The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Montgomery Wards 235 6 cly in 59 Chevy Pu

Hello all I was just wondering if anyone has ever seen a 235 6 cly motor in a 50's Chevy truck.I purchased this truck from a guy and he said it had a Montgomery Wards engine in it. It has a metal plate that says Montgomery Wards rivited on the block. Someone told me they did factory replacements for Chevy at one time. Is this a rare find? I would love to find out the history of the motor and how it ended up in the truck. Anyone that could give me more info on this would be greatly appreciated. Please email any info to [email protected] Thanks Tinker.

Never heard of Monkey Ward doing factory replacements for GM. Most likely, it's a re-man installed much later in the trucks life.

Montgomery Wards had an independent rebuilder do engines for them,,such as Automotive Engineering,
etc...
They would just put on their own tag.
Kinda like if you buy a reman. engine from Kragens now,,,its done by someone else.
All in all,,they were good engines.
Sadly,,,people use the terms like "factory" and "original"very loosely now.

I can remember being able to buy an overhauled engine from Monkey Wards.I believe they had an exchange program.

Sears, M/W, Western Auto, and a lot of other big-box hardware outlets had house-brand engine exchange programs back in the dark ages. It's kind of like buying a reman 350 engine from Auto Zone or one of the other discounters now. You get an engine from whatever contractor managed to submit the low bid for a lot of engines. No accountability, other than maybe getting another low-bid wonder if you raise enough hell about a bad one.
Jerry

Years ago Monkey Wards, Sears and others did lots of things they don't do today. For instance, Wards had a Motorcycle called a "Riverside" that was a relabeled "Mohave" and "Benalli". Sears sold a CAR! The "Allstate" was a rebadged Henry J! There is an old repair shop just three blocks from my home that was an Alstate dealership.

Click on the link to the story of the Henry J/Allstate. http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/HenryJ/

And the Wards Riverside.
http://www.benelli.nl/gallery_wards_riverside_benelli.htm

Brian

Have I ever seen a 235 in a 50's Chevy Truck? All the time. Usually 216's in the 1/2 tonners.. but the 235 is a popular 'upgrade'.

I agree with the others.. Monkey Ward would slap their name on anything they could to make a buck.. and engines were no exception.

So the history of your particular truck is most likely that at some point the original engine took a dump, and they bought a reman engine from Montgomery Wards to replace it.

I don't think it makes the engine any more collectible than any other 235 engine.. except perhaps to some die hard Montgomery Ward memorabilia collector.

I'd suspect back in the day, having a Montgomery Ward engine was about as prestigious as.. say.. having a K-Mart engine would be today.

Some folks would rather buy a rebuilt motor from M. Wards or another big store feeling they had better service & warranty protection than from a small independent shop. Of course the price had to be a bit higher too with the added retailer. Having worked in a small shop that had one of these contracts, I would say we were held to a pretty high standard on quality. Ea. motor had a traceable number to be followed back to the builder's shop in the event of a failure. My boss made a machine to flow test oil pumps before installation. We or any other shop I know of never did that for in-house motors. Just one example. Doug

Does K-Mart sell engines? Wow!