Well i went back to the junkyard today to do some looking and the motor i thought was a 261 is not!! It has no captains bars and it has an "848" head on it so i guess the engine in this old bus had been replaced with a 235. I found another old bus that does have a 261 in it but the head is missing and the cylinders are rusty. Im not worried about the head being gone im using a 848 head anyway but how rusty can those cylinder walls be and still be ok? These were not severly pitted but pretty rusty. Its $75 bucks. Matt
may be a nightmare if it's been bored in it's history.find one that still has some room to work or 75 bucks is gone.
$75? Good score. My boss has a complete 1956, 270 Jimmy hanging on the hook at work.....wants to swap it to me for my running flathead but the Jimmy is siezed from years of sitting... Still, I'd love to bolt one in a roadster with a T-5...I got enough shit being stored tho.
You can bore a 261 .080" no problem. I think Mcgurk used to routinely build them .125" back in the 50s for race applications.
....and enough of that "captain's bars" shit. Check the block casting number and find out for sure what it is.
<HR style="COLOR: #e5e5e5; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #e5e5e5" SIZE=1> <!-- / icon and title --><!-- message --> What HEATHEN said. 261's #s & years 3703414-54 56 3733340-55 57 3733813-58 3733950-54 3737012-55 57 3738365-60 62 3738813-55 63 3739365-58 62 3769717-59 62 3759365-59 3769925-55 59 3788813-55 57 3833340-55 57 383340-55 57 3836012-55 57
yeah, not all 261s had the captains bars. Check out Inliners.org for the definitive criteria for IDing a 261. Xderelict's list is about as solid as you can get though. You can bore out a 261 pretty far.
Hey Ill check the numbers on the block to be sure but, the head that was on it was a "848" head so between that and no Capt bars i figured it was a 235. Did some 261's come with 848 heads? Matt
no they did not come from the factory with 848 heads, but a lot of people swapped 848 heads on to the 261 blocks
Fifty to sixty years after the fact, don't take anything for granted---CHECK THE CASTING NUMBERS. The 848 head being on it means nothing. One of my buddies bought a flathead out of a '50 F-3 truck that ended up being a Mercury engine with 8RT heads stuck on it. Besides, I've got a 261 that I pulled out of a 1958 Pontiac Pathfinder (Canadian) that's got an 848 head, and it appears to be original.
haha- Yeah I bought a flatty with 8RT head and a 8ba head... that was really a merc - once i took a closer look and noticed the bellhousing- I dropped the pan- then measured the crank... it was ON- 4" stroke!
Ok ill go back and check guys. The casting number is on the passenger side right around the starter. Right?
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