Re: 359 Straight Eight Engine

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2010/12/23 22:12:54

Gary in many years of monkeying around with old cars I have only run across one with mouse nests in the radiator! This was a DeSoto flathead six that drove me crazy until I figured it out. The engine ran fine at idle but overheated as soon as you drove it. Everything seemed OK but close inspection revealed some foreign matter in the rad, like brown paper towels all shredded up. I pulled out what I could see and though perhaps someone had stuffed a paper towel in the fill hole. Eventually I took the rad off and cleaned it out, I was surprised to find enough shredded paper towels to make a ball nearly as big as a football.

My theory is that someone drained the rad for winter storage and left the cap off as a reminder to refill it before driving the car. But the mice got in and made a nest out of old paper towels.

Sometimes valves get stuck when an engine sits for a long time. Straight eight Packards seem to be prone to this. If it happens, the cylinders with the stuck valves will have no compression. The only cure is to take the head off and free up the valves.

Do not worry about rings, valves, and bearings at this point. My policy is always to change things as little as possible until I carefully inspect and diagnose the engine. If you start tearing things up and changing things you don't know where you are or why things aren't working. I start with the assumption it ran when parked and work from there.