well I picked this up last Sunday and towed it home

with my van and the dolly.

its a 1972 Chrysler ch 360 but with a 318 2bbl carb engine.

Australian import rhd which is the main reason I bought it.






I have been checking through the history and the engine was changed
in 1996 to a 318 5.2 litre v8.

ive sorted the exhaust out il add pics and details of that later.

the transmission wouldn't shift if getting on it hard so I dropped the pan off.




it should have about 9 pints of oil in it, it had 1 pint !

and after reading up about what it was the accumulator adjuster had come loose and the adjuster had backed right of and was bashing its way through the pan !


I then hooked an oil pressure gauge and found 5 psi hot idle, 25 psi max revving !
not good so off came the sump.




oil pickup was badly blocked with sludge and old gasket so I fitted new melling stock pump and pick up but oil pressure remaind the same





so ive pulled the sump off again and the inlet and both heads.





the whole engine is a big sludgy mess far worse than ive ever seen.

12 of the 16 lifters were seized open so I stripped and cleaned and freed them all off.
pulled the big ends and they look good and as far as I can tell standard size.

I pulled the mains and there 10 thou under and they are absolutely shot !

crank is marked everywhere but still round I think, once I dropped the caps the bearings were loose in the caps but havnt spun, upper bearings havnt deformed at all.

the rear most main has a oil groove all the way round so I have an original area of crank to measure from. the crank has worn 4 thou all the way around but the area which has no wear is 2.490" which is the exact size of the main bearings at 0.010" grind !

it appears to me the crank has been ground and not left any clearance or maybe 0.0005" at best !
I don't have time to pull the engine and get the crank ground as harvest is just around the corner so im gonna roll in a set of new mains and a high volume oil pump aswell with 25% more flow and hope for the best.

the engine wasn't knocking just low pressure hot.


that's the story so far im gonna order the parts on Monday and get her back together next week hopefully.


im now looking for another 318 engine so I can build it up with high comp pistons and ported heads with a high rise intake and 4 bbl carb so I can drop it in when it gets painted.