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12-01-2022, 11:34 PM | #1 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Orcas Island Washington
Posts: 5,018
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Testing blocks in the home shop
I have 9 or 10 V8 blocks here and the majority came to me as bare blocks. The rest I stripped down myself. All are 24 stud blocks. Approximately half are early style, mostly 59ab, the rest 8ba style. As many of you know I live on an island with no machine shop. I would really like to check all these blocks, none of which are more than .040 over. Back story is they came from a neighbor who is a mechanic and owns 5 or 6 'tri-five' chevys and "not a fan of the flatheads". The engines had belonged to his father in law (one of us), but he sold his farm and moved into a small space so off they went. I was told that the FIL had scrapped 13 bad blocks but kept these because they were good builders. I see one visible crack in the whole lot, typical valve to cylinder, and one block with a valve seat peened around the circumference that looks like it was run that way. I wouldn't.
About 5 years ago I used a pressure test kit that was loaned to me by a fellow barner. It was simple and worked well on the one engine I had at the time. Apparently these are no longer offered so I would like to build one. The borrowed one had steel plates to block off heads and pumps. (too much work to build)...My thought is use actual heads with an 1/8" epdm rubber sheet gasket, gutted water pumps with a solid sheet gasket, also rubber. I have probably 30 heads and 20 water pumps kicking around. Pipe plugs and expansion plugs where needed. I even thought the water pump gaskets could be made from inner tubes containing the valve stem. Anybody made a home pressure tester kit? Any and all ideas welcomed as long as I don't have to bother a machine shop....Maybe I will start a seperate thread on home brewed magnaflux afterwards. Thanks!
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Owner/Operator of 'Jailbar Ranch' on the side of Mt. Pickett. Current stable consists of 1946 1/2 ton pickup turned woodie wagon with FH V8, 1946 Tonner Pickup with 226 H six, 1979 Toyota landcruiser wagon, now wearing 1947 Ford Jailbar sheet metal. 'Rusty ol' floorboards, hot on their feet' (Alan Jackson) Last edited by GB SISSON; 12-01-2022 at 11:45 PM. |
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