Steve, my 1995 K1500 Cowboy Cadillac.

[MIHELA]

We decided to do a couple things while we were in there and replace my shot throwout bearing and greased up the splines and fork. We put the motor on the stand and started taking it apart for a cam swap. I had a worn out Vortec 350 that had a good cam and all the spider hardware so we swapped that and some new lifters. The rearmost exhaust manifold bolt on the drivers side was broken off flush so we had to extract that. We replaced all the exhaust hardware which was a pain in the ass. I even broke the distributor bolt, which required a reverse drill bit and an extractor. The timing chain was very sloppy so we replaced it. We ruined a rear main seal and had to get a local replacement. Then we reassembled the whole thing. We worked for 3 days on this in my 35 degree garage, so we were pretty beat.

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[MIHELA]

All went well and we buttoned the truck all up the next evening. We ran the engine a bit to break in the lifters. It sounded great, had good oil pressure, nothing seemed wrong. I drove the truck and it seemed a bit sluggish, which I attributed to a retarded distributor, which I corrected. The next day I drove it a few miles outside of town and it drove well. The clutch took less than half the effort to use which was awesome. I was really looking forward to having a nice driving experience.
I took the truck to work the next day and it was driving well, still a little sluggish but not too bad. After about 10 miles I went to pass a slow car on the highway and dropped it into 3rd and gave it the beans and it died just past the other car. I struggled to restart it and limped onto a side road. I limped it into the nearest town and left it at a gas station and got a ride from my wife to work.

 

[MIHELA]

I picked the truck up that night with my mother in law. I checked the oil level and it was high. The dipstick had read pretty low on the way in and I had topped it off. Well there was at least an extra quart there so I drained some. Full of sparklies. So I figured at this point the engine was screwed so we boogied it back to the house. I was making a racket and had no power but aside from wanting to die at a stop sign which I was luckily clear to roll through, we made it back to the house. At that point it was making a sound like an old diesel engine.

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[MIHELA]

And that was that. I already planned to do a Cadillac swap, so I started scouring Craigslist for an engine as cavemen did in the ancient times of 2016. I found a couple good prospects, and my friend and I left one VERY cold morning in a borrowed 89 truck to pick up and engine 8 hours away in Wisconsin. Temps throughout the day were about -16F.

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[frito-bandito]

This looks interesting! I’m definitely following!

 

[Wiscoburban]

You got me hooked make sure you keep going with this story

 

[98chevy2500SS]

Sub'ing as well.

 

[MIHELA]

The engine was out of a cream colored 1976 Coupe Deville with 105k. It was in really nice shape until somebody t-boned it on the passenger side. The guy that sold it to me was putting it in a demolition derby and had an engine set up for that already.
So now I have this greasy engine and trans in my garage. It has all the accessories and a trans. Where to start?

 

[MIHELA]

I started by taking a bunch of reference pictures and then removing the trans. It was sitting on a tire so I had to leave the converter attached. Here's a couple pics showing the damage to the passenger side as well. The impact shattered the passenger manifold and bent the hell out of the motor mount.

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[MIHELA]

Here's the TH400. It was in really nice shape. Since this car was a driver I assume there wasn't anything really wrong with it. I sold it in February to a guy from Spearfish for his Pontiac. All in all I paid 300 for the engine and sold the trans for 125, and sold thee kickdown switch to a guy from Hawaii for 70 so I did really well.

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