[massey478]

Hi Ed, good to be sharing posts with you again! The reason I made all of the adapters to put a 478 in my 1100 Massey was that whoever rebuild the original inline 6 had made the mistake of putting the exhaust springs on the intake valves and vice-versa. Resulted in the head coming off an exhaust valve right in the middle of the busy field season. It had scored the cylinder, broke down the side of the piston, and bent the rod. The motor was a Waukesha, so parts were not cheap. Regardless of the scoring, I put in a new piston, rod, and bearing, re-did the head during a rainy spell so I could at least use the tractor. I had the expected blow-by. I ran it a couple of years that way until it finally got so bad on oil that I dedicated a winter in the shop machining and welding the adapters necessary to put the 478 in it. It proved out well, power went from 93 HP to 205 HP. Traction is the biggest limitation now, but I leave it weighted as it was and just run a gear or two higher as conditions allow. I was told it would be a gas hog but I firmly believe a big motor loafing along will do better than a smaller motor winding up and working hard. Longer life, less fuel for the same work. I also modify the carburetors a bit. In my opinion GM ran these motors way too lean. We had customers complain about mileage; we would open up the main jets a bit and stretch the power valve spring a bit and their fuel mileage went up, engine temp came down. I learned to love these motors from experiences with them! One customer had a tri-axle dump with a 401, called in to the shop he had a miss and that he was on the way to get it fixed from about 20 miles out. To our great surprise we, expecting an ignition problem, found it had pitched the beam of a rod out the side, left the big end on the crank, hung the piston at top. It survived the 20 mile trip that way, idled with just a miss! We had a warranty 401 block that the GM rep had given us permission to scrap. The scrapper guy, when told the block had to be damaged obviously beyond use by anyone, said he usually just broke out the main webs with a sledge. He found he could not do it on the 401. I had to take a welder and carbon cutting rod to cut into the block several places to destroy it per the GM directive.