The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Engine Stand Capacity for 216 or 235

Hello All,

How much does a 216 cubic inch or a 235 cubic inch motor weigh?

After looking on eBay and in the auto parts stores there are a range different capacity engine stands available.

I would like to buy an engine stand that will allow some extra weight placed on the engine while working on the stand without having it start to reach breaking point.

What capacity engine stand would be with a comfortable safety margin built into it considering frequent use?

Kind Regards
Lionel

Don't know about weight of engine, think I read on here before about 650 lbs. Anyway do yourself a favor and get a four point engine stand Like this dont know if you have a harbor freight and it doesn't have to be harbor freight just an example. It is what I used and was able to roll my 235 all around my small shop without a problem. First had it on a 3 point kind of T style engine stand and it was very unstable wanting to tip over from just putting a little weight on it. There was no way I was going to get any work done safely with that so I went out and bought the four point very stable for these long engines. Good luck with your project.

I agree with using a four point engine stand and if you can, try to find one with longer front legs (outriggers). These engines weigh a lot more than a V8 and they're quite a bit longer too.

The heavier and longer, the better! Several years ago two students at the school where I taught were just finishing up an assembly of a 235. They had dismounted the engine from the stand, bolted the bellhousing, flywheel and clutch on it, AND PUT IT BACK ON THE STAND FOR SOME REASON! As they were working on the manifolds, the stand tipped over forward and the engine hit one kid on the foot. Several broken bones and 40-something stitches later, he still had a foot.

The policy in the shop was that students had to wear full-coverage leather shoes in the shop. One day before the mishap, the kid had been punished for wearing tennis shoes. The day of the accident he had come to class with heavy work shoes on. That difference probably kept him from losing at least part of a foot and being impaired for life.
Jerry

Lionel, there is a great Tech Tip about how to build an engine dolly for our Stovebolt engines. It produces an outstanding dolly that can be used in conjunction with an engine stand for increased safety.

Consistent with the safety reasons that Jerry and others have stated, I do as much work as I can with the engine on one of these dollies instead of the engine stand for both tear down and assembly. Doing so allows you to limit using the engine stand for just tearing down or building up the block itself with everything else being done on the dolly. This includes the head. Removing or installing the head on the dolly is accomplished much more safely than doing it on an engine stand.

A Stovebolt engine short block weighs about 325 pounds, but that's deceiving because of how long these engines are.

Matt

I bought a four point engine stand from my local OReilly's, and found it worked well enough. These engines are heavy, and more importantly they are long! A lot of weight far from the mounting points. I bought some grade 8 bolts and washers to fit the holes in the back of the block, and then attached the stand mounting plate while the engine was on my engine hoist. That gave me the ability to get everything lined up properly, then removed it, put it back in the stand, and finally bolted up the engine. It weems as if the mounting plates are really designed for a V8, it's tricky to get them adjusted to fit the inline 6. Once it was on the stand, it was stable and solid. An important point is to try and get the block balanced top to bottom, really helps when rotating to work on the bottom end.
Tim

As I've mentioned before, a good work-around for the oddball bolt spacing on the back of the stovebolt 6 block is a piece of 1/2" X 2" flat bar about 12" long, bolted to the upper holes in the block above the crankshaft. Attach two of the engine stand legs to the ends of the bar, and use a stack of flat washers at the lower block holes to level things out. This allows you much more flexibility as to where to position the pivot for safer rotation of the engine.
Jerry

Yeah, I used a 4 wheel engine stand to get everything together, but waited until I had it on a dolly before I installed the cylinder head- all that weight hanging out there just seemed like an accident waiting to happen.

The flat bar idea would have saved me hours of agony!! I ended up grinding and drilling the engine mount arms until I could get everything to clear the crank and fit and be fairly well balanced...

G'day Matt,

Thanks for the heads up regarding the engine dolly. I found the link ... http://www.stovebolt.com/techtips/engine_dolly.html


A dolly would be good for being able to move the engine around the shed. Great detail in the PDF attached to the webpage too.

Once the engine is finished it will be good to be able to roll the engine about instead of having as a heavy stationary object. Soon as you sit it down somewhere because it seems out of the way at the time - it turns out to be the exact opposite, and it needs shifting again.

The dolly also frees up the engine stand for one or two other project's engines too!

Kind Regards
Lionel

I have the typical flat plate, drilled holes to accommodate the engine and then I use long grade 8 bolts with spacers and washers to mount the engine. I used galvanized pipe to make the spacers. The clearance allows you to spin the crank during rebuilding

I used my four wheel stand just as Tim described here. Engine Mounting Have a look at his photo. He uses the upper two arms as spacers as the horizontal slots in the plate line up with the six cylinder block upper holes. One caveat for mine is that I have a gusset on the bottom and I have to use the shorter arms on the bottom because the nuts will hit the gusset.

This arrangement is pretty near the center of gravity for rotating the engine. It becomes bottom heavy when the head is removed and is more balanced when the crankshaft is removed also.

Definitely get U-shaped one with a 4-point support. To me, the T-shaped ones are kind of scary. After I was done with the 261, I repurposed it for another obsession.
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Repurposed Engine Stand.
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Hello Jerry,

Thank you for your reply and the description of how to use the flat bar. Is there any chance you could draw what it looks like and post it up? Or maybe a couple of photographs? I have trouble putting words into pictures. No problems the other way round as I think in pictures.

Kind Regards
Lionel

A few pics of a 235 on my engine stand.
Pic 1
Pic 2

G'day Volfandt,

Thank you very much for the photographs - much appreciated. They say a picture paints a thousand words.

Kind Regards
Lionel

Hello All,

My 2000lb (900 kg) engine stand arrived a couple of days ago. Thank you every one for your insight.

I am going to get some pallet racking so that I can get a couple of engines off the back of my two trucks so they are lighter and easier to move. This meant doing some calculations on rack capacity so I performed another search - this time I used the word "Heavy" instead of "weight" - as in "How heavy is a Chev 216 engine?" I found this site dedicated to engine weights... Accessed 27th of May 2017 from http://www.gomog.com/allmorgan/engineweights2.html

They have the weight of a 216 at Chevy L6 216/235 at 630 pounds. They also have the Chevy small block V8 at 575 Pounds and the Chevy big block V8 at 685 pounds.

I hope this link proves handy to people - it would be good to know how accurate these figures are though.

Kind Regards
Lionel

Those weights look pretty close to right. I assume those are "dry" weight figures, without coolant, oil, etc. and possibly without accessories such as the generator and starter, bellhousing, and maybe the water pump. They may or may not include intake and exhaust manifolds, carburetors, etc.
Jerry

I started making these years ago to eliminate the flimsy adjustable mounting head that comes with engine stands. A good 4 wheel stand base is a better investment than the unsafe 3 wheel ones as has been mentioned.
Engine stand adapter

My engine stand plate is almost an inch thick. I would not call it flimsy.

Its not the plate that makes them flimsy, its the narrow bellhousing bolt pattern the arms have to be adjusted to. The pic in one of the posts above that has a piece of flatbar used to move two of the mounting points outward is a better solution for store bought stands, and makes it a bit more rigid. My adapter plates uses all 6 bellhousing bolts to affix it to the block. And if you do a lot of Stovebolt's or GMC's it saves time having from having to change the arms from a different engine bellhousing pattern.