Rebuilds (was Re: more ramblings from Ken)

[ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com (Fluhr)]

>I've always thought the "only" (best, acceptable) 
>way to do it, is to pull the block, hot-tank/chemical 
>strip it, and check all the dimensions and such, 
>maybe even do a little boring.
>Just how half-@ss is it to leave the block in the 
>car, and hone it out and do whatever ridge reaming
>needs to be done.


I don't know if it is considered a halfway job or not, but this is
what my father and I did on his '82 Coupe back in the late '80's.
His car had around 160K miles on it and was burning oil, so he
decided to do a rebuild (and to use his high-school son as slave
labor for all the nasty stuff...I enjoyed it immensely).

We removed the head and had it rebuilt by a local So. Florida
machine shop.  We pulled the oil pan off and unbolted the piston
rods, then pulled the pistons out of the top of the engine.
We cleaned the block up, honed the cylinder walls, and re-installed
the old pistons with new rings.  We bolted it all back together with
the freshly rebuilt head, and that was it.

To this day the engine still runs well, with over 200K miles on
that rebuild.  It burns some oil, but that is not uncommon for a
car with 370K miles.  So, the kind of rebuild you describe above
has worked for us.

Later,
Eric
'85 CGT, '82 urq
---
Eric J. Fluhr                                Email:  ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com
630FP Logic/Circuit Design                   Phone:  (512) 838-7589
IBM Server Group                             Austin, TX