Slapping together a worn out, slightly damaged 400
 

Before anyone has a heart attack, please note this engine is only temporary! lol


I have a 77 SE TA that I've had for about 5 years now. It's a cool car, real SE W72 4 speed, deluxe interior, heat only, sold new in Bangor ME and spent its whole life there until I dragged it home. It spent about 20 years in the woods before I got it.

I got it up and running almost immediately, and put around 4000 miles on it before another vehicle needed an engine. This car had a non original 400 in it from a 74 TA, so I pulled it and threw it in the other car. I ended up selling that vehicle, so this car sat dormant for a while. Long story short, it'll be getting rotisserie restored, but I have other stuff to do before taking on that headache.

I'm sick of looking at it sit around doing nothing, so I dug out this 78 service replacement 400 removed from another TA. I guess it swallowed some metal thru the intake, and beat the hell out of one piston. However, the valves seemed to have survived, and the cylinder walls look ok. So while it's waiting to be restored, it's getting this cream puff of an engine.



I threw in a pic of it at Lowes for good measure

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Cool car! Glad you’re getting it back in the road every temporary with that replacement.

That’s some hammering it did on that piston for sure! Like the wing nut from the air cleaner maybe?

It was a solid chunk of iron. Basically a little square. I had to pull it out of the piston with pliers haha

Yeah, I really enjoy driving this car. It will be fully restored, but I'm recovering from the rotisserie resto just completed on the 70. I figured I might as well slap this back together and powershift all 200hp for a while

Polish up what you can of the sharp edges from that mishap to the piston.

Pull that head and take the valves out to see if the seats took a hit or if a valve got bent.
If it all looks good then slap it back together and make a compression test out of the car on that cylinder and if all is well then make those 200 horses do some work again.

I kinda half ass looked over the heads. They seem ok, although I didn't take them apart. Fingers crossed they dont suck!

Should be up and running shortly. The sets of long tube headers I have dont play nicely with the Z-bar and the steering column linkages for the reverse lights. Everything worked previously, so I'll just run the stock manifolds for now.

Getting closer:

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Did you run out of Quadrajets???

I have a few, but they're rough. I actually have the original to this car, but it's frozen.

Been there...

Sometimes I soak them in a bucket of gas, for a while... the gas will evap eventually...

Cool cool cool! I like all the things you're doing.

I've always had the opinion that a complete car that can't move under its own power is kinda useless.

I already have a few tucked away that dont move, I can't have another!

I loved driving this TA everywhere. Took it on multiple 150mile trips to go to shows, hardware store runs, basically drive it like a regular car.

It's time to do that again