Hot Rods The best engine you have ever had- looking back

When I was in high school 1982 ish, I was on a micro budget and a friend of mine had a yard full of junk cars that he sold parts off of. He had a 60's Chevrolet station wagon that had a 327 in it. It was full of mice nest etc. I gave him a good solid hundred and we pulled it.

It had been sitting for years and a couple of the valves were stuck. We laid it out on a couple of old tires and rigged up a ladder with a gravity feed fuel tank. We busted that thing off and it was coughing and sputtering, so what's the cure all for stuck stuff? Transmission fluid down the carb. It smoked like the field was on fire, then it cleaned up and ran pretty good. A couple of revs to 6 grand oughta do it good.

I took it home and pulled the intake and it was super crusty I pulled the pan removed the lifters and the cam, rinsed everything out with diesel. Everything people say you can't do these days.

Regasket, new Comp Cams 260H and added an Edelbrock aluminum intake. Performed the old Krylon overhaul and added some Cal Custom 7 fin Valve covers.

Good to go. Stabbed in the 36 Ford pickup I had. I ran that all through high school, did a little street racing with it. I probably drove it 5 years with constant abuse. After high school, started making some money, so I thought I would motor up and sold it to a buddy with a 68 El Camino, he continued to street race it and added nitrous. Keep in mind this was bone stock with wore out springs and rings.

He drove it for probably 3 more years before it finally exploded. It was great daily driver and never left me stranded. I guess that's why I am so nostalgic about the little 327's.

 

I'm with you on 327"s. My favorite SBC block. Mostly I do L79 versions now.
Second choice is a 302" Z28 style SBC. I do those with 327" and use 283" forged cranks.
Easy, universal parts that offer a ton of interchanges, affordable.

 

All straight 6s.
A 235, 240. 300 and a 223. Not fast but reliable.

 

59 Olds 371,in a heavy car it would walk away from many 350s and get decent gas mileage if I kept my foot off the floor.

 

I am a sucker for 327's. Almost everything old in the garage has one, but the best motor Ive owned is the 350 in my 33 Ford pickup. It had everything and the kitchen sink thrown at it in the 90s when my grandpa was racing the truck every week. It made made alot of guys scratch their heads in their big block cars when the little pickup blew by them.

 

I agree with Anthony. A Chevy 230, 250,292 and the present 250. And a couple of slant sixes. Dependable , ran when you hit the key and general maintenance.

 

Any 327, of course!
My Nova engine is kind of special even though it was assembled in the late 80's and never fired. It is about ninety five percent GM NOS, the block is a 1966 "362" ChevyII/Nova, the front oil sump style, getting kind of hard to find and when you do you need to sell an organ first to fund it.

 

I gotta say that 327 in my '32 pickup was probably the best sbc I ever owned, my pal Jerry did the machine work and rebuilt it and it ran like jack the bear! HRP

 

A 455 Pontiac using a 428 four bolt main block. I pieced it together for my race car ( micro budget also ). I ran it for three years, a 1/4 mile at a time, I could go weeks with out changing the dial in on the window. It was the most consistent running engine I built, won enough to break even two years in a row. End of year three one of the wrist pins walked sideways taking out # 3 cylinder.

 

A close 2nd was the 283 that was in the 32 mordor that I got when I traded Ron my red 32 Ford sedan.

That little engine sounded great and ran even better. HRP

 

Not best, but toughest ....
Got to go with the 250'' Chev .... when we moved 1999, one of the rigs we used hauling was a 19** 1/2 ton - an incredibly used up beater. It was 4 miles from old place to new, and each day at the end of the trip, it started to seize. For 3 months it hauled scrap, parts, & made dump runs without coming apart.

 

Banger-wise, a 1300cc I-4 Alfa Romeo in my 1970 Giulia GT Junior: Cross flow head, sodium filled valves, was perfect Hemi, DOHC, 2 side draft Webbers. It was virtually all aluminum with sleeved cylinder liners and a SEVEN quart fined oil pan. Would do 8000 rpm all day. Only made 105 hp. Ran cool as a cucumber. You just couldn't hurt it. It was a bone stock production engine. The larger GTAs had dual plug heads and 1600cc, made about 175 hp before options and had a lot of aluminum body panels. But they came special order from Autodelta and were pricey, a whopping $3800. Out of my league on E-5 pay.

 

I had two great engines:
327 in a Malibu. Quadrajet (best carb ever!) & 4 speed. Supposedly 275 HP, but snuffed 327/325 HP cars all day long. 18 mpg around town and 22 on the highway. Good runner!!!
304 IH in a Scout. Smoothest engine I've ever had. Good torque motor, too.

 

My favorite was a lot like Hawg's 327. It was a CHP 413 that had been sitting for five plus years. I got it running but it smoked like a freight train and made all kinds of valve train noise. So I did what any 16 year old in the 70's would have done, I put tranny fluid in it in place of motor oil and let it idle for a long while. The old timer told me the detergent properties of the Jenner fluid would clean up all the stuck lifters. It ran pretty good, but the thing used oil pretty aggressively.
My Dad showed me how to do a dingle ball hone, ring and bearing job on that motor. It ran much better making some cylinder pressure and didn't use any oil after the refresh. 16 year olds and good running Max Wedge Mopars are a dangerous combination.
When I inevitably crashed the CHP car I swapped that motor into a 4-speed Charger and with an Edelbrock Torker intake, Hedmann headers and a Holley 750 dp carb it ran really good. When I crashed that one, I fixed it and sold it off.
When I got my license back I bought a 4 cylinder shitbox and a race kart and over the next 8 years learned quite a bit about car control.

 

a ot 455 oldsmobile that had about 350000 miles on it and still running clean when sold. only had shell fire and ice oil, lifter valley was spotless. did blow a couple head gaskets but other then that trouble free.

 

All these little bowtie love story’s are giving me gas, in 76 I bought a mercury from the back of a Ford dealers lot for a $100. The car wasn’t to bad but not what I wanted, I wanted the 351 4v W and automatic, 9” rear, console with shifter and bucket seats. The fact that the 351 was a 4v ment it had 11:1 compression so I pulled the heads and did a valve job and pined the rocker studs, I had found a cam in the trunk of a car I had bought and sold, a Crane Fire Ball Cam, remember those, the lobes were a little rusty so I sanded them down with 220 grit paper because nobody said it wouldn’t work, I know I didn’t buy new springs and I might not have bought new lifters, a set of M/T valve covers headers and a new Holley and we were kicking it. That was a hard running small block, never had a tack shifted by feel, I ran it for about five summers until premium became hard to find.
Best hundred bucks I’ve ever spent.

 

I might have to agree on my best engine being a 327. Back when I was in high school, I bought a slightly off topic C10 with a “Corvette” 327. Not sure what that 327 really was, but it sure ran hard for what appeared to be a 100% stock motor at least on the outside including the cast iron intake, quadrajet, and points distributor. It used to surprise lots of folks in street race situations when I would open the hood and it didn’t even have chrome valve covers...

 

I think the best engine I ever had was a 390 Ford. I got it out of a wrecked 66 Mercury Comet GT. It had a lot of power and was reliable as Jesus, never let me down even when I accidently blew it up... I had put a 3x2 setup on it in the parking lot of my barracks while stationed at Shaw AFB in SC. Young and dumb, I was cranking on it but it wouldn't start so I thought maybe the distributor was 180 out. So without cutting off the ignition, I pulled the dizzy out , grounded it out and ignited all those fumes collected in the engine. It blew the valve covers up over the intake. I never found my oil breather cap. My hearing was bad ever since. But, the old engine still lasted me several years after even though I ran the dog crap outta it.

 

I have had 87 running and driving vehicles, but my favorite engine is my current flathead - hands down. It's fast, sounds cool, dependable, reliable and looks outrageous.

 

In high school I was a Ford man. I was also the guy who fixed cars. Had a few cars with Y blocks, some with FE blocks and in the middle I had a 58 Impala with a 348 tri-power. That may be the one I liked the best, it really jumped when you opened the end carbs. Had a 54 New Yorker with a hemi that ran awfully good. I never had anything with a SBC until I bought a sprint car. I was amazed at the power you could get out of a fairly stock 350 LT1 short block. Just bolt on a good set of heads, a roller cam, Hilborn injection and run it on alcohol. The engines I was told didn't have good low end torque would pull the front wheels coming off a corner.

 

427 L88 in my 57 Chevy. It had all of the bells and whistles and would pull the front wheel coming out of the hole.

 

110 horse Corvair flat six. This engine truly thrived on neglect. Ran the sucker dry on oil three times. Lost track of how many times I lost the belt so overheating was common. Floor finally rusted through in the Vair so I yanked the whole drive train and slipped it in a used sand rail frame. Took the tins off, got rid of the fan, bolted up a set of headers, didn't bother with air cleaners, but did run 4, 2qt oil filters remotely. Little fucker never let me down. There wasn't a dune it couldn't climb or a hot little VW it couldn't hold its own with. I figured the sand it sucked down was kinda like running a hone through it. Finally got tired of brushing sand outta my hair and sent it down the road. Never got any bitch call from the new owner so he must have followed my advice to keep neglecting it.

 

The '78 Chevy 350 in my t-bucket has been in at least 10 of my cars since I pulled it out of a 3/4 ton truck twenty years ago. Original rings and bearings. I can't kill it.

 

had a 1969 Pontiac Ram-Air III 400 and a 1970 LT-1 350 back when I was young and handsome. both were awesome motors in rather crummy cars. for pure fun the 400 was the winner though the LT-1 was probably much faster in a quarter mile.

 

Back around 1971 and just out of the military I bought an OT '67 Chevelle SS with 283 and 4 speed. The engine was crazy fast for the typical "power pack" engine setup, and the car would almost always beat more powerful ss396, GTO, and 442's in stoplight racing.
Eventually the cam began to wear out, and I was in a hurry, so I pulled the engine and swapped in another 283, that wasn't nearly a fast. A few months later I found a '55 Chev 150 business coupe and began building the old 283 for it. I replaced the power pack heads with a pair of ported and polished camel hump heads with larger valves and cut for high lift springs. The 283 got bored .010" over just to clean it up, and a set of TRW forged pistons with enough dome to get it to 11:1 c.r. went in. Ran a Weiand single plane intake, and a single Holley 780 that came off a buddy's '69 Z/28. Cam was an Isky solid lifter cam with about 520" lift, and a ton of duration. It loved winding 7,000 rpm's and seemed effortless to get there.
The '55 was even faster than the Chevelle the engine was originally in, and I loved it! It made a lot of guys extremely irritated to get beat by a lowly SBC 283, which was even more fun. Unfortunately right after I finished having the '55 painted, and upholstery done, the car was stolen. Never was found, so no idea where it went. I still miss that car, and that engine!

 

Well, I had a 235 in a ‘59 PU. I found a SBC/T400. Sent them to the shop for rebuild. Was gonna make that truck a V8!
Damned 235 kept running so well, pulled my small two horse trailer, never gave me a problem.
Sold the truck with the 235 still in it, points and plugs had only been cleaned. Last license on the truck was early ‘60’s, heck, not sure if the best, but never could get the gumption to do the Small block and automatic in it.
Now OT, I had a ‘78 Camaro with a 305. It had around 160k on it when the cat was coming apart. Car started “wheezing”. I’d have probably put more miles on it, but while parked someone pulled in and made an offer on it and I sold it.

 

The W Motor I built for my Touring. A pal had driven it around for ages in a pickup and then it got sold around to local pals. I got it, opened it up to find one main cap had been expertly brazed together and ran for years! I found some caps, had it align honed and hammered the daylights outta it. I think George put 15-20k on the car after me

 

Olds 350R I had a new one in the 69 Cutlass I had special ordered when I was in Vietnam, Had a 72 two barrel version in my 51 Merc that I put a lot of miles including a road trip to Texas and Bonneville in. I've got one sitting in the shed that needs a piston because it ate something it didn't like. Plus I've had a couple of OT sedans with them .

 

The best I had was 239 Y block in a 55 Ford pickup, drove it cross country twice, what a great engine.

 

I think I may be wandering off of the hot rod theme.
I have to say the Dodge slant 6 engine has done things for me that no other engine would do.