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Here are the two versions. The first version had issues with the rubber separating from the bars at the vulcanization making the assy ineffective. The second version was introduced to eliminate that problem and to provide some means to adjust tension on the engine/trans but it was a bit weak too. IIRC from comments others have made the bar can bend or break and rubber in the ball ends falls apart with age. Flackmaster came up with something to reproduce the ball end piece and bar but I don't know if he made new brackets so as to be able to completely replace the first unit.

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Thanks HH. the first one is reproduced by Steele for sure. the second one does give me ideas though. we will see what noise are produced upon reassembly and first run.

Fred.....first picture is for you. how you like those new front motor mount rubbers? lol j/k hehe

okay....so....

motor is completely stripped. 9am to 4pm including moving things around and going to "shop" to get cherry picker only to return to get load balancer for said hoist. then went to machine shop to drop it all off.

this motor has been messed with before in the past. bearings were aftermarket for sure. cotter pins in rod bolts all different sizes.

pistons not as nice as thought....not sure if they are repos or not, but they have been knurled...so those are out and new ones will be put in after boring.

number 6 piston is of interest. had some sort of spring loaded thing inside the piston and I could not remove the piston from the top because the rocker arm was too wide to fit through the cylinder by just a fraction of a small amount. could I have hammered it through..yup...but that would have screwed up the cylinder. so out the bottom end it went....once I got it out with a the wooden butt end of mallet...notice nasty gouge in bottom of piston...weird cause I never hammered on that. not a good pic of the gouge sorry. cylinder wall looked fine though..mystery for sure. rod appeared to be a Packard rod. any ideas on this mystery piston? desperate attempt to get motor running again in it early life maybe?? ideas appreciated, especially as to why it has the spring retainer and the others do not.

I could put number 6 piston into other bores rocker first...it would stick....any other piston in any other bore would slide fine.


all of the bearings look like good normal wear, but will be replacing anyways. crank had fingernail felt groove from bearings. not bad.

hopfully this thing is standard and we can go to .010 on all...if not then obviously .020 is next and so on.

all studs will be removed...decked...everything checked over and blah blah blah...basically a full rebuild.

thankfully when we were cleaning up my Uncle's shop (when he passed) I snagged several tools, including this valve spring compressor, which I believe was my Grandfather's to begin with. I can't tell you how helpful that bad boy was. I'm glad I snagged it.

machinist was wondering why I took out all of the rod bolts. I said they just fell out. He was thinking they were supposed to be pressed in....but I can tell you they just fell right out when the nut came off. I know some more modern cars had them pressed in...but should they have been on this motor? I don't think they were in 1937

I did not see a rear main rope seal either...so that was confusing as the gasket kit I ordered came with one. I and the machinist noticed the flange on the crank that goes in the groove where one would expect to put a rope rear main seal....so any thoughts there guys????

Had to work on the motor on the hoist.... not the best idea but it's all I had. I do have a 2 ton stand, but I'm not sure it'll hold this straight 8 block. I guess we will see how creative I get upon assembly.

wooden floor board rotting....will cut new one. all the parts left over from motor will get a good washing and repainting.

forgot.....head has no cracks...so good news there.

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Even though relatively new the car could have had a hard life before your Grandfather got it. Might be interesting to know what that particular limo was used for. At any rate, being the tail end of the depression and during the war just about anything to keep a car running was kosher. After reading some of the Model Garage stories written during the 30s and 40s when money and parts were hard to come by, even Gus did a few miracles to keep a customers car on the road.

The rod and piston is interesting. I would think if it was so different as to not fit thru the cylinder the rod weight would also be considerably different and that would have affected balance -- unless the mismatched piston was lighter than the others. No idea what a misbalance would have done to engine as far as longevity or reliability but would think it would have messed up the smoothness if nothing else.

Man, you're not scared to tear into it! My hat off to you Henry to tackle this head first!

Oh yes... I'm all business and I'm not playing... I'm gonna fix the wrong and make it one nice running engine.


Can anyone tell me if these are stock pistons or egge that came out of the motor?

Also any ideas on this spring thing in the piston. This was piston 6 and the one that the rod would not fit through the cylinder. It's the only one that had this spring thing

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This is a piston expander which was to compensate for slightly collapsed pistons. A cheap way to "rebuild" without the cost of new pistons. Packard sold them, I think Perfect Circle made them.
To tell what piston brand you need to give the number cast on the inside of the piston.

6 digit= Packard
others ???

In my experience rods that do not want to easily pass the bores are bent. Be sure your shop checks all the rods for straightness and for equal weight.

That was what I told the machinist. I figured it must be slightly bent. Because it looked exactly like the others, should have looked at the numbers though. The car did not run particularly rough either. Thanks for the info on the spring....considering the knurling I'm not surprised.

Pretty sure I'm gonna replace that rod regardless. I will look at the pistons when I go back to the machine shop to take in the cam and cam bearings.

On to correcting and making this thing well again!

just some pics of the cam. cam looks good to me.

rear engine mounts....wasted.

oil pump seems to have excessive gaps in the rotors. thoughts?

looks like motor was already polished down to .001 at some point. found this rod bearing that fell out in the back of the truck.

can I replace this cap in the exhaust manifold with a freeze plug of the same size? looks like someone broke off the bolts that held the Stromberg choke in place and put this cap in there that is now rotting away.

decided to turn the car around in the garage as the motor was facing the back side of the third bay. turning it around makes putting the motor back in easier. I used my riding mower to push it into the culdesac and turn it around an push it back in.

as I was going to put a strap around the rear axle to pull the car the rest of the way into the garage, I noticed this nice smashed brake line to the right rear....yeah that's gonna need to be replaced. someone must have put a strap around that at some point and smashed it. (fyi...my 3rd garage bay has garage doors on both ends. one from the driveway and the other into the back yard. so I pulled it in so I could put the riding mower back in the shed afterwards. also makes for one hell of a air tunnel on a hot day.

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You have a gear-type oil pump, not a rotor/stator. This from Glenn's Manual should be informative.

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