Originally Posted By SomeCarGuy
Best bang for the buck will be just cleaning it up and running it. Dont go changing rings and bearings. If it turns over freely now, we can postulate it will run ok. In other words, these rings and bearings are seated and should work fine now unless a bearing is spun and your screwed anyway. Sounds like you have a perfect candidate for just bolting on a few things. Compression ratio will suck, but changing pistons is money and you will end up figuring out it has some taper to it and want to bore eventually. Then standard hi comp pistons are garbage to you.

Another member recently tore down and engine and spent some money, on a budget, then had to spend more since you basically cannot just tear into one and piece meal the thing. You might find that thread, i think it was 71adam440 or something like that.

Pick your cam and a good timing set. Then look to the heads, maybe do a valve job or guides. You could find a set of 915 heads sure, spend money on them, then trash them later when you decide on a full rebuild and aluminum heads. That's just cash burned for a small improvement.

If you go the low buck route(many people have done these), plenty of budget becomes available for other parts of the truck. You'll soon find things to spend on. Or buy new rings and bearings now and buy them again for the full rebuild, which could be as soon as something goes awry doing a rering and bearing job.


I found a 1973 440 MH engine and trans on the Tacoma, WA CL for $100.00 and beat 5 other guys to the seller to pick it up. It had been bought from a wrecked MH 20 years earlier and stored at a body shop, covered up and it looks it up . It is sitting in my shop now and when it warms up around here, I will pull the spark plugs, drain the oil and examine it, if it passes I will give it 4 qts of fresh Walmart 10w30 oil and spin over the oil pump with my 1/2" drill motor while I turn the motor over with a breaker bar at least 2 or 3 complete revolution and check a mechanical oil pressure gauge to see where it falls. If it looks good then I will do a compression test while it hangs on the cherry picker (it came assembled with starter, alternator, ThermoQuad, etc.) Parts alone are well worth the $100.00 and it is for a club project rat rod so expectations are not high and the chassis is a model A frame with a T-Bucket body, so it should be fun for all. up


1986 Dodge Ramcharger 440 2wd, Bracket Racer Under Construction
1998 Ram 2500 QuadCab, new daily driver.
2008 Honda Element
2014 Carry-On 7x14 Cargo Trailer