Got it home and started to work on it. The first order of business was to get the car running. I knew there was some issues when I bought the car. The wiring was toast and it turned out there was a bad condenser in the distributor. Rebuilt the carb and fired it up... No oil pressure.
Got to looking closer... The engine had been kinda thrown in. Nothing was bolted together right.
The fluid drive wasn't even bolted to the crank. Clearly the engine needed to come out.
Interesting project from the K.T. Keller years before Exner's design exercises caught on. I like these early post war designs as well but I'm a bit biased towards some GM models of these years. Keep us informed.
You're going all the way through a complete resto or just making it a reliable driver ? I'd tend to the latter with this car.
The block in the car turned out to be a 1950 251 cubic inch block. It's close to the same as the 265 block the car should have (full flow oil filter etc) but the 265 block has reliefs for the extra crank throw. I found a 265 crank and rods from a combine in Seattle. Yes... I said combine. They used these engines in lot's of industrial and farm applications.
A few minutes with a die grinder and we were good.
I forgot to take a picture here. The road draft tube was removed and a PVC from a later truck was fitted in it's place. We now have a modern PVC system to keep the oil a lot cleaner.