Haydenh

Hello Brent! Sorry it has taken me so long to reply to you! Lots of life has pulled me away from the forum and the project. I'd like to see more about your "HH(A)" project and how that goes for you! I'm finally in a place where I can start tearing into my truck so first thing I'll be doing is just getting the drivetrain sorted and most likely rebuilding the 251, trans, etc. It'll be a slow project but I'm hoping I can be more active on the forum to document my progress along the way and all the issues I'm sure to uncover with it being an old grain truck from Idaho.

That’s interesting that the 251 doesn’t start as well. Maybe it’s something to do with the mechanical pump allowing gas to flow out of the carb? So does your truck have a 2 speed rear end?

Slow progress but I feel like I'll be able to focus a bit more time and effort on getting things back to road worthy condition on the weekends again. I tried using some MMO and it did seem like it made a little difference, but I'm not sure it made a big enough difference, at least the carb has been rebuilt I guess. So I'll check the distributor and wires and see if they're in ok shape. If its still struggling, smoking out of every filler and draft tube on it, and just not running right I'll have to tear into the engine. Might not be a bad Idea just to get everything refreshed and maybe remove the old power wagon governor and long bolts for the carb. I luckily have a family friend who just retired that has extensive experience with the older vehicles that he used to wrench on with his dad (dad was a mechanic in the 30s and 40s) and I might be able to pick his brain about how to go about a rebuild. I definitely need to get the truck back out on the road within the next year or two!

Wallytoo, I know this is about a year late but welcome to the big boy club! You've got a great looking truck and more importantly, its being used! Mine unfortunately is still sitting waiting to be restored a bit but seeing yours gives me a little motivation to get wrenching on mine! Hope all is well!

thank you for the photo/info. I’ll have to break out my manual to make sure I turn the screw I’m thinking of but I think it’s definitely very rich so leaning it out substantially will probably be a good idea. I’ll have to go pickup a vacuum gauge and figure out where to plug it in to get the best reading and then have at it!

i keep forgetting about the shop manual sitting on my shelf! I need to whip that out and go for it! I’ll give the guides a check sometime here in the next couple weeks and see if they’re in spec and also if the guides are worn or not. I’ll likely need to jack up the truck and remove the front wheel to get at the valves easily since the bigger trucks fender is very high off the ground! Not an easy way in there behind that huge tire! Thank you for your help! ?

JB, Any idea on how to pinpoint a worn valve guide? Just get into the valves and wiggle things around to see what’s loose?

Brent, thank you, any idea on how to adjust the fuel mixture with non-adjustable main jets? I read somewhere that someone said to braze the main jet in and drill a new one smaller. I don’t know if that’s the correct path to go or if there are some different jets for these old b & b carbs. I did reach out to Holley to inquire about their Sniper EFI stuff since where I currently live is about 2,900’ but I regularly drive up to the mountains up around the 10,000’ elevation and was thinking it’d be great to take the old truck up there sometime so the adjustability would be fantastic. The price tag is just a little high for that. I’ll have to look up vacuum timing as I’m learning a lot of “new” old skills! I’ll have to get some feeler gauges to do the valve adjustments. brakes will be slowly coming along and then some tires and some minor electrical work to get the signals working before setting off into traffic haha

hey Dj, so curiously enough the engine runs already but it just stumbles a bit even after I rebuilt the carb. The original post I had at the top has links to the short clips on YouTube so you can see the blow by I’m getting out the draft tube and the oil filler neck. That was my original concern was that it would run just fine but that it seemed like a lot of blow by was happening. that being said, that’s great to know the compression numbers aren’t too bad. I don’t know if that means that the rings are just seized on the piston or not or if there’s some other cause for the blow by. Thank you for your help and information!

Well folks, I finally got around to doing a compression test and added some MMO afterwards and I’ll do a compression test for the next couple weekends and see if the numbers change. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Dry. 85 110 100 90 90 90 Wet. 100 130 155 125 140 145 i guess let me know if you have some insight from the numbers and whether or not I’ll need to pull things apart and do a rebuild. I’m still figuring things out with this engine since it’s not the original to the truck. Thank you in advance and for your help so

it is definitely smoke, we’ve run it until it gets up to temperature and it smokes the whole way. I did a compression test and all cylinders were in the 90s or close to 100 at least. I’m going to do another compression test and see if it’s one cylinder or if all of them are similar. If they’re similar it could just be that the engine is just fairly worn out and needs a rebuild anyways. If you get a chance to look at the YouTube links it looks like blow by as the filler tube has lots of air moving out of it. I will try an oil change and some MMO to try and see if that helps anything and then if that doesn’t work and the compression test doesn’t turn anything up then I’ll need to tear things down I’m afraid.

Would you also try to put some in the top of the cylinders or just let everything run through the oiling system? I’ll go buy some MMO tomorrow and some new oil. Any recommendations on oil since these engines are older? Like Delo or something with a higher zinc content?

JBNeal, thank you! I likely figured that with that much smoke out of every end it wasn’t going to be good haha. It is an old farm truck from Idaho so it was likely used and abused for most of its life. I’ll get myself prepared for a rebuild. Thank you again for your input!

Hello All, After searching around the forum for awhile I found a few things that could potentially be causing my smoking problems but I wanted to put it to the forum to get more of an idea of what I’ll be looking at in terms of what might need to be fixed and if it’d just be better to just tear down the engine completely or not. I’ll attach some video links to my YouTube so you can see what I’m seeing: oil filler tube smoking (possibly bad rings?) Smoke coming out of road draft tube while running Overall view and some light revving to see smoke out of the exhaust I was also curious about the state of my main pulley that wobbles all over the place. I’ve never really rebuilt too much of an engine, mostly carb work and minor tuning but not a full tear down so I just want to see what I’m probably going to get into to get the truck running correctly. Here’s the wonky main pulley. Thank you all for your expertise with the flathead and I look forward to your suggestions and help to get this 2-ton back on the road!

All of that pretty paint is making me want to tear into my brakes now and get them working right again! Gotta rebuild the carb first though!