[dodge trucker]

My son has an original, that has been taken apart, blasted, repainted and reassembled. We got it all in pieces to begin with. The engine was off of the tractor at that time. So I went through the carb, put new points and condenser in, and bench fired it. it started and sounded pretty decent so we just cleaned it up, painted it and reinstalled it. Since we have had the tractor all back together, I can tell that the engine is TIRED. He wants to rebuild it. I say no problem, as long as we can get the parts that we would need to do the job.

I remember seeing both wanted and for sale ads on here,
and any time a k161 comes up, someone will ask along the lines of "for an original or for a 70/71/72 etc?"
I have come across a k161 that I can buy for less than the price of parts for this engine, and I want to check it out. It is off of a 1967/68 ish wheel horse Indy 500 version. It has been rebuilt and put on to a shelf. I know, rebuilt doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. The seller has offered to let me pull the head and pan off for a look before I buy. So that sounds promising. This is just a long block and flywheel.No sheet metal, starter or carb. My thoughts are to swap those things off the existing engine and drop it in, so that he can use it while I go thru the original engine. A temporary engine if you will. So with that being said, other than the crank diameter, what other features of the short block are peculiar to the original? He also has a 73 that I haven't looked at yet to see if it may be runnable. Maybe put this on there eventually. What difference is there in a k161 used between these two tractors?

I have been caught up in swapping engines that were the same brand and model over the years but wound up being quite a bit different from each other, with more parts swapping between them than I expected. So this time I thought I would ask before I go after this rebuilt engine.