mechresto

Blue under hard acceleration is rings, under deceleration is valves. Your oil pressure says main bearings are worn as is the pump.

Hey Matt There's a few things coming into play here...especially with a 70+ year old engine. Lifter to bore clearance: It MUST be measured with a dial bore guage. Then that reading compared to the prospective lifter. In this method you will be able to determine the taper of the lifter bore as well. A clearance of .001 to .0017 is adequate. Anything more and oil pressure can be affected. Taper of the lifter bores can and will cause non rotation of the lifter, as well as an OS lifter bore. If in doubt, and you should be with lifters worn to the min spec...replace them. You will gain in 2 areas, one being a lifter that runs true, and you will regain the crown that's lost on your worn out ones. That being said, check your camshaft!!! If the taper on the lobe is gone, and I guarantee that it is....then putting new components against a junk cam will yield junk results....lifters that will fail....crowned lifters on a flat cam = destruction. My advice in a nutshell... Your spending good money to build this engine...build it right and it will repay you over and over...cut corners and you'll pay more in the long run. Ps. Make doubly sure you have adequate zddp in your oil, its essential since all new oils don't carry it. Heavy truck oils such as 15-40 used to be a good replacement, not anymore. Theyve curtailed the use of it too. Lucas, stp and several others make aftermarket additives...use them. Good luck :^)

Since you've covered the ign fault, and it's now holding steady spark..... You're not going to like the next part.... There's only one more thing that's going to cause both symptoms you describe. No idle situation w/o choke and a fast fluttering vacuum. The valves are leaking or mis-adjusted, or too loose in the guides, from what you've said all things point there. It could be valve timing, however, the ability to achive high rpm smoothly negates that almost 100%. A head gasket leak on adjacent cylinders will show as a slow pulsing of the needle as those try to fire. I'll dig up the vac gage testing chart for you. It will explain in detail.

Cant trust them newfangled things, just ain't natural I tell ya!!! No movin parts, must be magic er sumpin!!! :^D

Oh, there's a definite benefit to Pertronix units, that goes without saying!! But .....I still like points, If I'm out in the middle of nowhere and my ignition fails, with points, I'm running in minutes.... hehehe

Contact pitting results from an out of balance condition in the system which causes the transfer of tungsten from one point to the other so that a tip builds up on one point and a pit on the other. The direction in which the tungsten is transferred gives an indication for correcting the situation. If the tungsten transfers from the negative to the positive point one or two corrections may be made. Increase the capacity of the condenser or shorten the condenser lead, If the transfer is from the positive to negative point, reduce condenser capacity or lengthen condenser lead.

Check the play in your dist shafts bushings, point cam bushing as well Good luck with the nice black and white "kitties" !!

Go back to the basics, Check your ign circuit. ie. Point gap, arm tension, wires, cap, rotor. Check available voltage @ both ends of the spectrum (dist side), scrutinize spark plugs carefully, make sure they are a quality plug... something like ngk or bosch. (Used to order champion plugs in 1000 lot quantities, minimum of 1% fallout for failed new plugs) I'm guessing without more to go on, that your fuel delivery is at fault....main nozzle, water, low pressure,contaminated filter etc... Your plugs should tell you where to look.

Do yourself a favor...have your manifold planed. That should cure any recurring exhaust leak. The coolant leak is normal, the bolts go into the water jacket, put some #2 permanent on the threads when reinstalling.

Just an observation... Check your switch wiring to make doubly sure you don't have 2 "hots" feeding your ign/start circuit. If its got that, when coming off "start" and back to "run" it will re-engage the solenoid and the ballast. Thoughts? It's not entirely uncommon...

With the modern tooling, 3 and 5 angle cuts, in a word....no. BUT... It's always a good practice to double check the work of any machine shop. Seat width and placement can be checked with a sharpie marker, place 4 lines on the valve face, parallel to the stem equal distance apart, then "slap" the valve against the seat, the resultant wiping away of the marker will tell you what you need to know. The other option is a light lap (which I always use), it gives extra insurance against possible errors in machining.

Does your '55 have a separate valley cover? They were only available for two years afaik. It was also available in Plymouth cars in 55 and 56. If serious about building an engine (especially a very limited production one) There's one guy with all your answers....and all of the parts as well. Gary Pavlovich glpavlovich@cox.net Theres where you will find all of the answers you need. Good luck...I hope you decide to do it :^)

Bit of a gray area there, but everything points to dodge.... Desoto used some dodge engines in 57 (they were the same) and some argue that the kds6 denoted desoto....but there's no concrete proof that I know of. Kinda like splitting hairs...same engine possible different branding. In 57,58...corporate started calling the shots on engine design...the use of common parts...just as today...all in an effort to save a buck.

I've been quietly waiting....eventually an old taxi will surface.... I'd really love to build an old gasser...just for the **its and giggles, always thought a checker would be fun, awful heavy, but fun.

'57 dodge 230.6 Lot of them used in taxi service On January 10, 1957, the engine prefix on the six changed from "D72" to "KDS6", starting at number 9601. About that time DeSoto began building six cylinder DeSoto Firesweep sedans for use as taxis. 139 6-cylinder 1957 DeSoto Firesweep taxis were built.

Don We're talking about the "oh crap" braking scenario...yes, under normal braking with all things adjusted and assumed to be working at 100% efficiency, the vehicle will stop normally. What happens in a single system without proportioning, during the "oh crap" situation is explained in this document, pay extra attention to the last of page 5 thru 8. the-physics-of-braking-systems.pdf

Fiddy Yes you can add a proportioning valve, but it shouldn't be necessary. With all things assumed to be in proper adjustment, braking pressure is equally balances to the 4 points of your truck. Where the issue comes from is that when running empty, all your vehicle weight transfer is to the front of the truck, remember. ...these are work trucks, intended to be loaded....Thats where the brake bias was engineered to function. To get these beasts to brake like a passenger car...is another can of worms. The only way to go I'm my humble opinion, is with a dual MC, an adjustable proportioning valve and a lot of cussing, blood,sweat, and tears. Yes, you can add a valve to limit the rears on a single MC system but that's adding just one more component to an already failure prone set-up. I at one time had the drawings and the part numbers for converting to dual MC. But a vindictive ex wife saw to it that I no longer have any of it.

Yeah....what Merle said....

Also make sure that the external leak hasn't turned into an internal one....filling your crankcase with fuel....

Fernando....when you rebuilt your pump, did you use a newly manufactured diaphragm? Or was it new old stock? the older diaphragms cannot handle the increa sing amounts of alcohol present in modern fuels.

Tp23 is dodge 23" 230ci from 1960

Jeff The issue of the bore being "off" from the factory is about as possible as me being the president. All six holes were bored simultaneously. However...that doesn't mean that at some subsequent time in its life that it wasn't rebored at OH. There the cylinders are done individually and it's not out of the realm of possibility that it was not lined up correctly. If your guy had done his rebuild by the book...it would never have made it through assembly. Checking rods for straightness, the line bore on the block, side clearances of all of the rotating assembly should have been done as the engine went together. Take your old rods to any reputable machine shop and they can tell you in seconds if theyre bent or twisted. It's far more common than most realize. In the "old days" we had the rod testing, straightening and resizing equipment all set up on the bench....because they got used constantly. EVERY rod was checked prior to assembly. I can't recall offhand, perhaps someone else can chime in...but are your piston pins full floating or semi floating in the 201? If they're semi floating...check the centering there as well, a bad fit there can induce excessive side load on the big end..... The head gasket issue.... Do you have the correct one?

If memory serves. ...again... There's only two differences: location of the bowl, one at 90deg from pump body, the other in line with pump body...

You're correct Merle. But, I haven't found any that will run correctly at the 5 to 5.5 range..they always start to leak at just before 5. Ive set them all to 4.5 or just below and never had one load up.

Exactly, the shims (gaskets), alter the effective length of stroke on the pump arm. That in turn changes the pressure exerted by the diaphragm. It won't change a huge amount but a pound or two is easily achieved. The same family of carter pumps were used on the flathead fords, in that set-up, the Ford carbs and the strombergs were only capable of 2.5 lbs fuel pressure, any more would push the needle off the seat and load the carb. I've had to shim the Ford flatties .05+ to get the pressure to within the limits of the carb.