My new non-bullnose project

Hi guys,

I haven't been super active on my F250, still welding away, but I spotted this on FaceBook market place and had to have it



1957 Chrevrolet 4400 stake bed.  It has an engine from a 66 or 67 pickup as best I can tell.

250CID inline 6 with a 4spd muncie SM420 and a 3 sped aux transmission.





It was a white knuckle 97 mile drive from where I purchased it.  The passenger outside dually basically disintegrated about 10 miles into the trip.



2nd gear is iffy so there was a lot of shifting from 1H to 2H to 3L when it would inevitably hop out of 2nd gear while accelerating.





From what I've garnered so far, I am the 4th owner and the 1st owner to take it off the island I bought it on since the original owners brought it there.

Cool project! I like it. There are several guys that show up at our local weekly classic car nights in old stake body medium duty trucks. They are super cool and they always sound so good going through the gears.

Thanks!  I'm excited for it.  It was an old farm truck, sat in a barn all year and only started during hay season.

Cool! Neat truck!

Very nice starting point!

I did a little bit of work on the chevy when I didn't feel like working on the bullnose.

The po spread some RTV in a poor attempt to seal an exhaust leak.  I know I need to replace that fire starter glass fuel filter too.



I pulled the intake/exhaust to have them surfaced.



Everything unbolted surprisingly easy.

Turns out the exhaust manifold was cracked so I ordered a replacement.





While I was waiting for that to come in I did a compression test



I also pulled the plugs.  These were discontinued in 1980 as best I can tell





Once the replacement exhaust manifold came in I took some time to port it to the remflex gasket.





I managed to wrestle the manifolds back in place in January



I also discovered that the carter YF carb needed bushings on the throttle shaft so I sent it to my frined in Canada that is going to bush it for me and send it back.

Jumping to today, I just picked up an SM420 transmission from a 50's chevy/GMC since the one in the truck doesn't stay in 2nd.











That's where I'm at now.  Just sitting down to watch the superbowl and eat some snacks.

LOL!  RTV on the outside to stop an exhaust leak?  

Anyway, you are making progress.  Not sure the port matching will make much difference as those engines are lethargic, but it won't hurt either.  

Yeah,

I don't know what he was thinking.  It lasted about 50 ft into the 100 mile drive.

The matching wasn't so much for performance but more because the replacement manifold had a lot of excess flashing in the ports from mediocre casting.



You can kida see the difference between the old and new here

Yes, that's a big difference on the manifolds.  Good idea to port it.  

Nice project I love it
I dont remember what is different between a 250 and the 292 six as it have been way to many years since I messed with them.

Do you know the make of the AXU. trans?
I take it is low / direct / high?
Dave ----

FuzzFace2 wrote

Nice project I love it
I dont remember what is different between a 250 and the 292 six as it have been way to many years since I messed with them.

Do you know the make of the AXU. trans?
I take it is low / direct / high?
Dave ----

Thanks!

I saw it and just had to have it!  I don't think I overspent at $2200 considering I could drive it home.  It has a lot of body rust in the door bottoms and cab corners, but there are a LOT of aftermarket patch panels for this era thankfully.  Fenders might be tricky since it's a medium duty truck so they're a bit different.

I know the block is different between the 250 and the 292 because the 292 has larger push rod covers on the side and the 292 has a different passenger side motor mount.  The 230 and 250 are the same from the outside, but the pistons are different.  I had to put a borescope down a spark plug to confirm it's a 250 because it has the characteristic D shaped recess in the piston top.

I'm not sure what the aux trans is yet,  I thought it was a 2 speed when I bought it, I discovered the 3rd gear when I got it home lol.

I'm assuming it's a Under, Direct, Over and as best I can tell it's a Watson Model 31, but I haven't confirmed it yet.

What I'm not looking forward to is finding brake parts.  It has a remote mount vacuum booster under the driver side floor and as best I can tell rear drum brake parts are unobtanium.  Even tires are hard to find since they're an odd 9R22.5 size.  Wheels are rare, only offered on a couple years and modern 10 bolt wheels are a different bolt circle so it could be interesting.

I haven't done much with this project in a while, but I thought I'd post up here that I snagged another SM420 off Facebook Marketplace.

They claimed it was rebuilt and they changed directions on their project before they could install it.

All of the gaskets are new.  I pulled the PTO cover and had a look inside.  It's surprisingly clean.

Cool! It looks like it is in great condition.  

Wow!  Didn't see your thread in September!  Nice project!


But, OMG!!
There is almost nothing under this huge and big hood !

CRittaler wrote

I know! The 250 looks tiny. The factory motor on this truck was a 235