Shoulda' known.....

[fng]

Got all geared up today, ready to to fire the replacement engine. Spent two weeks, cleaning, sealing, replacing gaskets and painting everything to spec. Looks like a new one did forty years ago. (cosmetics only)

Fired the engine with the help of the neighbor who know's engines and guess what, it had a flat cylinder. Almost like a miss but not quite. Went over to HF and bought a cheap compression tester and yep, sure enough, the #4 cyl is only making 60psi. Dang! I really can't see going to the trouble of tearing down that engine only to have a first rate, like new pip-squeak motor.

I have another engine but it looks like a salt water boat anchor, corrosion everywhere, freeze plug missing and the carb leaks like a sieve. It would take a load of time and effort to get it up to speed.

Somebody take the lead here and talk me into another SBC.

[syzygy]

That sucks. But, oh well, right? It runs, yes? Seems to me you could prolly get quite a bit of use left out of it while you save up for your SBC... or other conversion.

Somebody take the lead here and talk me into another SBC.

They're cheap. The conversion is pretty straightforward. Parts are readily available. Need more?

[white433]

I had one that had a burnt valve. It had a slight miss, but ran good. Surprisingly good. Drive it around till something else goes wrong!

[k8icu]

Fix the motor. You wanted a stock truck 100% or as close to as possible truck didn't you? Besides take my word for it a 100% stock truck is going to be worth more resale in a few years in the MV collection market than all the modified ones.

[Binford]

Are you doing a stock restoration, Tracy? If so, go with Joe's advice above. If a stock restoration is not your goal, then I see a SBC in your future.

[Duane]

diagnose a little farther, do a leak test and see where it is losing compression, iif its a valve, pull the head and fix it, its well worth the time to check a little farther.

Duane

[fng]

Very good advice guys. Thanks. Yes 100% resto is my goal. Looking pretty good so far too. I almost have all the mechanicals done and will soon get down to sheet metal stuff. Makes sense about the collectors value too. I know a guy who might be willing to do the teardown and rebuild cheap enough, I've got the manual and it looks way over my skill level to attempt.
I'll post some more progress pics soon.

[Barrman]

Beg or borrow a leak down tester or just plain use the compression gauge hose to pressurize the cylinder. Listent to where it is leaking from. Pull the radiator cap too and see if you are getting bubbles with the cylinder under pressure.

Exhaust and intake obviously, mean valves. Out the oil fill cap and you got ring problems more than likely.

Pour some Marvel Mystery oil (I always use regular 10W-30, but too many people have had better results than me to ignore with this stuff.) down the spark plug hole and fire the engine back up. Let it run for a while and then do the compression check again.

You could also just have some really, really loose rocker arms that either aren't letting air in our out, flat spotted cam, the list goes on.

Was the throttle wide open when you did the test? If not, your reading isn't all that bad. You could just have a bad contact on the distributor cap and be over diagnosing this thing.

[kwai]

What Tim says. Don't give up yet.

[Doug]

What Tim said, but leave that spark plug out for at least a couple of revolutions (by hand) or you may hydraulic a valve if you get too much oil in the cylinder.