Engine Removal

After the cab was out of the way it was time to start on the engine removal. It was stuck even if the guy who sold it said it turned over a year ago. I stripped everything off of it and put the parts into storage. The carb needed to be rebuilt and the starter and generator needed to be cleaned up and checked over. The engine was pretty clean on the outside. There was not a lot of oil and grease caked on it. The tranny had some buildup however. When I pulled the heads I could see why it would not turn over. It was completely full of debris which looked like mice had been dwelling there. the top was completely full of nest material and munchies. I cleaned all of this out and proceeded to try and remove the valves. I succeeded with a lot of difficulty in getting most of them out. There were a couple that were rusted in so bad that they broke off and I could not get them out. I figured the engine rebuild shop could take care of these. After that ordeal was done I took the engine and transmission out of the frame and onto the floor where I was able to take off the pan and remove the transmission from the block. When I took the pan off I found dead mice hanging on the crankshaft. It was almost enough to make you gag. I cleaned out that mess and removed the rods and pistons. I discovered why the truck was probably taken out of service 28 years ago. One of the pistons had a hole burned through the top of it. When all of the parts were off that I could take off I loaded up the engine and hauled it to local machine shop for rebuilding. As I checked on there progress they told me that even though the block initially looked pretty bad it turned out to be in relatively good condition. It was magnafluxed and there were no cracks and only one of the valve seats had to be replaced. It had to be bored to .30 over which was OK. After about a month they had it done and it was back in my garage awaiting installation.