Oh man, how embarrasing. (Uncle Tony/Nick's Garage)

I’ll try and shorten this story up.......

A friend I worked with had a high mileage 400 out of the family wagon that he had planned on putting in a fastback cuda he brought home from the bone yard.
He and his dad put bearings in it, but didn’t want to pull the heads and pistons to swap out the rings.
New timing set, some gaskets, etc.
Anyway it was sitting there in the garage for a few months....... in a spot that happened to be right where there was a leak in the roof.
The motor was sitting with the intake off and no valley pan...... and it filled up to the brim with water...... and then sat for a few months like that.

That put an end to the project, and the motor had to go.
He asked me if I wanted it.
I went over and looked at it and said I only want it if I can get it apart without breaking it.
Flipped it over, drained all the water out, and pulled the heads.
Big orange stalagmites hanging off the heads, cylinders full of “orange juice”....... lots of rust in the bores...... crank is locked up tight, pistons have no movement.
I put kerosine in the bores and came back a week later.
They used to heat with wood, so I found a suitably sized log and started whacking it with a sledge hammer on top of the pistons.
I got 6 to show a tiny amount of movement, but two wouldn’t budge.
More kero.... wait another week.
Second time around I’m using a bigger sledge and taking pretty big swings.
They finally start to move.

After more and more pounding, I get it to where I can take it apart.
The rings are a rusty gob of crud that are fused to the ring lands, and I hammer and chisel them out of the grooves.
I spring honed the bores, and there were a lot of pretty large areas where the stones didn’t touch because the rust had eroded some of the bore material away.
Those areas got hand sanded to get the rust out.

The whole bottom end/crankcase area was so sludged up...... that there was hardly any corrosion there.
The sludge had rust proofed it all.

So, the block and rotating assy goes to the machine shop for hot tanking, crank gets polished, new cam begs and freeze plugs.
The rings that didn’t get used previously got put on the cleaned and hand sanded pistons. Reused the bearings....... which had some scratches from where they got rolled in the first time.

I had bought a bunch of BB stuff from a guy about a year previous to this, and part of that stash was a set of 346 heads that had a fresh VJ.
A stock used 440hp cam and lifters that came out of my friends 69 GTX got put back into service.
I had bought a well used DP4B at a swap meet for $10. The heat crossover had a hole corroded into the bottom of it. I had the heat crossover welded shut...... so it was good to go.
I went through an old 383 single point distributor.
For a carb, I was working at a parts store at the time, and there was an auto repair shop right next door.
One day one of the mechanics comes by with a cardboard box with a disassembled Holley 4bbl in it, that had been sitting on a shelf under a bench for years.
I gave him $3 for it.
It was an old factory Chevy 780vs..... I put a kit in it, and it went on this 400.

Bolted that pile of junk back together, put it on my friends run stand....... and amazingly it didn’t smoke a bit.

So it sat there for a while....... and the 440 ended up coming out of the GTX for some upgrades....... and I put the 400 in to see how it ran.
The car had a converter and 4.10’s in it, headers, and exhaust that ended at the axle.
It actually ran fine....... no smoke, no weirdness...... so we took it to the track.
With Goodyear All Season Arrivas on it, babying it out of the hole to minimize spin...... it went low-14’s.
It came back out after the 440 was ready to go back in, and got pushed into the corner.
Before taking it out I did a compression test on it.
A couple cylinders were 110-115, several others in the 90-100 range, the one with the really rusty area in the bore was about 75.

The heads were “too nice” for the rest of it, and were pulled off and put onto a re-ringed 440 I was doing.

A few years later I’m looking to put something in my car to make it move under its own power while I’m working on another motor for it.
I had some well used, previous multi-valve job, sunk valve 346’s to put back on it.
Do yet another valve job, do a quickie bowl job, and bolt them on.
While I’m at it, I pull out the factory 440 cam and put in a used Crower 280 Monarch cam I used to run in my old 440.

Put it in my car, which has a factory LRE converter with the weight knocked off, and 4.56’s, slicks, SS springs.

Off to the track....... 12.70’s@103.
The speed is low-ish because the used factory HP springs start to float at about 51-5200....... which doesn’t quite get me to the finish line, so I just start rolling out of the throttle as it starts nosing over....... and just maintain that 51-5200 terminal rpm to the finish line.

I finish up the season with it(probably like 50 passes or so), then pull it out.
It sits in the dyno shop in the corner for 6 years.
The guy who owns the shop is tired of looking at it..... so it has to go.
Before getting it out of there, I put it on the dyno.
400tq/350hp.

I bring it back to my shop, where it sits in another corner for a while.
A customer who does some buying/selling of older cars is looking for a used motor for like a 65 Coronet.
I tell him the long story about the 400........telling him, it runs fine, no smoke, no noises.
But if you take it apart...... it’s kinda ugly.
He bought it, put it in that 65...... sold the car.
The guy who bought it had it at the track nearly every weekend for two summers going mid-13’s with 3.55 gears.
It was still getting regular street duty too, and driven to the track.

That initial build was done in the late 80’s, before I was working at a machine shop.
As the motor was when I put into the GTX, I had about $300 -400 into it, total.
It was just a fun experiment for me to see what you could do with a pile of used up stuff.

I know I know...... but that’s about as short as I can tell that story.

Sorta funny follow up.......
When I first put it in the GTX, it would skip and carry on at high throttle settings. Sort of like how they act with bad points or condenser.
That stuff was new, so I suspected it was something else.
Tried a different carb, still did it.
Well, the gas gauge didn’t work, and it ended up running out of gas.
Get the gas can, go get some gas...... put it in...... problem is gone.
The car had race gas in it for the 440....... and the cranking pressure was too low with the 400 to be able to use it.
The 87 from the pump worked a lot better.