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Engine Building & OverhaulingAll you ever wanted to know about building and rebuilding engines in here! Remember to post your model-specific questions in the correct section.
new to this forum and to Chevy big block engines.
A little bit of background to put things into perspective and to explain, why I my questions are not car-model specific. I am a glider pilot and one of the prevalent methods of launching gliders in Europe is by using a so called Winch. Imagine that winch being made up from a large engine, transmission and rear-axle. There can be one spool of Spectra-line or two. That line is typically 3-5,000 ft long. The winch is positioned on one end of the airport - the gliders are on the opposite end. The engine accelerates the glider very quickly to lift-off speed after which it flies up a trajectory at about 45 degrees to a release altitude of around 2,000 ft in about 30 seconds. The line is reeled in, a small car or golf cart brings the line back to the launch point - rinse, dry, repeat! ;-)
These winches are typically powered by large displacement V8 gasoline engines or I6 Diesel Truck engines.
Here are two links to videos showing the winch I helped to build for for my club here in SC. It is powered by a Ford 460 engine only because it was locally available for a 'song and a dance'. I rebuilt and mildly hopped it up and it dyno'ed at 310HP and 460ft# with a very flat torque curve, which is ideal for this application:
A club in Europe bought a used winch which is quite old but functioning and it has all the parts in working order. The previous owners used it for a long time and they were not the original builders. They claim that the engine is a Chevy/Oldsmobile 454 but could not show any evidence of it.
This is where I am hoping to draw on your collective expertise and help me to identify this engine. I uploaded ten (10) photos I was able to take in the very cramped space this winch was stored at.
If any of you experts can tell me what we are looking at here, I would be very grateful.
Happy New Year, y'all!
Wow - 45+k views of this thread but no reply.
Can anyone at least confirm that the transmission I show from both sides is a TH400? I did a bit of sleuthing and found pictures of TH400 transmissions. It seems that this model was only coupled with 454cuin engines. If that is true, then I would be already one step ahead of the game.
The following a link that will help identify the size of your engine block. The site will show you where to find the “casting number” and the resulting block size (CID).
I hope that this helps.
~Jack
Can you help me identifying this engine?
