size bearing half, and a .010" undersize bearing half put
together to try to make up for the crankshaft being worn out. The head
had old welds on some of the exhaust seats, and a big crack between an
intake and an exhaust valve...the crack is over 2" long. So we asked
around, and a friend gave us another head to replace it (the new one
magnafluxed ok).
We'll probably bore the block this weekend, hopefully it'll clean up at
.030" over. Pistons seem to be readily available in sizes from std to
.080", and they aren't too expensive either.
At the shop I found some new old stock bearings, both a .010" set, and a
.020 set, and also there's a reground .020" crank we could use.
This is a fun project...brings back memories from when I rebuilt the 235
in my orange 59 almost 25 years ago!
There's a picture on my home page (subject to change without notice--but
Gary wants to make his own page on mine, probably with several truck
pictures):
http://www.mindspring.com/~jforbes2/
Jim F
59s in AZ
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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