Sure look clean.
Valve guides might be good too, in as much as a picture can tell you. lol
Sure look clean.
Valve guides might be good too, in as much as a picture can tell you. lol
In reply to a_florida_man :
To do a good job of removing the carbon from the ring grooves use white Vinegar.
Grocery store vinegar is only 10% good stuff while hardware store ( Home Depot/Lowes/Menards) can be as high as 30%. Do use the 30%. The other stuff will take more than a week to work. While overnight with the good stuff will loosen the rings and 2-3 days will have them completely clean.
I have tried everything else. ATF and acetone would eventually work but not as quick or clean as White vinegar
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:Pulled a couple of valves last night, but I learned to hate and fear the valve spring compressor. I have another one ordered. I'll definitely replace the valve seals.
Once the heads are stripped, I can check them for cracks. I've got some of the chemical spray on crack detector material. Then, I'm going to tear down both short blocks and assess the situation. I'll get one running engine out of this yet.
Missed this last night. Glad you're plugging away.
I located the origin of the valve seal spring that was on the oil drain plug magnet. Cylinder 2, exhaust. I haven't pulled apart the other head yet, but I can see the springs are present.
I'm replacing all of the seals.
It appears that the intake runners had the valves unshrouded a bit, but the bowls are untouched.
I don't know how much metal is there normally.
There's also indication of a bit of grinding around the edges of the intake ports. I don't have a gasket set yet, so I don't know if that is enough to call it gasket matched, but it doesn't look like it.
A little bit of portwoork that may make marginal gains is better than too much that kills flow.
And i have an engine here with Similar cylinder rust that i paid way more for. So i feel your pain.
I'm concentrating on the heads right now. If I don't have two good heads, it doesn't matter what the short blocks are like.
The one short block has the rusty bores but rotates easily, the other one has cross hatching still visible except for a half dollar size spot that's smoothed by the broken ring, but is still hard to rotate, even with crankshaft, cam, flex plate, balancer and timing chain the the only remaining moving parts.
After I confirm the heads are good, I'm going to get a balancer puller and tear down both short blocks. I'm going to measure the bores in the original engine, see if they're out of round.
if I'm lucky, maybe I can salvage the original engine, leave the junkyard purchase out of the challenge budget, and sell that four bolt main engine to Stampie for the 383 build for his corvette.
No cracks.
Valve heads are buffed with a dremel and valves are lapped.
The deck surfaces on the heads aren't perfect, but they're flat.
Almost ready to start on the short block.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
Cool! Next thing you know you'll be running 10s at the Challenge.
Stampie said:In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
Cool! Next thing you know you'll be running 10s at the Challenge.
Lots left to do, and lots of potential problems, but I'm plugging away at it.
The Ralliart and the civic (Vtec-slow) have required some of my time recently too.
Tomorrow I want to clean the heads again (valve lapping abrasive) and reassemble them. I'd like to start on the short block, but I also have to work on my refrigerator and finish rear shocks on the civic. Plus laundry and cooking.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
Laundry and cooking can wait. Everyone can deal with dirty cloths and lose some weight.
Did you ever pull the timing chain?
Updates?
Crank wouldn't rotate even with the timing chain off. Here's the most abnormal bearing.
Thanks for thinking of me. If the rest of the fleet wasn't in constant need of attention I might make progress.
Everything else I own needs my attention right now.
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:Crank wouldn't rotate even with the timing chain off. Here's the most abnormal bearing.
Thanks for thinking of me. If the rest of the fleet wasn't in constant need of attention I might make progress.
Everything else I own needs my attention right now.
I can relate.
Glad its still around.
It'll happen...
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
I still need to come down and spend a day. We can pretend that we get some work done.
I took some days off to work in the garage so I could organize things. Turned out that was the week the garage was 102 degrees every day.
Still, weather's been better, hopefully I'll get a chance soon. Civic needs some brake work and a set of plugs, valve adjustment, and now that the rattle in the front suspension is fixed, there's a clunk coming from the back.
I'm probably going to save time by not working on the GMT400 anymore. It will be for sale soon, looking at a newer old Toyota or another GM .
Ever wonder what was going on with this one? Us too I think. I came down today (well after midnight so yesterday) and we got back on it.
First we stood around and talked about what the plan was. I wanted to throw the good heads on the new short block. Eric wanted to pull the pistons and crank on the new engine to make sure it was good.
Bore inspection showed no cross hatch and some surface rust. I was suspecting he was right. We started pulling the pistons and pretty much every one had multiple stuck rings. That said it was the worse thing about the tear down. Everything spun easy and the pistons came out real easy. It was obvious that this block was in much better condition than the other one.
We got down to the crank and called it a day. Tomorrow I'll go back and see what all we can get done. Sorry I slacked at pictures but here's some SBC porn for y'all.
Always nice to see this thread pop back up.
In reply to jfryjfry :
You said it.
This morning started with removing the crank. Eric already pulled the caps because Bob and I were slow. The main bearings looked great. Well great as this is the only one that showed anything.
The block was then rolled out and underwent it's first cleaning.
These are two pictures of the worse cylinder. Should clean up nice.
The pad didn't have any markings. Think it was decked or vortec SBCs just not marked?
Also thanks to a_flordia_man for some phone a friend advice this morning.
I'm plugging away, block hasn't had a comprehensive cleaning yet but I've been working at it. It's going to take a lot more cleaning before I can hone it.
I had bought a spring loaded stone type hone from the hammer store, but after watching a bunch of YouTube videos, then taking another look at the tool, I decided it's not even good enough for a challenge engine.
Brush hones are at least $60-100 each, and I had thought of using two, a 340 and then a couple of passes with an 800. I don't mind buying tools, but when I know I am very unlikely to ever use them again, it's not so great.
My new engine came in the mail. Some assembly required.
The pistons are soaking in parts cleaner, trying to free up the rings. It's been about a week and all of the top and middle rings are loose, and three of the oil rings are coming free.
Today I'm polishing the crank journals. I was going to do the front brakes on the Ralliart wagon, but some dumbass (me), only ordered one rotor.
The shoelace and metal polish method. Slow going, but I'm listening to Junk Connoisseurs, so that's good.
First main done with the sanding, not polished yet.
I'm also working on getting the GMT400 ready to sell, so that's been using up some time.
I don't know if I'm going to have this going in time for the challenge, but I'm registered for the post challenge track day already. If the Morris isn't ready, I'll still be there helping.
Bob and I had the honor of driving up while Eric was in the middle of polishing his crank. Looks real good in person. Sorry we couldn't spend more time.
Stampie said:Bob and I had the honor of driving up while Eric was in the middle of polishing his crank. Looks real good in person. Sorry we couldn't spend more time.
Could have phrased that differently. 
Taking longer than I expected, but what doesn't? I'll finish it tomorrow.
The rings are all unstuck except for the oil ring on one piston.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
He could have? You sure?
The crankshaft is polished. Way more hours in it than I expected, probably 4-5 hours at least.
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