Coyote: The new motor (a false alarm)

I had been looking for a motor for about 3 weeks when I found an ad in the local paper's on-line classifieds for a 350 with automatic tranny. I called and it had already been sold, but the guy said that he had another 350 for sale with a flat cam. I told him that wasn't a problem, since I planned to rebuild it before installing. He suggested that I come look at it, so I did:

08/06/2000. This is the 350 that the guy had sitting in his barn. Its castng number is 3970010 and the stamping code is V0311TAX which indicates a 1970 255hp auto trans truck motor.

After driving down to this guy's farm to see the motor, he tells me that it really didn't have a flat cam but rather a "slightly spun bearing" that only knocked a little bit and got quiet when he put thicker oil in it. Hmmm. I haggled the price and got it down to a reasonable amount and decided to buy it, since I'd planned a rebuild anyway.

Here's what I found when I opened it up. A 4-bolt block with the #3 and 4 journal much darker than the others.

I also found that it had been disassembled before, since the rods and caps had been stamped with their numbers.

Then I pulled the cap off the #3 rod and here's what I saw. A little wear, but not bad at all.

Then the #4 rod. It wasn't bad, either. Hmmm.

Here's the center main cap and journal. It doesn't look very good, especially the bearing. It has some deep grooves around it.

This is another view of it. The surface of the crank has a small amount of scarring, but nothing like the bearing. Kinda makes me wonder what happened to the oil filter.

It was about this time that that phone rang and a guy called to offer me a complete, running 350 motor...at a negotiable price. So this motor was put aside to be used in the Moby Grape 4-bolt 327 project, and a different 350 will go into the Coyote.

Next Page: "The Sacrifice"

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