Engine Swap 1941 259 vs. 1956 308

I was wondering if anyone has ever swapped a 259/269 blue diamond 6 for a later model mid 50's 308? I may have a lead on a 308 that is in good shape and the parts seem more available for the engine. Other than the oil filter the engines look the same. I was just wondering what kind of modifications would need to be made if I wanted to swap the motors? I wan't to eventually rebuild the 259 since it is the stock motor but was looking for an alternative motor to drive while I rebuild the 259.

The FAC 259 was a wetliner engine and liners are getting hard to come by.
the 308 will bolt in place of the FAC and BLD, but the full flow oilfilter will not clear the steering box on the K series. This requires moveing the oil filter and adaptor which also houses the oil pressure relief. There are many ways to do this, and it has been done before sucessfully . You cannot just swap oil filter adaptors from the older engine as the way the oil system is plumbed is different between the bypass lube filter and the full flow system used on the later BD 282-308.
You will likely need to use the orignal bellhouseing and may be the flywheel and clutch. Most of the later (50's) bells are different and don't have the rear engine mount.

If you go thru with it, and swap bellhouseings, you MUST align the bellhousing to the new block. Most service manuals go into detail on how to do this. IT IS NOT aligning the chutch disk, but makeing sure the input shaft of the transmission is in line with the crankshaft. The bore of the bell for the input bearing retainer is what indexes the inputshaft relitive to the crankshaft. Once this is done, the disk needs to be aligned so the shaft can pass thru to the pilot bearing. It is very inporatant for long life of all componants. The tollerance for out of alingment is very small something like .005 TIR (total indicator runout) at the bearing bore. If the two shafts are not properly aligned, it will not prevent them from going together, but will require relitive movement and flexing of the disk for every revaloution of the crankshaft, which will wear splines and can even cause the disk to crack apart.

I once bought an oil filter kit that mounted the oil filter on the fire wall. A plate bolted to the block with two oil hoses that let to the bracket that bolted to the firewall that held the actual screw on oil filter. It made changing the oil filter really easy since I did not have to get under the car and fight with the headers.

Do you know if anyone ever made a remote kit for the old IH straight six motors?? Or I guess a different angle would be how difficult wold it be to fab something??

I think you will find none that will work, and the filter head itself will be in the way anyway. The Six cyl have three ports on the filter adaptor anyway. One is supply, one is filtered return to the block, and one is relief dump back to the crankcase.

Just wondering Cornbinder, if I decided to rebuild the 259, is there a source for rebuild parts you could recommend? Wet liners, pistons ect?

I only have ideas, no firm leads. Egge Machine (pistons, engine parts), LA Sleeve (new liners patteren from your old ones), Olsen gasket (gasket kits). Rings can be found by size and shape from a ring catalog (Sealed power etc).
You should know that main bearings are NLA for any of these engines, new. That includes the 308 which uses the same crank as the BLD 269. Rod bearings were the last time I checked. Mains show up NOS on E bay every once and while.
You might be supprized what a new set of rings might do, that way you don't remove the liners, and have to try and find liner seals etc. Clean up the bores, remove any ridge and hone.

Cornbinder, I like the ring idea. I once put a set of rings in an old 1950 ford f1 ( my first truck I drove to high school ). As usual with high school kids, I had little money so I went the low cost option, rings only with new rod and main bearings. My neighbor helped me do a back yard valve job, we put it all back together and it ran great! No more smoke and lots of power. I drove that truck for the next three years with no problems.

I checked ebay and I saw some main bearings for a 308 engine for 49 bucks! NOS that is. Are you sure the 308 main bearings will fit on the 259? The reason I ask is because I see more parts for the 308 listed so it sounds like a great option.

Cornbinder, are any other parts interchangeable like the cam bearings or the rod bearings?

There are two types of main bearings used. One has thrust washers and one has the thrust bearing intergral with the rear main. If the engine has the pin used to retain the thrust washer, either set can be used. You just have to "notch" the intergal bearing (bottom half) to go around the pin. You could remove the pin, but that limits you in the future to only useing the intergal type bearings.
I'm not sure on the cam bearings, something sticks in my mind that the later engines used a larger cam, but not sure on that.
The gaskets interchange, but the later engine uses larger valve as manifold ports.
I don't have any info on the wetliner stuff. I'm not sure if the head gasket will work on the liners or not.
The 282 and 308 have the bores machined right in the block where as the 269, 250 and the earlyer stuff all use cyl liners. The BLD series are dry, while the FAx series are wet. Many BLD250's got 269 liners when they were rebiult, as the only differance in the two is the bore.
Stuff like oil pump, water pump all interchange. The fuel pump is different on the earlyer blocks as it is mounted on the right (passenger side) where as the later one all mount on the left side of the block.