Rebuilding an older engine is a tedious process. Chasing down missing, broken, or otherwise non-salvageable parts, machining the existing parts to freshen them up, and generally ensuring that the engine returns to serviceable status can take months of time. In fact, in the case of this 331 Chrysler Hemi engine tuned up by Thirlby Automotive [1]‘s machine shop for Hagerty Classic Cars [2], the process took over ten months to complete from start to finish. Thanks to the magic of video editing software–and what we suspect is many emptied coffee pots–we get to watch the entire process, which the Hagerty team says includes over 40,000 photographs of the entire build.
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Not only do they take the engine from greasy status to super-clean sanitized status in just over five minutes, they also took the time to develop a one-off, tubular intake manifold to mount the triple carburetors and a new set of stainless-steel tubular headers to finish off the Hemi’s return to glory.
[4]
Perhaps even more impressive than the rebuild of the engine is the effort that went into producing the video itself. Cataloging all of the photographs, editing them to ensure that the exposure is correct throughout the entire video, verifying that an image of the block in the hone doesn’t appear in the middle of the intake manifold fabrication sequence–our hats are off to whoever the talented soul is over at Hagerty who coordinated this entire video.
But the fun doesn’t end there; they also installed the engine onto a test stand and fired it up to test its mettle. Is there anything else in the world like the sound of a rip-roaring old-school Hemi? We think not. Check it out below!