Hi Nailhead fans. So i have this 56 Century 4 door hardtop that we have had since the early 60s. It sat outside for years once we quite using it as a run about car but it is complete, nothing missing but it needs some work. I decided a while ago that it was too good to scrap so I put it in the shop and pulled the engine and Dyna-flow. To my surprise it has a late 55 264 engine. Someone switched to a Special engine before my dad bought it in 63 apparently. It was stuck but some Marvel Oil and soon i got it to move some, One piston was stuck pretty bad but I got it out and the rest spun easily. One piston was cracked and two more are eroded badly on top down to the first ring and beyond. I guess that's why we parked it but the bottom end looks great, even the bores are nice, just a slight ridge but now I'm thinking I could put it together with new rings and maybe 3 or 4 pistons. Does anyone know where i might find those pistons, the number on all of these is 1167451 but I read somewhere that is a part number, not the piston number but i'm not sure.
264 Nailhead Pistons
- Thread starter Fran
- Start date
As younger people, my friends and I put a lot of engines back together with a ridge ream, hone and re-ring. They never saw a machine shop or even a micrometer. I know now we were lucky they ran and ran better then they should have!
firstofeight
Experienced Member
Did that all the time! Re-ring at 60000 =80000, lasted another 60. How many of us will put that on an old car today.
Ben
Ben
All of you guys are right about that, I know, I've fixed a lot of engines on large farm tractors, some we just wanted to see them run again and didn't want to pour a whole lot of $s into something that was just a toy and others I went all out as in boring, new rings and pistons, bearings if needed but those were on the workhorse models. This 56 needs a lot of work, interior must be all redone, brakes, glass, floor boards, transmission checked out and probably gone through so I just didn't want to pour a ton of money into a motor that isn't even the correct one for this Century and that really doesn't show that much wear. It's never going to win a show I'm sure, but I'll bet new rings would give it plenty of compression to run good but I don't have enough usable pistons without buying a new set and rings and getting it bored to the size. That's probably the way I'll end up doing it anyway but I was just checking with everyone to see if there was 3 or 4 good pistons laying around that someone wanted to part with. Thanks.