Repowering Miss Mary

At the beginning of this year, I pointed interested viewers at the Building Miss Mary blog post that gave a link to Paul's epic housebus project. He obviously has a tap on some large vein of cosmic vibrational energy, because he appears to get more monumental tasks accomplished than the rest of us mortals. This time, it's replacing Ms. Mary's engine with a herkin' 427 cubic inch V8 with 4 bolt mains. Read all about it at the new page: Miss Mary's New Engine.

Back when I repowered my Housetruck, someone asked why I was only installing a 305 cubic inch V6, an engine that was of industrial quality, instead of something like a Chevy big-block 396 "rat motor". Well, I found out pretty fast that there is no replacement for displacement, the V6 was an over-square, low compression engine that was meant to run forever while putting out only a modest amount of horsepower. Something with more grunt would have been a better choice, but after investing all that time (and money) in the rebuild and installation, I was pretty much stuck with what I had.

Mary's former engine was a 292 straight-six, which was an adequate power plant for a half-ton pickup truck, but hopelessly anemic for a large, heavy vehicle like this bus. The new, fully rebuilt engine not only affords Paul much better acceleration and top speed, but is 40% more fuel efficient. Sometimes bigger is better in more ways than one.

Lest you think that an engine swap is a trivial undertaking, have a look at the page linked above and see all the chassis shenanigans that were necessary to get this thing nestled under the bus's hood and hooked up to the rear wheels!