In reply to RacetruckRon :
I'm happy to report:
In reply to RacetruckRon :
I'm happy to report:
Been chipping away at the engine pull and tonight my buddy Dave came over so we could remove the low compression 5.3. Time to switch over the cam and valve springs. And clean the garage.
Pulled the drivers side head off the "low compression" motor and now I'm second guessing myself again. Do you think this would cause low compression? You can see where the water sat, but it just doesn't look that bad. Maybe I should get a new compression tester?
Rings lost tension. Or it's cracked the second ringland.
In other news the head gasket looks really corroded.
This pic doesn't look like much, but I can't tell you how much work I had in cleaning up the long block. It was a ton of wire wheeling, scraping, and digging with a screwdriver.
Next is swap the cam and springs from the bad 5.3 and then paint the long block.
Isn't it just quicker to power wash the engine to get the grime off?
Just kidding...I'll see myself out
In reply to nsogiba :
I deserve that.
Hell. That's what I went through to get the last of three broken exhaust studs out. The stud would not take a weld. Had to weld on flat stock that finally stuck and then has to spin it out with a screwdriver and a hammer.
In what would be a surprise to no one, I made another mistake. When I got the exhaust stud out with a welder, I didn't put a spark plug back in and filled a cylinder with weld splatter/slag. So off came the heads to clean it all up.
Not too upset about it. I cleaned up one head, lapped valves, and put in the valve springs. The valves were nasty and the intake ports were also pretty caked with goo. Tonight I started on the second head. Going to reuse head gaskets and head bolts to stay cheap and stick with the sloppy theme.
I chickened out and bought new head gaskets from RockAuto last night. I just can't bring myself to reuse the stock headgakets being as filthy as they were. It's documented on Sloppy Mechanics that hundreds, if not thousands of people have reused them with no issues. I'll just feel better about new head gaskets.
In reply to Scotty Con Queso :
new head gaskets? Look at Mr Moneybags over here!
I kid. In my mind, the sloppy "recipe" makes sense if you don't ever pull the motor apart, much less so if you start dissasembling things anyway. No real reason to not put it back together with good new gaskets
I was going to say, I'm shocked you could reuse the headgaskets!
Come on man, you let the magic out!
It's probably not a bad idea to freshen it up with new headgaskets. Just leave the bottom end alone! That's where issues come up once people start messing with them.
In reply to nsogiba :
It pained me greatly to open up the new engine as I know, like you said, I've let a lot of magic out. New head gaskets inbound and I'll get it back together next week with any luck.
Way easier to do the cam and valve spring swap with the heads off. I probably wouldn't reuse mystery mileage head gaskets either but once I've put a fresh set of MLS gaskets on an engine I'll reuse them if the heads come off again just gotta keep the copper spray stocked up in the garage. I hope you didn't get too fancy on us and buy new head bolts too.
After cleaning up the 706 heads, I have now come to understand these are the crack-prone Castech 706 heads which almost always seep coolant. Maybe this is a non-issue, but maybe it will be. So I'm going to clean up the 862 heads that were on the low compression 5.3 and use those on the good engine. At least I keep learning things with this endeavor. Even if it's learned the hard way.
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