120mm

I hope at least one of those is legible. The number I see is D8-100147 I didn't get a chance to use the lens pen on the odometer; will try to get that tomorrow. Was busy all day with other things. I did get a chance to feel the ridge around the top of the cylinders; it is very, very shallow and jibes with the bore measurements. At least the top end that I can see looks promising. I am probably going to clean up the engine compartment a titch before I pull the pan, and look at the bottom end. All the splash pans are there and intact, which makes doing anything around the engine from the bottom a royal PITA. I will most probably follow 1930's advice and pull the front end tin off and at least get it on an engine stand. It would be terrific to just have to do an overhaul, but the micrometers will tell the tale on that. I am also going to sit down sometime soon and sort out what systems need to be replaced, what need rebuilt and prioritize them. I know that lack of organization will kill this project deader than anything. Plus my lovely bride informs me our budget will not support any major cash outlays until next month, so I have plenty to fiddle with til then.

I am going to take a lens pen and clean up the odometer to get to the bottom of things. Also, I found a thread on this forum from 2007 where some folks claimed that the metal tag on the block indicated a replacement or rebuilt engine.

Well, time to consider pulling it, then. Any suggestions/tips on how best to do that? I have an engine stand, but not an engine hoist. Might need to ask about borrowing one of those.

I took careful measurements tonight, and the bores (which appear to be round) consistently come out to 3.256". (Except the two in full compression, which I cannot measure, of course. I looked through the Shop Manual and Parts guide, and cannot find out a table where it lists stroke and bore measurements.

Here are the seats. The thing that is difficult to describe is the smell. It is my understanding that the stuffing in these is coir, which is made from coconut palm husks. At least the military history of Guadalcanal lists coir as the leading export, and I understand it was used in both seat stuffing and as the material that baby chickens were shipped in when delivered to the farmer.

Here is what's left of the interior.

Task #2 for tonight. Take pics of ratty (i.e.) nonexistent interior.

The price of spending time and money on this car with my lovely bride's willing acquiescence is to get rid of the ratty interior. This, to me, is a cheap price.

Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic. It means I can work on aircraft, but believe it or not, little actually transfers to cars. I will mic the cylinders tonight. That might help in the going forward decision making.

That is what my gut told me last night, once I got the head off. There are a lot of stuff I can do in the meantime. Like research who would take on a job like this. Yep. Have the patience, but also learn a certain economic "sense" if you will. I am leaning heavily toward just having the engine redone. I am looking at this now as two restoration projects. The first, being a mechanical restoration, where I attempt it on a systems level, and fix one system at a time. This will focus on making the car go, stop, have glass and fix lights and other electrical "stuff". I will either just clean the interior out and drive it "as is" or put a really cheap interior in it. I will probably have the engine rebuilt, but will ask around more, first. Then, as I am able to drive it around, I will pay more attention to details and bring it up to a better aesthetic standard. If it never becomes a "museum piece" I will have achieved my mission.

I am trying to figure out what you are saying here. Are you advising to abandon the project completely, or are you saying to go ahead and get the engine rebuilt? Right now, I am in the "discovery" phase of the project. As a toy, spending money on this doesn't make sense. 1938 Dodges are as collectible as belly button lint. I knew this going in. But as a car I could drive around town, with a connection to my family, it's actually not that bad. For $5000 or so, I think I can make it go and stop, and have a place to sit inside. For $10,000, it would make a really nice car. It's probably work $8000 or so completely redone, so I know I'm not getting my money out of it, whatever I do. But I am looking at it as a long term project, which hopefully I can enjoy as I piddle with it. Now would be a great time for someone to chime in, if they think I am off by a large margin in my thinking, though....

We have a NASCAR track across the road; lots of engine shops in the area. I will do some asking around as to who does the best work on antique stuff. No idea about whether hardened seats or not. Need to be to run unleaded gas, so that is a must. Here is where I need to make the decision; why go to all that effort, THEN decide to rebuild. Wouldn't it make more sense to yank the engine, and have it rebuilt/do it myself? Am just thinking of what I'd do if I were still an airplane mechanic. (believe it or not, these cars are a heck of a lot harder to work on than airplanes). Actually, since you put a price on it, $1000-1500 is not that much, compared to the total cost of getting it turned into a reliable runner. My intention is not to baby this thing, but to put some miles on it. To me, the best thing I could do is run it enough to have to rebuild it again, while maintaining it well. <snip> The "red stuff" is a mix of all the penetrating fluid (WD-40, PB Blaster, Kroil and Mouse Milk) that I had on hand, some MMO and some tranny fluid. Noone around here carries anything but little cans of penetrating fluid. This car is exposing just how fragile memory is. Everyone in the family remember it as a maroon car; in reality it is golden bronze-ish. Dad thought it had 36,xxx miles, I can see, now that I have looked close that the first "3" is actually an "8". The rebuilt engine tag also supports the "8".

I just spent an hour drafting a reply to the above posts, and the forum deleted it when I pressed submit. If I decide to rebuild the engine, I will probably do all the other, supporting stuff, first. I need to reprioritize what I do with it at this time.

Excellent advice. Thank you for it.

As you can see by the pictures, I got the head off to survey the mess inside the engine. I didn't realize the exhaust valves were staggered like that. Interesting. Is the head gasket reusable? It appears to be pure copper. A couple interesting points; my work partner stopped by on vacation and pointed out the heater controls, which I found interesting. And I noticed the oil change sticker for the first time so took a picture of it, as it's interesting. As you can see, the engine is still stubbornly stuck, though I gave each piston a shiver with an axe handle driven by a small mallet, just to encourage things, if it will.

A quick day, today. First four pictures are of the right front wheel well access panel. The loose piece is the bottom one. Then there is a few pictures of the hood clips which appear to be designed to be knocked out to allow for upper panel removal. I love the baby fire extinguisher, this one is somehow fully charged. It cleaned up quite well as you can see. Took some pics of the head before removing it, so I know where all the bolts and stuff should go. The oil filter is cool as well. I flushed the radiator, and it appears to be fairly clean to start with.

I shall post pics of the offending fasteners. I will try your suggestions as well on unsticking pistons. I very gently cleaned the glove box lid with a mild cleanser and my bare hand. I could feel that the decal was soft and relatively porous so I am going to avoid doing much at all to it. You are correct on the dash being paint. Here is a pic of a nicer dash: post-394-0-68066000-1323275238.jpg I am going to pull the head and oil pan anyway. If it hasn't broken free by then, that could be an option. Will probably use a wooden drift pin first. It's both. Painted dash, and decal on the glove box.

Sorry. In order to get to the valve covers, the shop manual calls for removal of the right tire, and the right access panels in the wheel well. The bottom panel is bolted to the frame and is easy to get out. The top panel has lugs that go from the engine compartment and are fastened with nuts on the wheel side. I'm assuming that the lugs are supposed to stay put and the nuts move, but the opposite happens. You can pop the clips off the lugs, I think.

I will. I am a bit chagrined with the recalcitrance of the stuck engine, but this project is going to be fun. I have one other question; the top access cover in the right wheel well just won't come along. One of the hood clips took a moon bound trajectory when I sheared a bolt attempting to loosen it, is there a trick to keeping the lug bolts from just spinning without damaging the hood clips?

A short day today; I can't stand to let bare metal sit out and oxidize so hit the air cleaner with primer and paint. Nothing fancy, just keeping the rust off. Plus it's the first refinished part I did. Used some epoxy stick on the rusted through bits. And btw, those bits were in the upper, or oil part of the standard Dodge Heavy Duty air cleaner. I am looking through my Shop Manual, and this is definitely the factory Heavy Duty air cleaner. There was even a very faint etching of the sticker on the top plate and you could just read the lettering. No paint though.... Upon remounting it, I see why Grandpa used baling wire to keep it upright. With the interior gaskets shot/missing, it has not a hope of staying on with the simple crimp style connection. I will fix that with some shims and proper gasketing, I think. It was missing a bolt from the bracket to the air cleaner, and I just used one off another part. These Dodges only used like 3 kinds of bolt. Very efficient. My oil breather doesn't look like the above unit. It just sits on the vertical air breather pipe, which comes from the crankcase and makes about a 10 inch run to a cup, and the air breather just pushes down on the cup using spring tension. Someone earlier asked where the valved can on the passenger side firewall runs to; the answer is, it runs to a monster size car heater. We've seen as low as minus 40 degree F (which is, coincidentally, where the Celsius scale meets the Fahrenheit scale), and I imagine Grandpa Herman wanted his feet warm. Don't know if that was a different option on Dodge's or not. I gently cleaned off the glovebox, and opened it up to discover that it was a mouse nest box. The only thing of interest there was a generic admission ticket to somewhere. The mouse nest was all insulation. I finally figured out how the door locks work. Amazing! Very elegant solution. All of the interior cloth is gone, damaged, destroyed, and worse, it smells very, very, very bad. Since one of my goals is to share this with my lovely bride, I am not going to attempt to save any of it, but would like to reproduce it's simple elegance without spending a ton. Especially the cool hand loops on the door frames, and the seat loop on the back of the front seat. I also removed the abomination of a search light from the window frame. It was a cobbled together aftermarket piece of crap and replaced the mirror. Now, I need to find a mirror that looks right, or even one that is correct. As long as the mirror isn't horrific, I would be happy with something that isn't original, but looks like it could be original, if you get my drift. I also need to plug the hole it made in the window frame, and will probably employ some epoxy trickery to accomplish that. One other thing: I soaked the jack in penetrating oil yesterday, and it went from being a rust frozen lump to working perfectly today. I still do not understand fully how it works, though I imagine it is friction operated, but it is one slick and simple jack. I made it go up and down until I understood it's operation completely. I need to sand blast it and repaint it, I think.

I think you are right. The hole is regular, and appears to be where a bolt screws in from a support to keep the air cleaner from falling over. And the guts are full of oily copper and there is this empty chamber in the bottom portion that appears to be there for centripetal force to remove additional particles. Question I have is, why does the upper bit say this:

Dumb question; what color was the air filter on this turkey? I cannot believe it was plain metal.

I figured I'd solder it, but then I looked at some of the excellent epoxies out there and changed my mind. Good advice on the oil pan. I'm familiar, but not intimate with oil bath air cleaners; does the big hollow chamber open up, or is it always just sealed? I didn't find a way to get inside it. Funny thing is, Grampa Herman had wired it upright to keep it from falling over, but once I figured out how to reassemble it correctly, it stands up quite well on it's own. It's missing a bolt which screws into the side from a bracket and has quite a few gaskets inside that helps it stand up. Plus, it has a compression joint at the base that wasn't being fully used. That link is golden, sir. I will be sure to contact them. My other grandpa, LuVerne, will roll over in his grave to hear that I "bought" gaskets. He was somewhat of a skinflint, and made everything himself. But Verne had a large array of different kinds of gasket material on hand, and frankly, I cannot justify buying the material just to be "thrifty". Not on everything, anyway.

Tonight I started by asking gravity to assist my engine unsticking process. As you can see by the pictures, I put the rear tires on ramps with it in third. I figured if I could enlist Sir Isaac Newton for some help, there is no reason not to. I also took a suggestion and cleaned up the air cleaner. While it looked really nice on first blush, I found that corrosion had eaten some pin holes in the bottom of the oil bath. I'm wondering if it's worth repairing, or should I start looking for a replacement. BTW, all the gaskets to this point have been trashed. Are there commercial kits available, or should I just build my own? I've also attached some pics of the tools I found in the trunk of the car. I have no clue what to do with the jack looking thing. It does fit into the base, but haven't played with it yet and it doesn't look like a jack I've played with before.

Thanks for the offer. I'll be posting on here as I discover things. As far as the crank hole cover, most cars I've seen don't have them. Since now I know what it looks like, I'll keep an eye out, but won't bother me if I go without.