The engine that came with the car is not original, and it’s old and tired. I decided to buy another old and tired engine to rebuild so I have less downtime for the car. I spotted a likely candidate on Craigslist, and picked it up.
The engine came on a storage dolly, but I needed to attach it to a work stand instead. I didn’t have an engine hoist available, so the tractor got pressed into service to lift the engine so I could put it on the stand.
After I got the engine on the stand, I picked up the storage dolly to move it out of the way, and all the ball-bearings fell out of two of the casters. Not the best quality piece, but it held together long enough to get the job done.
I lucked out, I gambled on this being a decent core to work with, and it turns out it has 4-bolt mains, which is good.
The engine had been given a ‘craigslist rebuild’, a quick shot of orange paint. There is paint in all the exhaust ports and on the valves. One of the pistons even has some orange on it because the spark plugs were out. Looks like someone started to “chrome” the valve covers, but lost interest.
K07 15 TXD works out to:
K – St Catherine’s Ontario Canada assembly plant
07 15 – July 15th
TXD – 1973 350 for a C20 through 3500 truck, 4bbl, originally 165 HP.
Once the heads were off, it was time to check out the wear ridge at the top of the cylinders
The ridge measures 0.007″ according to my trusty bore indicator, which is right at the edge for a re-ring vs an overbore and a full rebuild.