Hello, all...
I'm wondering about a few things regarding my '47 Chrysler's 251 flathead. The engine's all there, so I intend to rebuild it to stock condition before I do anything to it. However, I DO want to do some kind of modification to it eventually, which I'll get to.
So far all I've done is rebuilt the carb and I'll probably have it pulled from the car pretty soon. There are some odd things about it, though. I'm quite sure it's identical to the original that would have been in the Windsor, if it's not actually the engine that came with the car. But the head is painted orange and the block is blue. When I first saw it I didn't know that was unusual, but I did think it was odd that such an old car in the condition it's in would only have 22,000 some miles on it. After looking at it closer, though, I saw that it had a metal Sears-Roebuck tag attached to one of the head bolts. It's not too legible since most of the paint is gone and I haven't really examined the imprints in the paint, but it does seem to be the specifications of a rebuild. When I got the car the air filter was in the trunk and the carb was halfway open, so as expected when I took the carb off there seemed to be some junk sitting in the bottom of the manifold. There's no oil in the engine as far as I can see, although the dipstick was a little slimy (I'm guessing it all leaked out decades ago as there's an oil trail coming out of the drain plug on the oil pan). Judging by all the junk in the car when I got it, the previous owners had at some point in the past tried to repair the car in some way. The plates are from 1971, so that's probably the time period, and since then I'd guess it's been sitting in a barn or maybe field or something. I haven't tried getting the battery charged and starting the engine, though. Basically my guess is that it had some minor mechanical problems and they gave up on it because the rest of the car was in such bad condition
What I'm asking here is: how much will I need to rebuild for it to work nicely? Is there any chance Sears would know what the deal with that rebuild tag is? How do I try cranking it by hand? (I did try my bare hands with no luck, and I don't think I'm gonna find a plain old socket for it)
The second thing I'm wondering about is what is available as far as aftermarket performance components for this engine. I'm guessing there's a lot of stuff and I just can't find out anything about it. From what I've read it's pretty capable as it is and it obviously has a lot of torque at very low RPMs, I'm just curious about what's possible.
And this is unrelated to engines, but I figure I'll give it a shot anyway. Does anyone make or sell new or nearly-new-quality floor pans, rocker panels, trunk pans, etc. for this car? I got a great offer from the guy who runs the yard I got the car from for an entire floor for $100. The problem with that is that a car would have to be picked out, hoisted up, and the floor carved out (they've got quite a few there, but they're almost all in the dirt and/or full of junk), plus although the floors in them are definitely in better condition than mine, they're definitely not perfect and cutting out a floor in need of repair to replace an unrepairable floor seems kind of inefficient. Failing that, any yard that could quote me shipping on a floor or any tips on how to go about replacing it would be quite helpful.
Thanks for reading all of this and for any help anyone might have!
-Adam
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Not there yet... [This message has been edited by Adam Smith (edited 02-16-2002).]
