Where to find a 360LA Roller

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Mopar92

Mopar92

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I went to 3 major junk yards today. I checked for Van, Trucks, etc. Diplomats. I found some 318’s but I’m looking for a 360La roller. Are they really hens teeth at this point ? I remember being able to find them fairly easily. Guess times are changing. Ugh. How much will a core end up costing? What are you guys paying for them?
 
Man I guess I’m late to the party. All 360 trucks had no engines left. I’ll keep digging. I’ll find one. 1989-1991?
 
Mopar92 said:
Man I guess I’m late to the party. All 360 trucks had no engines left. I’ll keep digging. I’ll find one. 1989-1991?
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I believe 88 to 91. I'm not sure where you are located, but in Alberta Canada where I live they come up pretty regularly in the online classified we have called Kijiji, much like Craigslist. I have 4 of them complete down to belts and wiring harnesses, all mine had been mated to manual transmissions and still had clutches and flywheels on them, in short they were all very complete. The highest I've paid is $300, lowest $150. Ironically the lowest price one was the lowest mileage and had been on propane so had extremely minimal wear. This one is now the 408 in my Dart.

Hope this helps, if by chance you live in Alberta I would be happy to sell you one.
 
Pulled mine from a van from a junkyard. It was a complete pain in the ***. Came out the passenger door.
 
Vans are a complete pain in the ***. The last engine I pulled in a Van the junkyard owner lifted the van as I torched everything out of the way. Motor was in the dirt and the van was up 8’. Sketchy but was a 15 min pull. I almost refuse to pull another van motor.
 
I guess I have been very very lucky, everyone I've bought was pulled and on a pallet. Even loaded into box of truck with tractor.
 
try pulling a motorhome motor out the side door or worse out the front with the rad support removed.
 
I helped a buddy pull a 440 out of an old Winnebago. Holy cow. That wasn’t exactly a “ case of beer to help” good deal. We ended up sawzalling the side out and got it out that way. The yard owner didn’t want to damage the motor home. Yeah right. Once he said give me $50 and you can kill it.... that was the best $50 spent. Much less the $100 for motor and trans. Pulling a 440 out of a big boat was the only other worse engine pull. It’s amazing that pontoon boat,440, and engine hoist isn’t 100’ deep in Norris lake. Got it all rebuilt and he had the boat pulled to reinstall. That was absolutely brutal. Working down in a slime filled bilge. I’m glad my friends are good friends!
 
I’ve tried them all. I’ll go back to a few more yards and scrounge. There are a few older yards I have not looked at yet. Besides block date coding is there anything obvious that will tell me it’s likely a roller core? I may just go magnum if this turns into a dead end. I’m
Not he’ll bent on it.
 
look for fuel injection and black paint from factory, pull valve cover and rockers can look at lifters and see the dog bones and spider! probably have the 308 heads to witch are best la heads!! im looking for a few of them my self...DWB
 
Don't forget MP crate engines of that era used the same block. I picked up a used 380hp engine for $300 and when I pulled off the intake it had bosses in the block for the roller lifter spider. Score!
 
Mopar 92 , I am thinking that the core buyers are sucking up the 5.9 L engines . Much the same way they are buying the 5.7L . My local yard has 2 (5.7) and he wants $1500 each . He can keep them . Keep looking . Usually salvage yards have people waiting for engine cores to come in and often the high demand stuff goes out the same day .
 
I bought a whole '89 Dodge maxi van for 300 bucks. 116,*** miles, ran like a top and i drove it 45 minutes home. pulled the engine, tranny, radiator, and junked the body. I just pulled the passenger seat, and out the passenger door it came. was going to junk the van anyways, so wasn't worried about anything that got in the way.
 
I have two MP short blocks that used the 89-91 LA roller block. They came with speed pro 116Chp pistons .020 and a mp 509 cam. One is still in the blue crate container 15 yrs now...LOL....One is the High compression and one is the low compression short block. Same piston just different deck heights.
 
Mopar92, I’m sure you’ve thought about magnum 5.9’s. Any competant machinist can drill 2 oil galley holes. Or is the the 308 heads? I’ve had those heads rebuilt and then checked again after 10k, cracked under the seats. It may have been a good head 30 years ago, but in most cases, obsolete to the heads available today.
 
cpearce said:
I believe 88 to 91. I'm not sure where you are located, but in Alberta Canada where I live they come up pretty regularly in the online classified we have called Kijiji, much like Craigslist. I have 4 of them complete down to belts and wiring harnesses, all mine had been mated to manual transmissions and still had clutches and flywheels on them, in short they were all very complete. The highest I've paid is $300, lowest $150. Ironically the lowest price one was the lowest mileage and had been on propane so had extremely minimal wear. This one is now the 408 in my Dart.

Hope this helps, if by chance you live in Alberta I would be happy to sell you one.
Click to expand...
i live not far from u in northern bc, i picked one up in a junkyard, fairly easy to find around here.of course up north here its totally truck country
 
Good read. After learning that I can still run a mechanical pump on a magnum... this might be the way to go. And put Edelbrock or EQ heads on it. Plan is to start gathering parts for a 408.
 
Have you tried an engine core supplier if there’s one in your area. That’s how I found mine and went by the code number on the block. Got mine for 150 for the long block. Might try and engine shop too. Sometimes they have core blocks instock
 
rigger3006 said:
i live not far from u in northern bc, i picked one up in a junkyard, fairly easy to find around here.of course up north here its totally truck country
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Yes, same here. Trucks all over the place around here, not hard to find at all.
 
In my studies, I find the hydraulic rollers seem to have very long ramps to .050. To run a small .050 cam, requires a big advertised duration and usually, a lotta lift.
Here's an example; a [email protected], might require a minimum 276 cam to perhaps a 282. And the lifts are gonna be well over .500,and closer to .600

Another somewhat difficult thing to work around is cylinder pressure. The stroker has a swept of 836cc.That's a lot. It's somewhat difficult to get the pressure down with a typical street cam in the 225 to 235 zone, to work with small chamber iron heads.
Aluminum heads make it much easier, cuz you can run an easy 20psi higher pressure,typically.
I'm thinking a better idea, if you have to have a roller, is a solid-roller.I have seen those with ramps down to 39* and less This makes that same 225,now a [email protected]. Or the flipside is, you can run a 276-advertized/[email protected], or about 2 sizes bigger.The penalty fort solids is periodic lash adjustments and a bit of tappet noise.
A lot of advertised duration is not necessarily a bad thing with iron heads tho, as you're gonna need to dump some pressure when running a small cam..
With an LA block, you don't run into that; the FTHs run about 40 to 46 * ramps.
The solids, I think I have seen 29* ramps.

All I'm saying is to get your ducks in a row, in the planning stages so you don't have an expensive-to-rectify situation later.
 
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