Thread: My Little Red Muscle Truck

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Now for the saga of engine #2!

The next engine was nothing short of filthy! The valve covers and valley cover had been leaking for who knows how long and the engine and trans were both covered with a very thick (VERY VERY THICK) layer of dirt and baked-on oil. It took many cans of engine cleaner and numerous pressure washings just to get the thing clean enough to start working on.



After getting the engine on the stand, I pulled the plugs and everything went south from there! They were covered in oil! Several cylinders were apparently shot. I did a leak-down test and never got past cylinder #1. It had over 40% leak-down! I could hear air leaking from the intake valves, exhaust valves and into the crankcase. Rings were completely wasted as well as the valve seats. Hard to believe the thing didn’t smoke. I mean absolutely none could be seen on the test run.

At this point, I was done with used engines. I decided to do what I should have done with the first engine and that was do a rebuild. Actually, I had hoped to just do a rering job, but after getting the engine apart, my measurements told me that wasn’t going to be possible. I loaded all the parts up, including a set of 799 heads, and dropped them off at the machine shop. The engine originally had 317 heads, but I picked the 799’s up on FB marketplace. The 799’s have slightly smaller chambers for a compression bump and they have the same ports as the 317’s.

I also decided to quit messing around with used transmissions and dropped both transmissions off at good rebuilder. He built me a heavy-duty trans with a mild shift kit. It took both of my transmissions to do it as the case from the van was cracked under all that gunk (go figure!) and the van transmission had a slip yoke on the output, which I needed. The original truck trans had a bolt-on flange. After talking engines and driving style, he also recommended a mild stall converter. 2400-2800 range. He said he had the same converter in his truck and thought I would like it with my engine.

A few weeks later, I had a pile of new and redone engine parts laying around the shop. Everything went together fine. The assembly on LS engines is still a little strange for me since I’m used to building old school small blocks. The alignment of the covers and the torque to angle bolts seems to slow the whole process down, but it ain’t nothing I can’t handle. My son-in-law is eager to help and a little team work made the torque to angle process a lot faster.
The specs on the finished engine are:

6.0 liter

Stock bottom end and rotating assembly with .020 overbore

Between the overbore and heads compression should be around 10.2 to 1

Cam is an older Comp grind XR265HR I had left over from the Healey project. 212*@.050

Heads are stock 799’s with PAC 2018 springs. Rockers got a BTR trunnion upgrade

High volume Melling pump since my bearing clearances came up slightly more than I like (about half thou) and I’ll be running an oil cooler

Trailblazer SS intake and injectors with 92MM cable throttle body

Speed Engineering long tube headers



My arm-chair guess tells me this should make around 380 HP at the crank and 400+ on torque installed with all accessories. It might do better, but that’s plenty. Any extra would just be a bonus. At any rate, it should have enough torque and HP to be a lot of fun to drive.