The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop In Over My Head

I have aquired a 1952 2 ton with the original 235 already machined an ready to go back together.I have pistons,crank,cam reinstalled an then went to bench an looked at all the bags of bolts and said OH MY what have I gotten myself into..shut up shop came in an order all manuals I could fine.....Ladies an Gents be ready for a confussed person asking dumb questions

Taint no such thing as a dumb question newbie, we were all there
once upon a time. I might suggest investing in a reproduction
of the Factory Assembly Manual, a Parts Manual and a Service
Manual, that will answer 99% of your questions and then when
you need to ax a question, it will be an informed one.
I'm in my 70's now and have been taking these old Stovebolt's
apart and putting them back together since I was a sprout and I
still find something I didn't know about quite often.

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny speaks TRUTH and is a warehouse full of not only info but some of the most detailed pictures of a lot of thing related to our trucks. Look at the number of posts under his registration info . Jerry

if they are all different bags with sort of the same of each in a bag then thats a good thing and all you need to do is sort and identify the parts in each bag with quanities and the size. this is what i do, oil pan bolts in one bag, side cover bolts in one bag, waterpump and thermostat housing bolts in one bag and so on, but i mark the bag as to what it is for. if yours is not sorted then youll need to sort them. hopefully someone cleaned and degreased them first if not then youll need to do that first. its not that hard to sort it out then go from there.

yep, buy LOTS of Z-Lock bags and a few Sharpie pens. Its seems simple when we take them apart and we think "yeah, I'll remember this". Well, you won't months and even years later..... I know!!

I'm searching now for a Factory Assembly Manual now but not having much luck

there are no year specific assembly manuals, the FAM you want covers all the AD years, although it's basically a 47 product, - 47-54 FAM here - or here, or any of the other vendors

Bill

I might be mistaken Bill, but the reproduction FAM is mostly
aimed at the '54 model year isn't it? At least most of the
illustrations are, as the drawing dates suggest.

But newbie, although it's far from perfect, most of it will
still give you a lot of information on where thing go on
any of the AD's.

Denny G

you're likely right there Denny, I just know it's a general AD manual, no year specific ones available for any series - a lot of the 55-59 manual is also dated '54

Bill

i agree, i used it on my 51 figuring out how to use the book is the hardest thing.

I think there are a few 1955-1st illustrations in that 47-54 FAM, but the majority are for 1954.

The FAM is quite logical (not necessarily intuitive/obvious), but you have to spend some time figuring it out. The "index" pages are the first several pages that reference which of the later pages/sections cover specific categories. Clear as mud.

Just imagine where we would be without that confounding FAM. It has helped me out immensely, especially with where all the spotwelds are supposed to go on the top cowl/dash, outer cowls, inner to outer cowls, inner cowls, floor board, rocker panels, and cab corners. Come to think of it, if I had that manual before I decided to restore my 52 rust bucket, I would have done the smart thing and hauled it to the scrape yard and looked for a better candidate. Oh well, fun fun fun.

I've often wondered who compiled those manuals. Working for
Chevrolet back in the late 50's/early 60's I never saw anything
like that. I would have thought that the service department
would have had one of them for reference when a customer
complained about a factory defect, and I worked at four
different dealerships as a parts man.
I even wonder if the guys on the production lines ever got a
glimpses of a "Factory Assembly Manual".
As far as that goes, in all those years I never saw a bound
version of a parts manual, all of ours were always post binders
so we could make the weekly/monthly revisions to the parts
listings.

Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

I worked as a parts man at a Chevy dealership in the mid 70's. There were weekly (or more often) revisions to the parts listings. Anything we see now is very suspect. But its better than nothing. I just wish they could have preserved more of the engineering documentation for the earlier AD's. The 54 and 55's are way different. Good thing everything is pretty straightforward.