Let The Rebuilding Begin...AGAIN!

Nice wok! A pair of turbos would look good in there too...just saying lol. Someday I'll build something.
 
05cesrt said:
Nice wok! A pair of turbos would look good in there too...just saying lol. Someday I'll build something.
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Believe me, if I could afford a set of twins right now, they'd be going in the car. :)

So last night I started cutting main caps, and found out today that there was a faux pas made. I was taught to grind the side of the main caps on SBC stuff. Well I didn't do that last night because the surface of the caps looked just fine. Turns out that they were not, and I should have ground the side of the cap.:banghead: The caps ended up having .0025" of taper in them. Last night I started looking for new main caps just in case, but today I know that everything is okay. After they're cut and right I'll explain what I did to get them that way.
These are from when I thought everything was going A-Ok. LOL


I also got all of the valve guides knocked out of my cylinder heads last night. One was a bit of a pain, but it eventually came out.



I got new guides ordered this morning. I considered going with bronze guides until I figured out just how expensive they are. I plan on replacing the heads down the road so why spend the extra money?
If all goes well tonight, the caps will be cut properly and the align honing will be done. Tomorrow I get to order moar parts. :icon_psyc
 
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Lots of progress was made tonight, and I learned how to run a new machine.
I learned how to run the align bore machine tonight. It was used to fix the main cap incident from yesterday. The caps are all now within .0018" from being where I want them.
My friend (Jason) loading the bar into the block and explaining to me how to adjust the height of the bar.

Getting the boring bar dialed in on the rear of the block.

Doing the same with the front of the block:

Setting up the cutter:

All lined up:

Here's a video of the machine doing it's job:

Tomorrow I will align hone the block. Hopefully I will only need two passes (back and forth) to finish that part of the machine work. After that's done the block will get loaded into the hone and I'll start honing the block.
 
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Did you evere figure out how your main and rod bearings got so wasted? Wrong bearings? To tight? Not enough oil pressure? Just curious?
 
Good write up! You are getting way more involved than I would even hope too. I admire someone getting to know their car this deeply. And you are right, no one can screw it up but you and if you do there is a direct lesson to be learned when you Make it right. Inspired! :)
 
Falcon64 said:
Did you evere figure out how your main and rod bearings got so wasted? Wrong bearings? To tight? Not enough oil pressure? Just curious?
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They got wasted from the engine being put together dirty and not enough oil pressure.
sardeanie said:
Good write up! You are getting way more involved than I would even hope too. I admire someone getting to know their car this deeply. And you are right, no one can screw it up but you and if you do there is a direct lesson to be learned when you Make it right. Inspired! :)
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After this rebuild, I can say that I've done every modification to my car. I do believe at this point the only thing I haven't taken out of the car is the dash, the front seats, and the interior carpeting...LOL This build has been a major adrenaline rush. I love this stuff. In fact, I'm anxious to get to the shop this evening to finish up the machine work and make a final list of parts that need to be ordered.
 
Tonight started with getting the block set up in the align hone machine. Unfortunately it took a few more than two passes to get the main bores where I wanted them. I ended up having to grind a couple of the caps ever so slightly.


Once the mains were done, the block with into the SV-10. I love that machine.


The shadowing shows that the cylinders are getting cleaned up and eventually measured at 4.0055".

All nice and round with some nice crosshatching.

Here's a vid of the SV-10 doing work, and making my life easier.

So Monday I will start cleaning the block. I will also measure to see if I need to order a shorter timing chain set. I'll also order what parts I need to finish assembling the engine.
 
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sucks you have to do it all, but looks like it will be worth it in the end. major props for doing it all yourself, i wish i had that kind of knowledge.
 
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chunkybs said:
suck you have to do it all, but looks like it will be worth it in the end. major props for doing it all yourself, i wish i had that kind of knowledge.
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I'm having fun with the build. The only stressful part was finding out I needed to pull the engine to see what was wrong. Pretty much from this point on it's smooth sailing. Now if I could just find a carb'd LS intake to borrow for a couple of days, I'd be golden. I'm going to put the engine on an engine dyno after it's assembled to break it in and see what kind of numbers it will put down.
 
Thanks for the GREAT write-up! Sorry it took someone shafting you on the last build to get to this point.
I'm lucky in that I have a great machinist a couple miles away. I will be doing all the assembly work for my little engine project.
Still blows my mind that these asshats will rip knowlegable people off that way. Imagine what the run-of-the-mill customer gets!
 
OldbutNew said:
Thanks for the GREAT write-up! Sorry it took someone shafting you on the last build to get to this point.
I'm lucky in that I have a great machinist a couple miles away. I will be doing all the assembly work for my little engine project.
Still blows my mind that these asshats will rip knowlegable people off that way. Imagine what the run-of-the-mill customer gets!
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When I started the first build I was still pretty wet behind the ears regarding modding an engine. Now all bets are off...LOL


Today was a bit of a tedious day. I checked the block to see if it needed to be decked, and it did not. That was kind of a bummer because I wanted to use the CNC machine...LOL After the block was checked, it went into the wash:



The block got sprayed with WD-40 after it came out of the wash and was put away for the evening.

I ordered the rest of my rotating assembly today too. I'm sure the delivery person is going to hate me simply because of how much the crank weighs.
Tomorrow I will install new valve guides in the cylinder heads and wash the block by hand. I may even get started on porting the heads after the guides are installed.
 
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Who is showing you how to port?? Be careful. You can make the heads much worse VERY FAST, even if you think you are only grinding lightly. Also please do not "polish" the intake runners anywhere at all. Figured I would mention that $.02 worth as a precaution. Very cool that you are getting this hands on. Very good write up as well! Bummer about the previous engine builder, but now you get to learn :) Any idea what you think the new engine will make for power over the old one?
 
This isn't the first time that I'll port a set of heads. I learned how while I was in school (before I broke my ankle). My friend, who happens to be an instrustor at school, will be watching and giving me tips. I do not plan on taking a bunch of material out of the head. Thankfully I can measure them before I start and after I'm done to make sure I've done what I'd like to do.
Yeap, he took me for a ride but what can you do? Build a better engine and tune better than he does. :) It will make way more power than the old one for a couple of reasons. One, I'm stroking it this go round vs stay stock. The other reason is because a lot of care and attention to detail is going into this build. All of the little things make a big difference in the finished product. If all goes well I'll buy a L92/LS3 setup for my birthday and be done for a while with making the car go fast...LOL
 
Tonight was another tedious but fun night. It started with me scrubbing down the block to make sure all of the dirt and debris was out of oil galleys and threads.


While I was cleaning the block, I put my cylinder heads in the wash so it would heat up. The purpose of doing that was so I could install the new valve guides easier.
I learned a very valuable lesson tonight. That is being short needing to use a workbench designed for someone over 5' 5" sucks. After deciding that I wasn't going to be able to get the right angle on the guides on the bench, to the floor they went...LOL The guides are all installed at .682"


I also learned that going elbows deep in the parts washer can lead to interesting things happening to your skin.

Now I was elbows deep in the parts washer because I thought I lost one of my new valves. I had to clean the cosmoline (sp) off of them.

Jason and Zach thought I had lost my mind when I started laughing out of the blue. When I showed them my hands, they laughed too.
I also got the exhaust ports Dykemed and scribed for porting tonight.


Tomorrow I will get my piston rings ground and installed on the pistons. Then I'll move on to honing the valve guides so that the new valves fit.
I should also see my new bearings tomorrow. I hope my crankshaft and rods show up by the end of the week.
 
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Tonight seemed to fly by. My bearings came in this morning so my first order of business was to measure all of them and figure out what my oil clearance is going to be. Main bearing clearance will be .0020". Which is right where I want it. The photo shows my rod bearing measurements.

The valve guides were honed and the new valves fit perfectly. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of that process. I left my camera at home, so you guys are stuck with cell phone pictures tonight...LOL
Now that the guides are done, they are resting upstairs in the cylinder head room. I may get some flow numbers tomorrow. That just depends on if I get all of my rings filed or not. Disclaimer: That is NOT my cylinder head sitting on the flowbench.

My crank and rods will be here Monday, so I'll get all of my reciprocating and rotating weights done and know what to shoot for when I balance the crank.
 
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Tonight's goals were to get the rings gapped and start porting the heads. Well I got a pleasant surprise when I went to gap the rings. They were already gapped at .018" and .016". Thank you Robert. So all I had to do was mark the rings for the cylinders the are going in and I was done.


Since that was so easy, I got the rings, pistons, wrist pins, and locks weighed.



Now it's time for the worst part of my evening. I started porting the heads. Why was this the worst part of my evening? Two words: Flying metal. Shudders. It's amazing where little pieces of aluminum can get.
I also learned that for this process, being short is and advantage. :)



I got the roughness of the exhaust ports ground out and just barely opened the port itself. Tomorrow, I will work on smoothing the area around the guide out a bit and remove all of the marks left behind by the cutter on this head. I should have some stock vs ported flow numbers by Monday. I want to finish porting and polishing this head first and then I'll flow both (ported and stock) the same night. Once the heads are done being ported I will cut the seats for the new valves and surface the heads. I'm thinking I'll only take off .005" to clean them up. As it stands my static CR will be 11.6:1.
Monday will be exciting because my rods and crank will be here. I'll be able to get my rotating assembly balanced and start assembling the short block. If all goes well I'll have the timing chain, balancer, and gasket kit Wednesday.
 
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AutoRoc said:
Cam & Compression! It's gonna have that "cachunk cachunk" :eek:
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After talking things over with my friend Jason, I realized that my static CR will drop a bit when the valve job is done. Thank goodness.
Tonight I finished up porting one of the cylinder heads. There are two things I don't like about porting. One is I'm constantly afraid I'm going to hit water and the other is flying aluminum. That stuff gets EVERYWHERE. I'm waiting for some crosshatches from Goodson to show up so I can finish the heads the way I want (getting rid of the tool marks) and then I'll flow them.



 
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