a built 400sb, was taken out of a monte carlo (running) 15 years ago. It has been in a barn upright the whole time, with no air cleaner and no exhaust manifolds. What are the chances of this thing starting up.

anyone?

It should do something. But I can guarantee it will leak oil from everywhere. If you do a full tune up. Wires, plugs, ignition stuff, rebuild the carb, it should run decent.

Steve

Sure it will run - but its life will be short! Let me put it this way, even GM, with cosmoline coated and bagged and sealed engine assemblies only considers ~ 6 years of storage to be acceptable. Your engine needs to be disassembled and freshened up.

Thomas

ok

any other thoughts?

if it ran it will run again........i have done this with a few engines in my teenage life.....give it a good cleaning (my preference) before puting in car....shoot wd 40 (alot) in the spark plug holes rotate motor few times buy hand......if it still spins ok.....drain oil and put some new cheap azz oil in it.....get the thing running.....changed oil and filter soon after it is started (hour or so). run it til it drops......most of them i had smoked for a few minutes after started but clean up.......none of mine i can recall had great oil presure some where around 15 to 20 psi after they was warm......but hey most of my motors that had sat for years was between free and 100 bucks. i couldnt afford a rebuilt motor when i was a teenager i had to work with what i cold get my hands on.......... if it blew owell find another one.......

It will probably run. Since the aircleaner has been off, I'd pull all of the accumulated dust, spider, junk out of the carb before I started it.

Mike

A gasket set is cheap, take her apart and inspect everything, replace the gaskets and fire her up! Heck, even if you had to rering the darn thing it would only cost about $100 total. I helped a collector get his car collection ready for Barret Jackson a few years ago, none of them were started the last 12 years they were in storage. 25% of them were siezed up. We used Marvel Mystery oil to get them loosed and got them all running but I'm sure ringseal wasn't very good with the corrosion that must have been in them. A good friend of mine pickled a 327 years ago and sealed it up really good, after setting for 10 years he fired it up and it had some siezed piston pins that broke the pistons on four cylinders, pins are one part that can't be treated for storage. Take her apart and check her out! For what it costs it ain't worth worrying about. And you don't want to waste a good 400. Bob

Yes, good old MMO is great stuff ta use to bring her back to life, imho..

Squirt some in each cylinder and pour 1/2 of what's left in the oil and the rest in the tank and crank away!!

AND bring her up fast so you get a good oil splash off the crank onto the cam!!

I sold the old 265 out of my '55 to a younger kid I knew and it was just cold enough there was ice in it! We thawed it out and squirted her up and I couldn't get it to catch??

So the Mechanic got hold of the throttle and cobbed her AND it ran like a charm once she blew the melted water out of her!!

The bad part of the story was that the kid flat tore it up bigtime shortly later just like he did his '57's, 283 motor that I got out of the deal as a core..

I later asked about my old 265 motor and all the younger guy's around the town/country that knew him said he was a dip-sh-t that could tear up a hammer and anvil and they all said he worked pretty hard at tearing my old 265 up!!!!

I talked to his Dad later too and he wasn't pleased at all with the boy but was fine with me b/c he knew I did try to help get his boy's car back running at a good price and that the motor I sold them was on the up and up.. (Summer of '66).....

pdq67

He, He!! The little 265 had that great big oil filter can up by the carb. on it!! I never liked wiping it clean with shop rags everytime I changed my oil and filter..