dorkpunch

No biggy, right? I can "weld". Not. But I thought I'd give it a try. Ground the cracks out, found the ends, drilled some holes. Bought some expensive nickle rod, did some research on the "no preheat" method of welding cast and gave it a shot. Ugly. No cracks, but super duper porous. No way is that going to hold water. So I figure I give it another shot last night. Ground it all out again, welded it, same result. Super porous. Ground it flat but didn't vee it out and though I'd try another layer. Looked a WHOLE lot better, but... Now it has more cracks. Now we're all caught up and I don't know what to do. Have a call into Legacy Classic Trucks- they are just up the road from me. Hoping I can do some horse trading with the twin stick and this block for a running motor I can put in Grandpas truck. I know when I talked to them about 3 years ago they were pretty interested in 265's, and if I understand correctly you can make a 251 a 265 by using the crank and rods? Open to suggestions at this point. Might pull the spitfire motor out and get it up on the stand to see what it'll need.

So we're almost all caught up to the present. Got all the bell housing stuff off and decided I should clean up the engine. A couple of dousings with degreaser, hit it with the pressure washer, then once dry douse it in PB Blaster to try to reconstitute some of the dehydrated grease all over the engine, then repeat. Finally got it good and clean. Found some cool things: And some really NOT cool things. I just cannot win with this thing... Two nice long cracks in the water jacket. Guess I'm glad I found it now, instead of after I had the engine in.

Yup, Canadian engine with the 25" block. So I decided to run a want ad on craigslist. I turned up this: So I bought it and drug it home! They cut the cab off, widened it, slapped it on a diesel school bus frame and put a tanker on the back. It's the farm fuel truck. Got it home. It had supposedly ran before they cut it up. I tinkered with it a bit and did, indeed, get it running! Drove it to its resting spot for the next 3 years... I did do some digging for info on the engine. Turns out it's the "rare" "sought after" industrial 265!!! Fast forward through cancer, divorce and recovery... About a month ago I decided it was time. Dad was coming for a visit and I figured I could put him to work so we drug the frame out and rolled the front end into the shop. Motor out. Now I just need to get rid of this frame... and wheels... and the twin stick dual transmission. Any takers?!

Then I remembered these in my neighbors field... Bought 'em and drug 'em home. It was exciting. The tires even held air. For a couple of minutes. My helpers: Spent some time on Blacky, and even got it running! So I figured, pull the engine, drop it in the '48! Drug the truck up to the garage. Guess what?! It has a 23" block. Wont fit Grandpa's truck. Ended up selling them to a guy out east, who is still working on them and has the one truck put back together and running like a top!!! Fun to follow him on instagram. I still don't have an engine.

With the truck home, I started scouring the local boneyard and found a few candidates... Problem was I had no idea what kind of shape any of the engines were in. I also had this: It was rebuilt by my sister in law like 20 years ago when she was in high school. Also an unknown... Been sitting for years before she gave it to me. Also missing ALL of the externals. Hauled it home anyways, so it's an option too.

LMBoise, I will send you message... Well, progress the other night took an unexpected turn for the worse... Back to our story. The truck sat in the shed for 15 years. 2 dead engines in the bed, all taken apart. Tires holding air. Dad decided he wanted to start cleaning stuff out and things worked out that I was able to haul it 600+ miles down from Canada to Idaho. Home and unloaded.

A bit of both... The ongoing hatred of Photobucket continues. Trying to get all of my pics over to Smugmug so i can share them here. Manualy downloaded 53 pics and have them uploading now.

I'm working on it! Patience!

And the Fargo cab...

The day we drug it home from the farm.

Bit of a back story here. In 1948 a couple of things happened. One, my dad was born... and 2, Great Grandpa bought a new truck for the farm. Both the truck, and Dad, are still around. Story goes that Grandpa wasn't big on changing oil. When the THIRD motor died, sometime in the 70's, it got parked in the line of scrap out at the farm. Fast forward 30 years... I'm in high school, I love working out at the farm, and meander past the line of dead equipment often. My senior year, I talked my Dad and Uncle into letting me work on it in my shop class. We drug it into town, got it in to the shop, and started tearing it apart. It apparently sat for 30 years with the cap off the oil fill tube. Mice removed the stuffing from the seat and deposited ALL of it in the crankcase. When I dropped the pan off the motor, it was stuffed clear up to the bottom of the pistons with seat innards. Gross. In the stuffing was a mixture of piston skirts and rust. This was NOT looking good... It was seized tighter than a drum. No amount of anything we could would persuade it to move. Did I mention how NOT fun it is to get that motor out? My shop teacher was a Chevy only guy, and this was waaaaayyyyyy before youtube and the internets. To compound the pain, the truck is a Fluid Drive... I had to drop the crank out of the bottom of the engine because there was no way to spin it enough to get the bolts out of the back for the torque converter, which has to come out to get the bell housing out, but it turns out you have to take the bell housing out with the engine, and on... and on... and on.... I managed to find the front half of a Fargo that some farmer cut the back end off to make into a trailer. We drug that in and pulled the motor out of it. It, too, was seized. To this day, neither one will spin. By now I was out of time and never had any money for any other options, so the truck got pulled out of the school shop and put in one of my Dad's spare shops. I graduated, and moved on with life...

Hey, how about an update... Been tinkering and am about to start a new thread for the "build". Pulled the 265 off the frame. Turns out the frame has a "TWIN STICK" setup, or dual transmissions, PLUS a split rear end. So that's what, 4x4x2 gears?! If anyone would be interested in that system or parts off of the frame let me know. I did get the 265 running and it seems to run pretty good. Got a gasket set on the way, going to clean it up and install those, then work on getting the fluid drive bell housing on it and back in the truck.

Lots of the industrial engines did not have any kind of timing advance, they were designed to run at one steady rpm. Means the midrange suffers, but where this one is coming out of a truck I'm hoping that has been fixed already...

Its going to be a driver for sure. May one day restore it but I just need it to be mobile for now. Can't do much with the interior- I want to keep the shift pattern my Dad scratched into the dash when he was 8, and the tractor filter #'s written on the headliner in pencil. The farm fresh patina is kinda nice too. Tired of it sitting in the shed. It will likely only see the rural highways around here- 55 mph. I'm not going to lie though, it would be pretty cool to run it up the freeway at 80 mph every now and then, but I REALLY don't see that ever happening. Guess I'll have to see what I have when I go pick it up. Most likely will get it running before I do anything, and test the trans etc while its all in the frame still. Will make a decision after I know more about it.

Looking back at the pics... It would appear that the trans behind that 265 has 2 extra levers- what would they be for? I could see one as a PTO, the other maybe a split rear end?

Thanks for the insights. Current plan is to attemp dropping the 265 and attached trans in. I will probably have to come up with a custom driveline, but this would be the least amount of work to make it at least move. If its a no go, I think I can trade it off for the 251. Here's the 265: Looks like it has a custom hydraulic pump, must have had a dump bed? Hoping it'll fit... This is what it'll be going in.

Looking for a little advice. Still trying to get Great Grandpa's old truck back on the road. I have come accross a great deal on a supposedly running Industrial 265 engine and rolling chassis. Going to pick it up next week. P.O. said they started it, drove it a little just to move it around, then pulled the cab off for a different project. Been sitting for about a year. Frame is a '47 1.5 ton. ALSO have a line on a 251- professionally rebuilt about 10 years ago, but had extremely low time put on it before it was pulled for a modern engine swap. Work was done by a reputable business, garunteed it as running. Little more expensive but not out of line. The truck I need an engine for is a Canadian built '48 Dodge B-1. I know I need the 25" long engine, which both of these are. The truck has a "Fluid Drive" transmission, which apparently is on the rare side because everyone confuses it for the later version. Has the looonng bell housing, a regula clutch, then a torque converter, then the standard 4 speed transmission. I dont want to do ANY cutting if at all possible- eventually it may get a full resto back to bone stock. In the meantime, I want a good daily driver truck. This leads to my questions: 1. I think originally the truck had the 251. Any reason NOT to use the 265? Parts availablity? Performance parts available for either? 2. Transmission- 3 options. Use the 265 and the trans that is on it now, plug it in, and run it- OR- use the 265 or the 251, hope the Fluid Drive trans is good, and bolt them up, making a more original truck- OR- use either engine, do a T5 conversion and have better gearing and maybe better fuel mileage. What should I do!?

Ta-da! Motor out. I would say that clutch is fragged... Dug out the '48 and pulled it up by the house. Had my 9 year old "drive" it- pretty funny watching him run the armstrong steering, not to mention you have to spin it 4 times before things start to go. By that point, he's clear on the other side of the road and doing his darndest to spin it back! Man. I have a lot of crap. And now for the bad news... I thought I had 2 transmissions with the green truck- the fluid drive and the one from the Fargo cab. Unfortunately, I only have the fluid drive, and it's input shaft is about 4 inches longer than it needs to be for the regular bell housing. More bad news- the clutch pack from the fluid drive is NOT the same as the older trucks, meaning I still don't have a clutch. Grinding screeching halt time. I will price out a clutch tomorrow but its not in the cards to buy one right now. I was thinking I could try setting the engine in place to see how far off I am but I just realized I can't really do that without the clutch and the bellhousing attached. Ug.

Decision time. The motor is coming out. Everywhere I look at Blackie, I just see more things that need fixing. The motor will *probably* fit in my '48, although it is smaller than what it's supposed to have in it. Look at that! It fits in my garage! Yanked the rad before I pulled it in though. 10 minutes worth of work and the trans is out. 2.5 hours later, I have the engine ready to come out. Had several stuck bolts I had to cut off, and lots of things needed to be taken off to get to other things. Not like my old Ford- I had that motor OUT in under 45 minutes IIRC. If it fits in the '48, great. I'll drive it while I rebuild the spitfire motor right, then I can swap them out. At that point, I can decide what to do with the older 2; build one, make a rat rod, or who knows. Right now I'm thinking I'll probably sell them because I just don't have the space right now- I have 6 vehicles but only room to park 4...

Havent decided yet on the two older ones... I really like the styling of them a lot more than the pilothouse, but its been in the family since '48 so I cant get rid of it. The two older ones might be for sale eventually. I live about 20 miles outside of Idaho Falls, Id if anyone is interested in them.

Hey all, quick question for you. I am trying to get my great grandpa's old truck back on the road. Its a '48 B-1. I found a set of older trucks, a '39 VC and a '41 WC. I got the motor from the '39 running great and would like to swap it in to the '48 (the two older trucks are REALLY rough, no titles, etc). My problem though is the running motor is a 23 incher, T105. The motor that was in the B-1 was a 25. Aside from the front motor mounts being to far away, is there any other reason why this wont work? Some pics of the offenders: Resting spot.