The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Engine evaluation - first time inside a 'bolt

Recently picked up a couple engines for less than scrap value. No specific need for them, just couldn't help myself. One is a 48 216 and the other a 62 235. Seller knew some history on the 216. Pulled from a truck with 35k miles.

Neither is complete. Both lack flywheel, bellhousing, starter. Now that I have them, I can't help but wonder if one or the other could be revived. Been around the site long enough to understand and have done some of the basic revival stuff, but would have to spend some time and money sourcing parts to get to that point. If they are merely parts or rebuildable cores...that's cool.

Disclosure: I've never torn down or rebuilt an engine by myself. Closest thing was "helping" (handing tools) to the guy who rebuilt my 327 in high school..so consider this a "for dummies" operation. Part of the idea is a future (winter) learning opportunity for me and my kids.

Figure a natural place to start would be some kind of evaluation of the bottom ends. Maybe pull the pan and do some measuring of crank and rods? What should I do or can someone point me toward a resource? I understand the plastigage concept. I have an AD shop manual. Would assume the process might be slightly different for the babbit 216 than the later 235?

Before you tear them down run a compression test on both. That will tell you upfront of where the problem cyl(s) are as well as overall condition.

Before you run the test. squirt some oil in each cyl and let it sit for a couple days. Then fill up the oil to the proper level, use el-cheapo oil, then remove the dist and cut off the tang on an old used long straight slot screw drive and use your dill to turn the oil pump clockwise to see if it will pump up some pressure. A good sign would be that oil starts seeping out of the rocker arms weep holes. Once you've got oil circulated then run reinstall the dist and run the compression tests.

If the tests come back fairly good I'd recommend to try and start it(them) up before teardown.
Good luck
Dave

Compression test with no starter? Can that be done?

Sorry 'bout that, my reading comprehension goes down as my skim reading increases.

I still recommend what I did as you'll know better what your dealing with but I can see the hesitation in investing in a flywheel, bellhousing and starter as a steep upfront cost and then discover both engines have no rebuild value.

You can still try to spin up some oil pressure and then try to manually spin the engines over before dropping the pan.

If they're freed up enough to spin manually that's a good sign.

You can lay them on their side to drop the pan and pull the bearing caps to get a good idea on the cranks condition.

Good luck
Dave

Compression check is not going to give you much info if the engine is worth rebuilding... other than if it NEEDS rebuilding. Good compression could still mean bad valves, worn journals etc etc

Do a good visual inspection for obvious cracks around the cylinders and valve seats. Then look over the whole motor to see its in good shape.

You'll need to take it apart and get the head/block magnafluxed and pressure tested and the crank/cylinders miked to see if its actually rebuildable. That's a $300 work order.

You could ream the cylinder, put in new rings and hope everything else is ok... you might have a runner, you might have a boat anchor.

Invest in a borescope. Mine cost a whopping $48.00 on Ebay, fits through a 5MM hole, and it projects a full-screen image on my laptop with nothing but a USB plug-in and a disc in the DVD drive. It's got variable-intensity LED illumination and a mirror accessory for looking around corners. I can also capture screen shots directly to my "pictures" file with one mouse click if I want to study a screen shot in detail.
Jerry

Got a link to the model you chose? A search of Ebay comes up with an overwhelming number of options...some actually even cheaper than that.

What kind of quick and dirty inspection can I do of the rods, mains, etc? I might even be willing to invest in some measuring devices, as those will be useful later even if these motors are junk.

Mine is a "USB Endoscope" model UC100SL. It's got a 36" probe and a 6 foot USB cord. The driver disc is about 3" in diameter and fits a regular laptop computer disc drive.

I'd recommend a digital caliper for quick and dirty measurements of bore size, crankshaft journal diameter, etc. I've got a Starrett brand professional quality digital caliper that cost about $350.00, but they're available for considerably less. Plastigauge is also an option for checking bearing clearance, and all it takes is the width measuring gauge on the envelope the plastic thread comes in to get a pretty accurate idea of oil clearances.
Jerry