Studebaker Progress

Once I had all the fabrication work done on the Studebaker it was time to turn to the motor. I got three or four motors with the car, but I wanted to use the 1958 Corvette Fuelie motor that the original builder had swapped in 1959. I had used that one for mock up and fab work, so I removed it and began inspection. What I found was an engine that had never been rebuilt, but was too worn out to use.

Thankfully, I had another 283 Chevrolet that was left over from another project several years back. After tearing that one down and inspecting it, I decided I could use that one. So I made it look nice and stuck it back in. Here's the skinny.

I removed the Corvette Fuelie motor and took the opportunity to clean 40 years of dirt off the engine bay. Check out the vintage Hurst motor swap mount.

The Corvette 283 looked pretty nice at first glance with no obvious catastrophic damage. It had forged rods, forged pistons and a steel crankshaft.

The bearing looked good as well with no copper showing.

Unfortunately there was .0043 of cylinder wear and plenty of taper in the bores. A full rebuild of the motor was not in the budget.

This is the other 283 I had in stock, left over from a project years ago. It's a 1960 motor, still the right period for the build of the car. Here it is after a good cleaning and taped up ready for paint.

And here it is all painted up!

After painting I tore it down again to install all new gaskets. One of my pet peeves is painted gaskets on a new motor. It's just lazy.

And here we are, all freshly painted and assembled, ready to install with the Hurst mount bolted up.