I don't plan on doing anything right now. Just thought it would be "fun" to play with a spare motor.

Steve, your compression #s are just excellent. FYI the numbers usually found on a cylinder head are not part numbers but are casting numbers; from a single casting several different compression ratio heads could be made. And the high compression head normally had "HC" cast into it.

But I agree with your point, if all an engine needs is a valve job, why go shopping for another engine which may or may not be as good as yours and may still also require a valve job, and maybe much more. Were it my car, I'd remove the head, measure the cylinder bore taper, drop the pan and examine the bearings and plastigage them. Since Phil's engine was performing well without any note of oil consumption, noises or low oil pressure, I'd be optimistic that a valve job would give him thousands of miles of enjoyment.

If anyone interested in the 57th and 58th Series cars has looked at the Model Info pages, perhaps you noticed that the text seemed scant or incomplete compared to that of previous Series. Believe me, there was no intent to diminish coverage of those models.

I happened be looking over the '57-'58 entries today and found them ALL to be truncated. That was particularly troubling to me since I wrote the text for all those models offline in MS-Word, then pasted them, completely, into the entry screen.

Luckily, I had saved those write-ups, and a little extra sleuthing revealed that the truncation occurred at some special characters that Word applies for punctuation, rather than plain text, which appear to cause problems in web pages.

Know that I have now replaced the offending characters and completely replaced the text in the affected pages. I hope you find the corrected text to be sufficient, but apologize for any confusion that this anomaly may have caused.

Yes, nice work, I may be interested and also interested in seeing any other work you have done, Steve.

Phil, not sure if this helps but as Owen points out there are some variables around normal compression. Another variable could be how well the gauge is calibrated, and if you are 100% confident of no leaks. My simillar '39 282 has the following PSI: 120; 113; 115; 116; 115; 115; 109; 115

This car has some wear, and it may have the cast high comp head on it - the number did not corrospond to numbers I have seen in either the owner's or shop manual, but it seemed close enough to the hi compression head number to make sense, unless it is off another year.

If it runs fairly well, why replace the orginal motor with a replacement block? I would enjoy for now and look to a possible winter project? Hope to see your car sometime here in the Southern NE area!

Steve

Do you have the tool for putting the keepers back in? The first flat head I ever did (Jeep 134 F head)was quite a revelation as far as valve tools and installation procedures go. Without those pliers for holding the keepers you can spend lots of time swearing and looking for tiny keepers that somehow seem to travel really far when you drop them

Been said many times before, probably stands restating: if you have a good core of anything requiring rebuilding, it's often safer to have your own core rebuilt than risk getting an exchange rebuild which may have started with a a core requiring repair, or one that was marginal or otherwise not up to the quality of the one you have in hand.

Not to say that there aren't lots of top-notch rebuilders out there who do business on an exchange basis.

Other than toe-in/out, adjustments on solid beam-axle cars like yours are done via bending of the axle (if needed) and shims; heavy trucks still utilize these suspensions and methods and heavy truck service centers are generally the best places to go. The enclosed may prove helpful to you, I think I actually retrieved them from this site a while back, thinking they'd come in handy.

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Good evening all,

Talk to me about caster and camber. My manual says 1.5deg for each. One of these adjustments is obvious,ie, steering tie rod, the other is not. Am trying to sort these out as i am having some tyre wear and steering issues.

Thank you.

Pat.

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Just so no one is mis-informing anyone else, the pump I got from Max Merritt has no casting #s or stampings, or markings of any kind. And, as previously noted, exhibits a casting quality FAR inferior to a Packard casting. It's performance in usage is also leaky-noisy as previously discussed. I don't really see how these postings contain any mis-information. If you send me 115.00 plus postage, I'll be more than happy to drop it in the mail for your thorough analysis/comment.