1938 Dodge Engine

[James_Fish]

I am travelling in Texas and have had some difficulty with my 1938 Dodge. Rather than rebuild the flathead six I am looking for a rebuilt 6 in great shape. Any ideas?

[cpwalter]

Jim,

Why take a chance with another engine that is supposed to be rebuilt or one that is supposed to be in good shape when you can rebuid yours and know for sure it was done right and will perform as needed?

When you figure the costs and the unknown factors with another engine it makes rebuilding the only way to go, especially if your engine is a D8 engine that matches your car.

One mans opinion.

[Guest backyardmachinc]

I agree with cpwalter.We have a automotive machine shop and belive me we have seen our share of engines that were rebuilt by a shade tree machine shop.We have one going thu now that was rebuilt long ago and was ran a few min.put in storage the owner pass away his nephew purchase the car started it up had a bad vipration.sent the engine for us to tare down for an inspection.Here's what we found, The shop knual the pistions to take up slack in the bore,a baffle plate was install between the crankshaft and the bore to limitate oil pumping,the crankshaft assembly need to be ballance The pin on the front of crankshaft for manual cranking moved 1/8 inch back and forth. The engine requires a .040 bore to clean up.I can go on and on with true exsperence of what we have found with engines that were suppose to be "rebuilt".I have heard a saying "DO IT ONCE DO IT RIGHT"

[Guest DTiffin90]

Hi,

I live in Australia and am currently rebuilding a 1938 Dodge truck. I'm struggling to get the engine going, i've had valves checked and a new gasket kit installed, spark to all plugs and it has heaps of compression. I was wondering if anyone knew the firing order for this engine because thats the one thing i'm not quite sure of? If you can help it would be greatly appreciated or if you know of any problems associated with these engines from your years of experience.

[Guest 1930]

Firing order is 1.5.3.6.2.4. To get the correct leads in the correct terminal hole try this. The cap has two grooves which the side clips go into. Look at the inside of the cap, there is a locating tab beside one of these grooves, turn the cap back up the normal way with the groove that is over the location tab on your right. The terminal hole immediately BELOW the LEFT hand groove (the one WITHOUT the locating tab beneth it is your number 5. Going clockwise next is 1, then 4 then 2 etc. Centre is of course from your coil.

If you were to google firing order for 38 Dodge you would come up with this and all sorts of other usefull info that may help as well

Sounds like you have everything needed to get this engine running so hopefully this will fix the problem. Good luck

Edited March 29, 2012 by 1930 (see edit history)

[ply33]

It is possible that the oil pump was not "indexed" properly when it was installed and that the position for the #1 spark plug lead is not where you expect. I don't recall the exact procedure for properly installing the oil pump, but you can compensate at the distributor side: With the spark plugs out so (at least the #1) turn the engine over with a finger on the #1 plug hole to feel when it is on the compression stroke and stop at top dead center. Now look at the rotor in the distributor, it will be pointing to the location for the #1 plug wire. Now install all the wires with the order, going clockwise as viewed from above the distributor per 1930's cylinder order.