keithb7

My wife is basically a contractor. She does all our home renovations, and repairs. She takes our 3/4T diesel, long box extra cab 4x4 to Home Depot for supplies all the time. It's a pretty big truck. I have often thought of using that excuse to buy another old Mopar truck. Tell her it's her truck for her dumps runs and home depot trips. I think that might actually work. Yet she's about 5 '2 ,120 lbs. Not sure she could see over the steering wheel, reach the clutch and work the manual steering in the parking lot at the depot. Guess it would be too late to worry about those small details when I had already bought a '48 Fargo. Fixed it up and painted "Heather's Contracting" on the doors. It'd be mine then.? This is how marriage works when you are 30 years in.

Got it on. Took safety measures. 8 fasteners in place. Lightly torqued for now. Will really torque them down when the engine is bolted down.

Here’s the 23” cradle a local guy gave me. Not convinced it would hold up a fully dressed engine anyway. Looks dicey to me.

I like the metal cradle idea. But I'll use it once probably. For 20 mins. Limited floor space so I won't store it. Mind you its certainly not like storing a @Snipergantry. ? As much as I loved building this engine I can't see myself spending $4K to build another one for kicks. I am pretty sure if I rebuilt another old Mopar engine for love of the hobby, when done if trying to sell it, a guy would probably be lucky to pull in 30% of just actual parts costs. My '38 Chrysler engine is a low mile rebuild already. Anyone within 500 miles want their engine rebuilt? Lol. I'll consider it. I have a spare 25" 218 here. 2 1/8" stroke. 3 3/8" bore. Could easily turn it into a 234 cc-ish...Well sorta easily. Actually. I'm expensive and slow. Took about a year with this one. ?

Thanks guys. I agree on the timbers. I don’t think I have enough. I’ll see what I can round up. I had a thought at 3 am. Engine is hanging on a leveller. Not seen in the pic. I could tilt it so the water pump end is down. Might allow me to attach at least a couple flywheel bolts. Then I can attach the rest and torque them all after my engine is bolted to the frame. A local Mopar guy gave me a wood cradle he made. I tried to use it. It turns out it was b built for a 23” engine. Wouldn’t work. He had cut out wood end pieces to wrap around the front & rear radius of the oil pan.

Not mine. Not yet. Aside from 3rd gear, no OD, on the freeway at 55 mph in my ‘38 Plym. Sure sounds like hard labor.

I’m at the point tomorrow where I’ll install the flywheel and clutch. I had to take my engine off its stand to install the bell housing. Engine is currently hanging from my hoist. I think I’ve seen pics of engines mounted to the stand only by the bell housing. That seems a little sketchy to me. The engine continues to gain lots of weight with each piece I install. Yet working on installing the flywheel while it’s hanging from the hoist seems sketchy as well. I’d have to get partially under there to install and torque flywheel hardware. It seems safer to mount the engine back on the stand with the bell housing on. Then roll it upside down and install the flywheel. Yet, as mentioned, also seems sketchy. Lesser of two evils maybe? How are you folks doing this step? I thought about mounting the engine in the car. Then installing the flywheel. Yet its pretty awkward by yourself down there. Trying to hold up a 70 lb flywheel off your chest and get fasteners threaded. Tips appreciated. Thx.

Love it here! Learning from others and passing along info is fun. I like the questions asked. Makes me think....Hmm. What is the solution to this problem? Like a daily pop quiz on old Mopars! It is stimulating and keeps the fire burning for the old Mopars. Some people do crossword puzzles every day. Some of us come here to see if we can answer the latest dilemma.

This 50 year old hobbyist mechanic started working on these old Mopars 5 years ago. Been a great time! I enjoy every minute. I’ve turned many a page to try and learn. I must have read the section on the M-5 tranny 3-4 times before it sorta all sunk in. Quite the system. There’s extremely few flathead Mopars seen out on the roads around here. Regionally we might be able to build a club of 15 members. Doubt it though. So I have become my own isolated Moapr specialist. Lol. 52 weekends a year I’m usually wrenching in solitude. Not complaining, I love the downtime. Especially when there’s no cussing required. I’d enjoy helping out another Mopar owner around here. Yet I am having little luck finding anyone. So I do it on You Tube. The dusty, dead ‘37 Desoto coupe that I found. The weather turned and caught up to me. Hopefully next spring I can dig that one out. The owner is 80+ I figure.

Looking at engine compression ratios climb over the years mentioned, I suspect the distributor’s were tweaked to account for improved pressures. Fuel improved as well. Combustion flame travel speeds changed. More HP and torque were able to be wrung out of similar displacement motors as the years passed. I assume distributor curves were adjusted to take advantage of this new found power and fuel economy. Were Mechanical advance weights made heavier or lighter as required? Return spring rates tweaked too I suspect? Springs on both the mechanical weights and the vacuum advance unit? I am only guessing here. Just a hypothesis. Did they tweak these timing variables while dyno testing at the factory? Trial and error until they nailed it. Squeezing out a sweet spot of HP and torque without pinging or too much heat? Would a later 50’s distributor, stock form, be hard to tune-in on a 1940 engine? I suspect so but have never tried. I’d love to hear your tales on these topics.

I deleted 250 photos tonight. I guess I had about 950 photos. I am now at 75% capacity. I get it that web sites can't offer unlimited data. I don't feel special or self entitled to have more data. I just enjoy contributing to this site. Many good people here. @P15-D24 I do like the idea of active members who have good credibility able earn to more storage data. Why let a few bad-apple kill the plan? I suggest you carry on. People do have to adjust to changes. We don't like to, but we will.

It seems my keithb7 account can no longer upload any photos. I have reached my maximum allotted uploaded file size capacity for this web site. I do reduce all my image sizes. I don’t like to post links to photos stored to other online image hosting sites. These web site addresses change, then images are not visible in the future here. So I think I’m tapped out. I do post quite a few images. I guess, too many. Wondering if anyone else has experienced this here on this site? This action seems punitive for an active member.

I’ve got lots to say about Moparpro but I’ll leave it alone. Just beware there are plenty of offshore reproduced, poor fitting parts on the market.

Why type of transmission do you have? Manual dry clutch 3 speed? Fluid drive?

Sure make 30 of 'em. Sell 'em on E-bay. Then Mopar Pro will buy one, copy it perfectly and cut you out of the market. Ask me how I know? Lol.

My wife gave me a badge recently. “Biggest whiner of the year about Old Mopar parts prices.” I was a runner-up also, for “Gets in a rage the quickest, over freight costs to Canada”.

Going thru my spare parts stashes. Not seeing one of those spacers. Even braved the attic stash. Nope.

Aha! Thank you. Love this place. So much great info.

The photo is making it appear that way. The generator is not on an angle. The gen pulley and fan turn true. i was experimenting with odd camera angles to try and showcase the belt deflection. The photo makes the generator pulley look skewed I agree. In reality it is not.

What is your block length? We can then get pretty close to a bore size. Stroke is easy to measure. Small pipe plug over #6 cylinder in head.

Same water pump. Was new and I installed it Summer of 2020.

Betchya you are right Robert. I figured someone here may have seen spacers on the back side of the pulley. I have never seen that. Perhaps I will make one.

Thanks Kevin. I found some old photos I took before disassembly. Its reassembled the same as before. Generator on front side of bracket. I reassembled again here now. It’s more like 1/8” not 1/4”. I must not have noticed it before. It’s not a big variance. I’ll keep an eye on it. Generator and crank pulley like up perfectly. I seem to recall the belt drive on the horizontal 6 Corvair engine. Holy moly it certainly has twists in it. My deflection is pretty minute by comparison.

Putting my engine back together. Same fan and pulley that I took off it. Same water pump. Generator too. The generator pulley lines up with crank pulley. Yet my fan pulley belt groove sets about 1/4” out of of line. It sits closer to the engine block. I don’t recall a spacer behind the pulley hub to move it forward 1/4”. Weird. Nothing shown in the parts book. I could put some washers behind pulley for draw it toward rad 1/4”. Scratching my head. Hmm. Wondering why? What have I done? Lol.