Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines Bring 67 250 back to life - need advise

Hello,

I am restoring a 67 chevy truck with 250 6cyl. I plan on keeping the inline 6. Need some advise on gettng it running again. Here is the background. Truck was given to me by my father-in-law, from talking to him it has not ran in over 10 years. He did keep a battery on the truck and would turn it over to keep it from freezing up. I have the motor pulled out of the truck now and it will turn over by hand. The engine has 83k acual miles.

What procedure should I follow to make sure I do not damage anything when I try to start it for the first time?

Thanks
Keith L.

Pull out all the spark plugs,squirt some marvel mystery oil down all the spark plug holes.

Pull the distributer out & use a oil priming tool & drill, to turn the oil pump & lube up all your engines internal parts.

When you are turning the oil pump w/a drill,turn the crank by hand as to get oil through all the passages.

After it is all primed up (the engine oil passages) Crank the engine w/the starter w/the spark plugs still removed.

There are different ways to do this,so anyone else care to chime in?

MBHD

Does you father-in-law have any service records on the truck? If everything is still orginal, it may be worthwhile going beyond just trying to get it to fire.

I am just guessing, but by the question the assumption is if it runs ok, you will put it back in the truck and use it as is. If that is the case, I would invest a little time and money.

After doing the lubrication noted in the second post, run a compression check to see if there are any ring or head issues. If it passes it may be worthwhile to pull the front cover and see if it still has the fiber timing gear. I would replace it with a metal set, but if there are no missing teeth or cracks you may be ok. If the engine is out of time when you try to start it,it may kick back and break the old timing gear. Replace the front cover seal and rear main seal as on a motor that sits for a long time and then is put back in service, it is not uncommon for seals to start leaking. This is true for any rotating parts on the truck.

I would also take the carb apart and make sure it is not stuck or full either gunk or dirt.

Good luck!

As has Hank reccomended I would lube the cylinders, check compression and prime the oil system (after changing the oil and filter).

However I would go one furhter than Bruce reccomends (since you have it out of the truck) and replace all the gaskets now just for GP.

Definetly at least the front and rear main seals as Bruce reccomends.

If you don't mind working with tube 'o gasket, the Right Stuff brand has been much better to me than any other, it not only seems to seal the best, but when it comes time to take it apart it doesn't seem to take as much force ont he putty knife / gasket scraper to get the pieces apart so I expect there's less of a chance of warping anything.


If you choose to replace the gaskets, clean up whatever you can while you have the covers off, if you have it on a rotisserie have a look at the cam lobes (engine upside down).

You might pull a rod cap or two and check the bearings while you're at it, I would, but that's me. That recently saved me some cash on a bent 8 I have in a truck. I pulled the pan and a rod cap when it started fouling a cylinder with oil, even with good compression in that cylinder still. Bearing was scuffed, one spot was gouged with the copper showing. It still was showing good oil pressure, but I don't know for how much longer. At this point it would appear all I have to do is grind the crank and change the bearings (and the cam, damn new low zinc oil anyway ).

Sory if that seems like a rant but I figure you might want to check (and if the cam looks good, you might put some slicum on the lobes for the inital startup after all this.

FWIW it won't help it start, but you might want to try and rinse out the cooling jackets while you have it out.

That and it might look good with some fresh paint if you haven't doen that already.

I know this sounds obvious, but drain the old gas in the tank, then check the gas tank for rust/corrosion/gunk in the tank and flush it if it needs it. You probably will want to flush the gas lines, too. Preventing problems from biting you in the rear end (yours,not the truck's rear end) is mostly in the details and preparation of any project you're working on.