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Great Grandpa's Truck. It's time.


dorkpunch

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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.  :D  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...

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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. 

 

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Home and unloaded.

 

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With the truck home, I started scouring the local boneyard and found a few candidates...

 

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Problem was I had no idea what kind of shape any of the engines were in.  I also had this:

 

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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.

 

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Then I remembered these in my neighbors field...

 

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Bought 'em and drug 'em home.

 

It was exciting. The tires even held air.  For a couple of minutes.

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My helpers:

 

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Spent some time on Blacky, and even got it running!

 

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So I figured, pull the engine, drop it in the '48!

 

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Drug the truck up to the garage.

 

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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.
 

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Grandpa’s truck isn’t a 23” engine? It would have had a 23” 230 CID engine from the factory. If it has a 25”er then someone swapped it in a while back. Your Spitfire head engine would fit then. Go through it again and clean it up. It’ll probably be fine if it was stored inside. 

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Yup, Canadian engine with the 25" block.

 

So I decided to run a want ad on craigslist.  I turned up this:

 

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So I bought it and drug it home!

 

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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.

 

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Got it home.  It had supposedly ran before they cut it up. 

 

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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.  20180823_193828-X2.jpg

 

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Motor out. 

 

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Now I just need to get rid of this frame... and wheels... and the twin stick dual transmission.  Any takers?!

 

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Interesting the bigger W series trucks the gas tank moved from inside the frame to outside however it looks like the same tank with a relocated filler neck. 

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18 minutes ago, Young Ed said:

Interesting the bigger W series trucks the gas tank moved from inside the frame to outside however it looks like the same tank with a relocated filler neck. 

I looked up gas tanks in the "W" series trucks... a total of seven different tank part numbers!

Two of them out board 25 gallon tanks...Rt and left

The heavy series WK and WR even more tank numbers.

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2 hours ago, Dodgeb4ya said:

I looked up gas tanks in the "W" series trucks... a total of seven different tank part numbers!

Two of them out board 25 gallon tanks...Rt and left

The heavy series WK and WR even more tank numbers.

guess I've never seen the underbelly of the bigger trucks. I'd love to have one of the big 2.5 or 3 ton flat nose trucks

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If I was into the "W" trucks I'd own one of the Bull Nose jobs for sure!

A good looking truck.

But I've got enough of those "B" series heavy trucks. Easier to drive too.

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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.

 

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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:

 

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And some really NOT cool things.

 

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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.

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No biggy, right?  I can "weld".  Not.  But I thought I'd give it a try.

 

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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.

 

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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...

 

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Now it has more cracks.

 

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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.

 

 

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I would have Lock-N-Stitched that block. The repair is safe and quickly hidden by careful grinding.

The special two types of threaded pins pull each other tightly together.

Not cheap though.

 

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