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After all of that, i took a break for a little while, waiting for the tax money to come in. After a bit of driving the car around, the oil pressure in the engine started dropping from day to day. Its gone from 40psi cold down to 30 psi cold, and 30psi warm down to 20-21 psi warm. That being said, last Friday, i was heading to work, and after dropping the kids off at the babysitters, i cam back out and saw coolant leaking out from underneath. Discovered that the front head gasket blew out right behind the water pump housing. So needless to say...im not doing head gaskets on a 3.1 lol.

I had been on search for an engine for a little bit, and i had finally found a 3500 car in the junk yard. Well, i didnt want to get into trying to get the 3500 to work in my car, so i also went digging for a 3400. When i found one at the same yard, i showed up one day, took the top end off the 3500 and put it on the 3400 i had found. I also grabbed the throttle body from a 3.5 short-star. So i got a hybrid motor, with a larger TB for $305. The 3500 had right around 30k miles on it, and the 3400 had high miles that i still cannot determine. So i bought, and brought it home. Yup, you read right, i made a hybrid in the yard and it didnt cost anything extra lol.

Following, are the pics of the engine parts, and so forth...

Short Star TB







Short Star factory adapter plate





3400 exhaust manifolds and downpipe (just for the flange)



Engine random pics

Playing with the BP 3100 intake, perfect match....hmm, might play with this one down the road.



Opening it back up

3500 top end











3400 block. Faily high miles, polished cylinders

Yard hybrids are thrifty money savers. Did it with a few trans, rear gears, seats, cv's lol

The at that point, stopped to take the block apart another day.



I took the adapter plate to work to remove the coolant feed lines and get it and the TB cleaned up. Looks pretty good now.







Hard to tell in the pic, but there is about 2 millimeters of material difference between the adapter and the TB and the intake.

Next time i went back out was 4-5 days later and i pulled the caps off everything on the crank. Everything looked great, except for the bearings on main cap 2 and 4.

Main cap 2



Main cap 4



Crank never got any damage done to it. Got a couple of opinions and all came out the same verdict. So a new main and rod bearing set was ordered among the rest of the parts i decided to order in for it.

Was informed by a very wise person that the pump was prolly more than okay, but i ordered on and a new screen anyways, as i got a great deal on them both.



Pics of the cam

Cam bearings

Block stripped down



Main cap bearings









Crank and cam pulled out and bagged for the machine shop



Block bagged and ready



Guts out and bagged



Heads bagged up for now



3400 exhaust manifold outlet and downpipe inlet





Got the coolant tube holes tapped, and plugged to help keep hot air out of the passage in the TB and adapter.



That will get most people caught up to where i am now, I will have more pics in the next day or so once i get the block assembled. Stay tuned.

Man I swear the dampers on these 60's have a short life.

Unexpected swap. Im excited to see whats in store

Yeah. When i bought the car, i had evef intention to do an engine swap, just wanted to wait till the motor gave up. Never thought a head gasket would blow out before that. After finding out the yad didnt care about me swapping parts frome engine to engine, and a good 3400 costs, like, $800 with low miles, i figured doing a hybrid swap at the yard and paying $305 cor it was worth it. Now, granted, ive so far investex more than $800 into this, but i have also bought new injectors, regualtor, sensors, new bearings, rings, gaskets and minor machine work. I will have a new engine when im done.

Only problem i have now, is that the machine shop that i had do the work to the block, screwed up the cam bearing install. So, now i have to take the block back and have them make it right. Which means they are buying my new cam bearings and installing them correctly. Now that i have that set-back, my short block assembly has to be delayed another two weeks. Good times.....

This is all I have for a tool

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/pro-6 ... gQodCjIAtg

Had to have my machinist friend skim off the tiniest bit on the blue die so it would fit in our cam bores as a guide and I just used sand paper on the black inserting tool to bring that down a tiny bit as well so it wouldn't get stuck in the bearing after installed.

I may buy a more expensive tool in the future... but for right now this has been working just fine.

I as well have a cam bearing install tool...shoulda said something Geoff...i would have shipped it down to you for your use.

Its not a very common tool most people have. I didnt even think about it Ron. Jon, thanks for the info. Was looking at the ones on Amazon, but next time, Ron, ill hit ya up.

90GTZHO wrote:Its not a very common tool most people have. I didnt even think about it Ron. Jon, thanks for the info. Was looking at the ones on Amazon, but next time, Ron, ill hit ya up.

True. And for the cost of new, its not worth the expense. I got lucky and found mine in a pawn shop for a fraction of the cost of new.