I bought an unknown 292 from a '66 C/30 that had been sitting for a few years and was stuck . To day I took it apart and was able to easily knock out the two stuck pistons . Several of the connecting rod bearings were slightly " wiped " showing copper through the babbit . The crank journals looks pretty good , I'll see if I can find some Crocus Cloth & wet polish the journals . Right now the rod bearing journals measure out @ 2.0875" Bore is @ 3.9080 I used an electronic caliper . The block casting # is 3851659 , this breaks out to be a '63 ~ '79 Chevrolet 292 . The date code is K174 , I've forgotten how these break out . I need to find a 3" ball hone to run in the ridge free (! sweet !) cylinders . I'll be replacing all 6 pistons and prolly the cam too , the lobe tips look good but the heels show seriously off center wear , I've not yet pulled the tappets , I imagine they'll be worn out . This engine looks like it was gone through not long before it was taken out of service , hardly any sludge in it and the bearings and piston skirts look very good apart from the narrow wiping in the middle of the load surface , typical if the rods were not re sized during the last freshen , also very common when the operator over speeds this long stroke engine . So , I need info in what the bore and rods are , std. or oversize and what oversize ? . Also , what date was it built ? . Any and all comments are welcomed , this engine will replace the ailing 250 I6 in my '69 C/10 now . TIA ,
Nate, Looks like you have quit some work in front of you on this one. Have no info on this engine would not even know where to look to find the #'s info at. If you need some help on it just give a shout-out. Did see a 3" hone at Saugus Swap meet last Sunday but figured I had no use for it at this time may have been worn out for all I know. Good luck and stay out of the heat. Charles
It's HOT ! So ; No one knows how to decode the build date ? . It looks like it's a .030" over bore and the connecting rod journals appear to be.010" under , there's a start . I got some Oxilic Acid and will soak a rag with it to see if that dissolves the surface rust to where I can hone it , still no luck on finding a 3" ball hone but I will . Oddly , I had the devil of a time finding Crocus Cloth to wet polish the crank journals with . Please guys , I see you're reading this , plase jump in with thoughts .
More Work O.K. ; I'm all alone here I guess . To - day I cleaned up the pan , rods and pistons a bit , soon they'll go in to the shop where I can clean 'em really well in the cleaning tank (no more Stoddard Safety Solvent , dammit) . I swabbed out a bunch of brown oil that smelled gassy . Then I began scraping the oil pan's lip ~ the last boob didn't bother to clean it , he just slapped a new cork gasket over the petrified remains of the old gasket and squeezed 1/2 a tube of clear RTV every where then over tightened the bolts until the lip of the pan was bent all to blazes and one bolt was broken off in the block Sheesh . I have a vintage Great Neck scraper I like , that and the good old hand operated wire brush cleaned off all the old gasketing glue , once I've cleaned the pan Hospital Clean I'll dress the pooched in holes back with my trusty ball pein hammer . Two cylinders have some deep pitting , I used a rag soaked with Oxyilic Acid to break up the fluffy rust then a 2" wire wheel I got from Harbor Freight on sale to polish the cylinder walls , I'm quite sure it's going to need boring . I *think* I see " .04 " stamped into the piston crowns , I'll know for sure once I put them to the shop wire wheel and clean 'em up . I won't re use them no matter what , I just want to know what size the bore is now . I looked at two rod bearing shells and didn't see any undersize marking in the various stamped numbers & letters . I'll prolly buy another engine or two to get a smaller bore block and sell this one to a Hot Rodder who'll of course instantly bore it to .060" , IIRC that's the biggest pistons they make . No one here knows production codes ? IIRC , K174 means the first week in November 1974 . I used a knotted wire brush to clean the block's deck , it looks good .
Nate, I think you're really close on the build date. The first letter would be the month, the next number would be the day of that month and the last 2 numbers is the year. The only thing I can't remember is whether or not they omitted the letter "I" because of the confusion caused between "I" and "1". With that said, I think it's safe to say that it was either built on Oct 1 or Nov 1 of '74.
De Coding Thanx ; I got a letter from a guy who has some book , he said it's November 17th. 1964 . I did some serious cleaning , wow was that oil burned into place ~ the DPO ran this poor thing hard . I got the pistons , rods and oil pan cleaned up nicely , the pistons are stamped .04 More hard work for this old man to come , stay tuned , I need a rest before attacking it again .
That's That ~ Last night I decided to run a Hail Mary Pass and hone the cylinders to see if maybe , just maybe the bore's pitting wasn't so deep , I was wrong , it needs a re bore :
Oil Burning Well Russ ; That's what I'm doing now ~ I use 30 or 40 W when I can find it , the rest of the time it's 20W 50 as this thing goes through a quart of oil every 150 miles minimum . It smells really strongly of the burnt oil but doesn't smoke too badly as it was fouling three spark plugs every 200 miles so I had to upgrade it to factory 250 '76 ~ '77 HEI and open the spark plugs up to .070" + , it still burns oil like crazy and occasionally fouls a plug or two so I don't want to deal with that any more I know better than most , how to tune an ailing engine to run very well and strongly to boot but this is my personal Work Truck and I want it to run better than this or patching the 292 . I'm sure someone will want the core block when I get finished . If I post up the #'s from the backs of the rod bearing shells , can someone here de code them as to what grind the crankshaft is ? .
292 Update O.K. , a YEAR (+ !) and I'm just now getting back to this as I finally found a Body Shop I'm trusting to rebuild my frame and new cab . Anyway , I bought a 1977 heavy duty emissions 292 and of course , the bolts holding the flex plate to the crankshaft , are different thread . Sheesh . I also found some sort of weirdness in the alternator bracket holes (in the block) ~ I think someone ran a Metric tap 1/2" or so , into the holes as I can't get the bolts to go in more than that . I have ordered up a new ATP flex plate for the 1977 model year with TH350 but , the part number crosses over from 1966 ~ 1999 so we'll see . I still have the crankshaft from the 1964 292 so I may swap it in as the bolts from it are the same size/thread as the bolts in the old smoking 250 I'm trying to replace . Is anyone reading this ? the guys on the '47 ~ '54 Boards are usually right on top of my posts & work reports .
12/17/2014 Wow ; 707 reads but so few replies . Anyways , it's been a while , the Body Shop has been pestering me to return a ready to install driveline by 12/31 (oops) so I have been trying to get some works done here , problem being : my Fathers out of State Memorial and Thanksgiving Family dinner , that took quite some weeks then I got sick as a dog and it's been raining every time I have an hour or day off to attack it . I really need to become rich so I can afford a shed or garage or summat instead of working in my back yard underneath a California Oak tree.... Was I rambling again ? . Oh , yeah ~ the 292's : I pulled the crank damper off both engines then I pulled the '66 crankshaft and stored it inside , on my dry back porch ~ I need to measure it so I can order up new rod & main bearing shells . I also want to pull the pistons and crank out of the '77 engine so I can order up new pistons for it and look at how good (or not) the cam is . Every day when I get home from work and it's not raining or I'm not cacking up a lung , I break out my tools and make a little bit more progress . To night I discovered why the '77 engine was fairly dry of oil leaks : they'd glued the oil pan and side covers on , I won't know if it's ever been apart until i split the brearings on the crank and pull the head and pistons , maybe to - morrow , maybe Friday , it all depends on the dang Weather . If I run out of time , I'll just hurry up quick clean and re - spray the old 250 C.I.D. engine and bolt my new TH350-C tranny to it and let him re install that .
Yes, Nate, I read your stuff... Just, sometimes don't have useful stuff to say and help ya. The rain, maybe annoying, but, from what I hear on the news, very much needed out there. Kinda funny to me, the bodyman that seemed slow to start is now barking at you??? I can't wait to see it done. Oh, and we would look at pictures of torn-down engines too.
Progress Thank you Steve ; It's Sunday 12/21 , four days until Christmas and I'm sitting here in Golden Cove , Ca. (Palos Verdes Peninsula) in the warm (55* F) pre dawn looking at the stars twinkling over the Pacific Ocean and munching a left over Pastrami sandwich for breakfast , my old Mercedes is parked nearby with the Wreath on the grille twinkling merrily away .(this year I have a new LED light string in it , the lamps are smaller , I preferred the old pine cone shaped ones but time marches on...) Life is good . Anyways , back to it : I took the 1977 292 apart , it's American made , not Mexican so everything is fractional threads , whew . I god this engine up North from a Cop who'd bought it randomly , planning to use it in his Grandpa's old truck then decided not to so I have ZERO back ground on it but it's *very* low mileage and clean inside ~ even the water jacket is rust free ~ how rare is that ?! . The cylinder bores are *perfect* , not even any ridge at the top , the pistons and bearings (both journals and shells) looks like maybe 50,000 miles and could be re used but I'll definitely buy new bearing shells and prolly new pistons too . The # 1 main bearing mics out to 2.303" the bearing shell had # 1159857 stamped in it #2 : 2.284 stamped 1159859 #'s 3 , 4 , 5 & 6 were all # 1159857 , I am hoping someone will be able to tell me what the journal sizes are . I didn't measure the rest of the main bearings yet , I am wondering if anyone has the specs to tell me if this is std. or under size ? . Rod journals : 2.101 Bore : 3.873" . The cam looks very nice as do the tappets but , some moisture got inside this engine when it was in storage , two of the tappet feet have slight discoloration so I am thinking a '64 or so pre SMOG cam and all new tappets might be smart . I do have a couple pictures but don't have my patch cord , I'll try to post up some photos soon , they'll mostly be of piles of old parts stacked up . FWIW , a fellow old Trucker hipped me to this 292 far North but only $150 ~ SWEET ! more so because it appears to be so good condition .
Flex Plate Fun O.K. , it appears the pre 1967 cranks used a 7/16" bolt to hold the flex plate / flywheel on , naturally I ordered in the wrong flex plate , I'll have to order another . FWIW , 292's with manual trannies used a flange mounted starter that bolts to the bell housing , automatics , both TH350 & TH400 , used a parallel bolt starter that bolts to the engine lock , the threaded holes are there , just hidden under years of dirt and grease . I *think* I'll be needing a 153 tooth flex plate , I will count the teeth this afternoon . Apparently the wrist pins are a light press fit and you're supposed to simply press them out , no heat necessary , per my GM overhaul booklet . I'll use some All Thread and old sockets to do this , I want to send the connecting rods out for re - sizing and balancing , hopefully my local machine Shop can balance them down to zero grams , this makes for a smoother running engine .
Progress ! O.K. , I keep chipping away at this overhaul in my ' spare' (yeah,right) time.... I had the connecting rods rebuilt and as I was chatting with the Machinist as he did them , he said ' why don't you go bring me the crankshaft and I'll measure it accurately wile you wait ' ~ so off I zoomed , across town in my old Mercedes Diesel Sports Coupe , carried that beastly heavy 7 main bearing crankshaft out tot he trunk and he miked it , turns out it's *PERFECT* as I had surmised from eyeballing it and using my 25 + year old plastic Japanese Electronic Caliper . You're really not supposed to use Calipers to measure bearing journals but these are simple tech engines and I've been doing it this way since the 1960's with nary a failure yet.... . This is the box 'O Rods : This is a random box o' 1977 292 parts , I'll be cherry picking between these and the 1964 292 parts....
Bad Photos Sorry about the poor quality pictures , it was in my kitchen @ 04:00 this morning , I have only one ceiling light and no flash on the iPod .
Gapless Piston Rings O-kay then . Yesterday right after work I took my new 292 piston (one of them) out to The Valley where there's a place that makes up custom gapless piston rings , he just called me to say the set of 6 will be $79 and should be ready next week . I assume the 292 i6 pistons rings are the same as some Chevy V-8 engine , non ? . The rod bearings are and it's often cheaper to buy a set of V-8 SBC rod bearings and throw two away.... I was lucky and found a set of Main and Rod bearings cheaply . More soon I hope .
Bored yet ? O.K. , here we go : This is the proper tools and SAFETY EQUIPMENTS because the wires throw off the motorized wire wheel with great force , more than enough to pierce your eye , I know this the hard way . I stopped here to show the rusty metal underneath two coats of paint . Here we have the left side of the engine , clean and almost ready for paint : Removed the oil pan and cleaned the sealing surface :
More Cleaning Fun Believe it or not , I actually enjoy this work because it makes the end product look nice for decades , folks always look under the hood and always ask me : is that all original ?! . I like this . Anyways , here is the oil pan showing how the last guys GLUED EVERYTHING to - gether , leaving me with much hard works to clean it 1000 % and not damage the surface : Notice how clean the oil intake screen is ? this old engine burned a LOT of oil and would foul the spark plugs every 150 ~ 200 miles until I converted it to GM HEI from a '76 / '77 NOVA : all those BLISTERING HOT routine oil & filter changes cleaned out all the sludge and kept this 250 engine sparkly clean inside . Here's a nice view of it , I cleaned NOTHING ~ this is what a properly cared for beat to crap old truck engine should look like : I'm going back to work more to - morrow and will try to take pix of the normal damaged oil pan bolt holes along with how to fix them easily . G'night .
