I went to visti Stumpy yesterday. He is about a 30 minute drive from my house. Small world! Nice guy. Bought the cradle with casters. There are cheaper casters out there but they are not up to the load of a Y-Block and transmission. Have my engine and trans on it now. I am impressed whith the quality and construction. Recomend it to anyone. Only $38  without the casters. $86 with the casters plus shipping. You get what you pay for.

It's air cooled. Thanks for the tip. 6 qts in the pan now.

You realy need more than 2 quarts to protect the trans, I cannot tell from the video but the trans looks to be externaly cooled. If so you have 2 cooling lines that should have been spewing fluid, without a full pan the pump and front seal are running dry.

If you are going to run it again you need to hook the cooler lines together and fill it till it's at least on the stick. the level will drop when the engine fires and fills the convertor, top it off to at least keep it on the stick. You will also need a rear yoke in the tailshaft or it will dump fluid from there.

If it's air cooled you can skip hooking the lines together as there are none but you still need fluid in the trans before you run it again

Good advice. I put one qt in the converter, and one qt in the box before I started it the first time. The engine has only run for a few minutes, with the transmission in park. I won't put the full 10 qts in the transmission before I install it in the car, but I should put more in before I start it on the stand again.

Thanks for the input. Sent him email for shipping costs and plan to go ahead and buy one. A lot higher than the one on Amazon .com but this is well built and will fit. Would be neat to set up my spare engine for display if I had room in my garage for it!

Sounds good, I hope you have fluid in the transmission, not good to run them dry

I borrowed a regular engine stand to assemble the motor. I bought the two-piece cradle from Stumpy for attaching the transmission and starting the engine. IIRC, I got mine from Stumpy on ebay.



I'm not willing to part with mine yet, but maybe in a few months...



-Rick

Thanks, Paul! I'll look into that.



-Rick

Did you make or buy the engine stand? Been looking at buying a cheapo on Amazon.Com for a 302 and modifying it but not sure if it is worth the $25 or $30 it will cost with shipping.

Well done sounds pretty awesome. What are you thinking of putting it in?


Mike Rizzo

1963 F100 "Rudy"

Daniel Island, SC