Life span of a 134L

The Dodge 218 (1931 to 1954) which I have written about in other posts has a 3.25 x 4 5/8 bore and stroke and produced 91 HP and lots of Hi performance equipment was made for it back in the day. I owned a 1940 Dodge Business coupe with the 218 in it and I can tell you with its 3.90 final drive that car had no trouble at all doing 100mph. The car when I bought it had well over 200K on the clock. And it ran like a swiss watch I do not know if the engine had been rebuilt as I never had the head off.

I knew guys at the time (1977-79) who were running 2 and 3 carb manifolds and one of them had an Aluminum Marine head on his 218 in a 1934 Dodge 3 window coupe.
 
So as you can see the 134L is not the only "under Square" engine to be successful. The 218 had a run as long as the 134L (as we know it not the earlier version)

134L 1940 to 1964  24 years
218   1933 to 1954  21 years

I have no idea what the "Max RPM" of the 218 was as at 105mph with L-78 x 15 tires and 3.90 gears at 105MPH (the fastest I ever had it that I was certain of the speed) I still had some pedal. I also know 4000rpm is not the max rpm for a 134L Having exceeded that a number of times in Chug in the late 70's.

jpet wrote: Sure, anything is possible, but you would think that if an L134 was able to go 100k miles before a rebuild, someone somewhere would have actually seen or heard of one doing it.  From testimony, I think the odds are against it. ..... That being said, I still think it goes back to a person's opinion of acceptable oil consumption.  GW's motor was still running good at tear down.  i just got tired of dumping a quart of oil in every trip.  I guess there is no reason to believe the motor wouldn't make 100K.

X2..... The speedometer/odometer system rivals the engine in longevity .....

Lee

Edited by Lee (MN) - 03 Sep. 2017 at 3:20pm

Dad put some where North of 55,000 on Chug in less then 7 years. It was at the time (1960's) his way to work every day. Now if you are only building a toy then yes you might not live long enough to get anywhere near that now days.

I plan on driving the heck out of Chug once I have it finished.