So I ran into a HUGE stroke of luck and am picking up where someone else left off on a 1956 Dodge C-series pickup. It looks like the guy that owned it before me dropped in an early 70s 440 and an A727 trans probably out of a late 60s charger. The body is in incredible shape. As in, the only thing I'm going to paint is the center piece of the 3 piece hood and that's just a touchup! The engine doesn't look too horribly bad, but will need a little freshening up. I took off the old beat up Thermoquad that was on it and looked into the intake. Poop brown. So probably going replace both of those. I'm thinking of just starting from the intake up and crossing my fingers that the heads, lifters, and pistons are in decent enough shape to last a few more years. When I get it running with a new distributor, intake, and carb I think that will give me a good enough indication of whether or not I need to go back and dive in. I mean eventually I probably will rebuild from the block up, but for now I'm just looking for a decent running car show truck. What do you guys think?
If you are going to pull the intake, why not just go a little further and pull the heads, take a look at the valves, cylinder walls, etc. ? If all that looks good, button it up and enjoy. Only out the price of a gasket set and a few hours and you gain insight/peace of mind. If it's in bad shape, well, you needed to know that too. Nice truck.....I like the mid '50s Dodge pickups....many years ago had a '57 and, like dozens of other cool vehicles, I sold it. Doh! Ray
Yeah good point. I guess I'm just excited to get this thing running! Taking the heads of at this point wouldn't be too big of a deal. Plus I can clean em up real nice.
I agree, if you are pulling the intake, it wouldn't take much more to pull the heads to inspect the rest of the top end. Congrats on your find & good luck!
Why don't you try to get it running as is before putting money and time in it just to find out the engine is junk. Good,solid looking truck.
I don't see much value in just pulling the intake. I would just change the oil, filter, coolant, carburetor and fuel, and try running it. Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone
Katsumoto.....get back to the new guy page an post an intro before one of the old guys catches on. I'll jump on with the guys saying to pull the heads. I just picked up a "running" '67 440 that i was going to drop in my '64 wagon. I had a spare gasket kit laying around so I pulled it apart just swap the gaskets 'cause I had them. When I got the heads off I found the intake valve on the #7 cylinder was so burnt the their was a 1/4 inch piece of the head just gone. I would have had the engine installed and tried to get it running if I hadn't pulled the head and found the issuse.
I would put the carb back on check fluids and start get it to operational temps . See how the old girl runs. then make your decession on what direction to go.
If the engine IS junk, there is no money lost, only a very little time, by pulling the heads. And, IF there is debris in the manifold and/or cylinders, or the cylinders are rusty, because it has been sitting, exposed to who knows what, I would prefer to find that stuff BEFORE it gets sucked in or banged around on top of a piston trying to run it. It very well might start and run fine without the precautions, but if it doesn't, the OP is the one paying for it, not the well intentioned, but less cautious, advisors on the HAMB. There are many ways to skin a cat, but some ways offer benefits other ways don't. Ray
I agree with Ray. Also I can't just simply slap the carb back on and try running it either. The carb is completely shot. The linkages are broken on the side and plus, as you can see from the pictures, I'm missing a distributor as well. The more I think about taking the heads off, the more skeptical I am that everything is going to be in tip top shape. So while half of me wants to do a complete rebuild, I figure I might as well throw a new intake and ignition parts on it and run whatever life is left in this 440. (Which could still be a lot!) I just think making the decision to rebuild now on this mystery engine could be a potential money waster. The hard part is that this guy passed away so I can't simply ask him how old/new the internals are. I'll probably just make sure everything is tight and in decent enough shape visibly. Who knows, he may be on the other side applauding me or he may also be facepalming. Thanks for your input guys! This forum is night and day to other vintage truck forums out there which will go un-named.
Car show truck ? Save yourself the grief and just build it as a fun and unique driver. Do what you want with it and enjoy it. All you will find at most car shows is a bunch of posers and spectators who know so much they are at genius IQ levels
use your own good common sense ---there are always people on here that say tear it down , but there are l\also people that say try to start it ---i say pre oil it and give it a try---let us know what happens...
As an update, I didn't have enough resources around to start it up. The carb was just too far gone and I couldn't find a distributor. So I dove in. Last night I removed all the accessories and belts, the carb, intake man., valley pan, valve covers and one of the exhaust manifolds. (Exhaust manifold bolts always seem to give me crap.) I plan on taking off the heads and cleaning up the valve train replacing what needs to be replaced. One thing I'm not familiar with is the valley pan gaskets on these 440s. Can I just clean it up and reuse it? Or should I get a new one. Looks like the previous owner just used the valley pan and some RTV (no other gaskets). When I look up kits online they come with 4 gaskets plus the valley pan. So I assume that's to sandwich the valley pan between the gaskets? Seems like a lot of gasket to me. I read that some people that have just used the valley pan only go through oil like crazy, and then those who have "sandwiched" have had issues getting the bolts in. Thoughts?
I've re-used 'em before. Clean it up really good, use RTV on the ends (where it mates with block) and use some brush tack around the port openings.
hey Joel, picking up a '57 D100.....going to flip it if you need another one when you get back from korea. Won't post about it again on here, dont want to hijack.
Cool truck! Tearing it down was a good idea, you never know what could be in there, or what the PO;s plan was.
After removing the intake I discovered a chip out of one of the corners on the carburetor deck right by one of the stud holes. Was going to just scrap it and buy a new one until I did some research and noticed that these old Weiand 7500s are now hard to find vintage intakes and that the chip out of the carb deck was actually a casting flaw. I've seen them go for $150 - $200 on ebay and other listings. Now I just have to decide whether or not I want to keep it or sell and buy a new Eddy Preformer. Hmmm....decisions decisions.
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