Sure Dave, the inside on all of the 216 bell housings are coated with oil, their supposed to be that way, haven’t you ever heard of a oil clutch?? Yeah there oil in there but not enough to account for a qt. every couple hundred miles, that’s a lot of oil!
Nope Chip, I haven’t gotten around to the bottom end yet, just took care of the top overhaul. The cylinders weren’t worn that bad and the compression was even across the board at around 130 and she doesn’t show any visible signs of burning oil, as mentioned, no smoke and clean plugs.
Over the years I dun got lazy like the rest of ya’s, and am used to jumping into that new Sebring or Sierra and driving it for 100,000 miles with out pulling the dipstick. But since last summer when I took that step back in time, back to when trucks was trucks, I’m getting into the habit of checking the oil and radiator every time I take big Red out for her exercise. Nothing but nice clean green Peak in the radiator Alvin.
Me and my trusty dog just now went out and sniffed her tail pipe, (dogs are good at that you know), she’s kind of sooty but not wet and doesn’t at all smell of oil. After all, I’m running an early Rochester ‘B’ so one would expect the exhaust to be a little black and sooty because of that!
I hate to talk about something and not be able to back it up with a picture to prove it, so, here’s a picture of what the top, bottom and back looks like after not being wiped down for at least a thousand miles. There maybe a few ounces clinging to it but there taint no five or six quarts of oil drippin’ from this.
http://rides.webshots.com/photo/2005069560098611668UdhTQq Yep Jerry, I’m a tending to think your way, I’m really surprised that I’m not seeing any smoke though. I surely would have thought that would be visible in the exhaust or on the plugs. With the race cars when we were using that much oil to fuel you could see them smoking pretty good. Rebuilding the bottom end was supposed to get done this winter but things just didn’t work out.
Sorry you other guys with the cardboard, as the old saying goes if it tain’t drippin’ oil, then it’s probably out of oil. So the drip on the stains on the Depends is to be expected. As to the rear main seal, which does leak a tad, I’ve replaced the seal in the cap and I don’t feel that you can do a good enough job on the rope seals with the crank in the block so the upper half is gonna have to wait till the short block gets torn down. The front seal is also leaking just a tad. Enough that if I wipe it all down in a couple of days there will be some seeping down the front of the pan, and once again, now where near a quart.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
