I bought a 454 motor and rebuilt it. Found a TH400 in good shape and a Dana 70 10 lug rear end out of a motor home with 4.10 gears. But, I got past fantasizing about a Big Block for my '49 COE Wrecker project. This truck is so complete it would be a shame to turn it into another COE cab on a modern chassis which is how it would end up. So.....
I started rebuilding the 1955 235 that was in it. Right after I got done resurfacing the head, it slipped off of the stand and dinged it right on the edge, into a water jacket. darn. ruined it. So as long as I needed a new head, I went to the wrecking yard and found a 1962 848 head. I surfaced it on the deck and exhaust side, knurled the guides and did a valve job. Every thing came out nice. I didn't put hard exhaust seats in it, I'm not going to work it hard and they will probably last longer than I will. The block is .060 over and the cylinder walls are very nice. I sent my bore gauge back to Sunnen to get it recalibrated so I won't know until it gets back if I'm going to buy a new set of .060 pistons ( the ring lands are bad on the pistons that were in it ) or bore it to .080 or maybe even look for another block. The crank was grooved pretty bad so I sent it out and it came back with .020 rods and .040 mains. The cam and lifters look good so i'm just going to run them. Out of four sets of heads I've torn down all of the rocker shafts are bad. What do you guys do for rocker shafts? buy new ones? I haven't looked into that yet, maybe you can steer me in the right direction.
Greg
pictures -
http://sdrv.ms/1c2Crxs
