- Hey this is Davin with the Redline Rebuilds.
We are currently still in process on our
1950 Chevy pickup truck getting that transmission
and the motor back into that.
But in the mean time I have another project
that I need to get moving
and it is this beautiful, glorious straight-8.
It's out of a 1951 Buick Super Convertible
you may have seen here and there
in some of our publications and that.
It's a car that I located actually out at Hershey
quite a few years ago
and it's kinda been bombing around our shop.
Well we finally got to the point where we're like,
"All right we need to clean this up
and do something with it."
So my task at this is to pull the engine down
and go all the way through it.
Now this a 263 straight-8.
It had about 126 horse and roughly 226 pounds of torque.
So not a huge horsepower it's just a cruiser motor.
We're going to do some call it, day 2 upgrades
as far as performance are concerned.
It was running when we purchased it
so it should not be stuck or anything along that lines.
But it was smoking and so we're just gonna
go through it 100% like always and make it pretty.
(heavy rock music)
(metal clanging)
(tool whirring)
(tool cranking)
I just took off the valve cover
and then that side cover relative to the lifters
and one thing I noticed you know,
specifically going back to a couple of the other motors.
This engine is fairly clean
as far as how much it's been sitting,
so on and so forth.
Whatever amount of runtime it had
in its life hasn't been too bad
or at least saw some pretty predictable oil changes.
Now as I go to take this big intake manifold off
and the exhaust manifold I see a couple things here.
First off, it appears that the exhaust manifold
is cracked right through here
and then the same thing on the other side.
So we had talked earlier
about probably putting a split manifold down.
It looks like this is gonna be a perfect time to do it
because this stock piece again appears to be damaged
or at least it's got a really, really nasty casting flaw
in it and it's symmetric over here
but I'm pretty this is gonna break into two pieces.
The other item I see on this side of the block
is we have rust coming out of the freeze plugs
both here and here.
Now this one in particular looks like it's been leaking
and I'm assuming the other one is leaking as well.
Hopefully it's just the freeze plug that is leaking
meaning it maybe had a little bit of water in it enough
that it pushed it out and did what it was supposed to do
and we're not gonna uncover some huge crack.
If we do uncover a crack in here
then it's a perfect time to make a repair
but at this point I'm just nervous.
A little leery, that's all.
But here we go let's get this intake manifold,
exhaust, and the huge motor mount off and out of the way.
(heavy rock music)
These pistons in general are odd-looking
this is what would be considered in today's world
a pop-up or a high compression piston.
I don't believe it's very high
but there's also it appears that this
is a 40-thousandths over as it's stamped on top
and this particular piston has been doing a couple things.
Either it lost a ring at some point in time
and that's what's caused this dimpling effect here
and it's certainly has had a valve hitting it.
So something wasn't too great in that hole
and as you compare it down here to this other piston
you can see how nice and call it, clean
it's an as cast piston.
Appears to be an aluminum piston and then as we rotate,
it is a free rotating motor here.
Let's get this back that way.
This cylinder wall here has not looked so grand.
It's got a ton of taper in it
and it is pitted like crazy.
Mikey is gonna be laughing at us thinking that this
is gonna clean up at 60 if 60s are available.
So I guess once we get this tore down
we'll see where we're at.
We very may be looking at eight sleeves.
That's my unprofessional professional opinion.
(heavy rock music)
(tool whirring)
All right, so.
Oh.
Well remember I showed you where a valve had bounced
the top of that one piston?
This won't help it any.
This chain should be a lot tighter.
So this timing chain has certainly stretched out
obviously we're going to replace that anyway.
But it kinda gives you an idea of maybe what happened
to the top of that valve.
In other words, if it's lagging behind
and it gotta slow spring to boot
and a valve that's stickin'
that very well could cause some of that problem.
But overall it doesn't look bad in here.
It's not too grimy.
(hammer banging)
Something we noticed during our initial inspection
of the motor when we were pulling it out of the car
was that when you rotated or grabbed hold
of the balancer and kind of spun it
or tried to spin the motor over,
you'd get a little bit of a click where the balancer
would move but nothing else would turn.
Indicating that there was something like
an issue between the keyway.
So on your crank shaft there is a keyway
and then this is the key that's in there
and then on your balancer here in the hub
you have a slot which the key fits into
and what that is for is it locks
these together so when the crankshaft is spinning
the pulley spins because it's locked together
and it's not relying on a bolt
to hold it tight to the shaft.
The bolt is just to hold the pulley from coming off.
This happens to be a slit fit and not a press fit.
So what I want to see though is,
cause I don't see anything obvious right off the bat
by looking at these, I'm gonna get this back off.
I don't see anything obvious.
The keyway is wallowed out.
I don't see that the slot is wallowed on the crank shaft
which is good because this is an expensive repair.
This key is tight inside of there.
So what I want to duplicate is what we saw in the motor.
Now you see right here there's a witness mark.
This does not go in all the way
because you have that gear for the timing set
that's on this pin here.
So this pulley only goes in about
a little bit back.
Right about here.
Now what I want to see is...
What am I finding?
Okay, so I have...
When I rock this it might be harder for you guys to see.
I have just a little bit of a tick to it.
So there is some slop there.
So what I'll have to do and I don't see...
Most likely it's the key is just wore on that top edge
and we'd be able to see it
when we pull the keyway completely out.
Which means we can try to do that.
We'll have to inspect this,
make sure that this keyway here is not wallowed out.
So what we'll do is ultimately we'll measure this
before we go back to the assembly side of things.
We'll get this measured out and make sure it mikes in
as tight to this as possible
But that's something you should check on,
I'll say all of them
because you do not want this rocking around
because A.) your timing is gonna be a bear
to try and get set if you have a timing mark
on this balancer which this particular one
does not have it utilizes the flywheel
but also this is a balanced piece
so if that balance is getting changed relative
to the indicator marks you're gonna add some
harmonics to the engine that you probably don't want.
(hammer banging)
Looks like it's on the balancer side of things.
This doesn't appear to have any ridge wore into it.
(heavy rock music)
One thing that's typically critical
as far as when you remove the rods
and piston assemblies from the crankshaft
is to label each assembly relative to the cylinder it's in.
So for instance one, two, three, so on and so forth.
Now this motor has been apart
based on those 40-thousandths over pistons.
The other thing I'm noticing is for instance,
this rod has actually been labeled number six
but it is in the three hole
and number two as of for instance,
doesn't have any number on it.
So something went awry with this motor
at some point in time.
What I'm gonna do right now just to document
how it's been assembled as is,
is I'm just gonna go and put a one through eight
on the in caps and then I'll decide later on
if I need to swap them around in some fashion.
But I believe once you go through,
resize everything and it's one rod per journal.
Really that whole mixture isn't an issue
other than if you had a different piston
or something along that lines.
Now let me get this last one done here.
(hammer bang) (metal clings)
Yeehaw!
And then eight.
(hammer bang) (metal clings)
(laughs)
At any rate...
Sometimes it just goes that way.
So something else that we've noticed
as we're rotating this around is a creak.
Which I'm really curious to see what it is.
I'm guessing it's either a ring but I don't know how
but most likely I think it's the rod bearing.
But here let's take a listen for it.
(engine creaking)
It sounds like you have metal on metal doing the creak
it might be number two but it's either one or two
has an issue as far as it should not make any noise.
(engine creaking)
So that's something that we're going to watch for
as we take it apart see if we can find out what it is.
But let's proceed with a time lapse,
get number 1 piston out.
(heavy rock music)
(hammer banging)
(tool clicking)
That's it with exception of some plugs on the sides.
Yeah, oil gallery plugs that we can heat up and pop out.
If you wanna see a little flame.
Might as well, we'll let the time lapse finish up.
And that is our Buick engine completely tore apart.
Ready to go to the machine shop.
(heavy rock music)