The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop 38 engine

I purchased a 1938 chevy pick-up truck and was wondering what cubic inch motor did they come with. Also does that motor have an oil pump or the dipping kind. The truck runs and drives and over all in exellent shape I paid 3000.00 It's still original and not missing any peices.

Do you guy's think it was a good deal or not?

That should have a 216 engine in it. It has a oil pump but is not full pressure oiling. The rods still have dippers on them. It sounds like a good price if all the parts are there and you are driving it around. Joe

When you say not full pressure what do you mean? Does it just pump oil to the valve train and not the crank?

Just purchased it from an old fella that had it in his garage for the last 15-20 years. He told me every summer he took it for a few rounds around town. He kept it in good running shape and well mantianed.
He was getting on in years and was starting to sell some of his stuff. He sold a 41 in the same shape for the same price a week before I bought the 38. He seemed a little sad to see the 38 go.

The oil pump supplies the main bearings (and camshaft bearings I believe) under direct pressure. The vast majority of the oil is pumped to the rear chamber of the oil distribution valve housing (just below the manifolds & between the exhaust pipe and engine block. When the oil reaches a given pressure the valve opens and allows the oil to enter the front chamber of the distribution valve. From there it splits. Most returns to the oil pan through the "squirters" in the pan. The rest travels up the 1/8" ID copper line, through the water jacket, up the right side of the block under the side cover, into the head and feeds the rocker arm assemblies. The squirters ride inside troughs in the pan. The rod caps have "dippers" on them that scoop oil out of the troughs at low speed. At higher engine speeds the oil pressure increases enough that the oil squirts out of the squirters into the path of the dippers which forces the oil into the rod bearings under increased pressure. It's amazing that such engineering works. I've read old magazine articles that say hod rodders of the era found the squirter system to be more trouble free than those that were converted to full pressure. The key was to replace the cast iron pistons to aluminum to reduce the force on the babbeted rods. Even more reliability was gained by adding harder bearing inserts to the babbeted rods. Big down side is no oil filter and the accessory filters of that era are a high bypass filter that allows most of the oil to bypass the filter.