Can I efficiently rebuild an internal combustion engine?

Schurkey said:

Oiled, sealed in plastic bags that have had the air vacuumed out of them.

Otherwise, you'll have a rusted mess when you come back to it a few years from now.

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A trick I learned from the old man.
When you bag it and oil it, put a turkey pan full of charcoal in the lifter valley.
Swap it out once a year.
Sucks up all the moisture and will keep a block like new for years.
If you store it with the heads on, back the rockers all the way slack.
Sitting for years with spring tension can bend the cam

thinger2 said:

A trick I learned from the old man.
When you bag it and oil it, put a turkey pan full of charcoal in the lifter valley.
Swap it out once a year.
Sucks up all the moisture and will keep a block like new for years.
If you store it with the heads on, back the rockers all the way slack.
Sitting for years with spring tension can bend the cam

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Sounds like overkill. I dumped a case of cheap crap oil into a Vortec 350 with a spun bearing and a bit down each cylinder. 4 years later I tore it down and bagged it and it was flawless. It's still waiting for me to blow up the current engine so I can stroke it.

Supercharged111 said:

Sounds like overkill. I dumped a case of cheap crap oil into a Vortec 350 with a spun bearing and a bit down each cylinder. 4 years later I tore it down and bagged it and it was flawless. It's still waiting for me to blow up the current engine so I can stroke it.

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Not overkill in the PNW at all.
It is never dry up here.
We have forums dedicated to moss removal.
Rain gear and gore-tex and stinky wet dogs are a part of dating strategy and often used as pick up lines at the bar.
We walk around with our chins up, not because of pride.
We are trying to see how many shingles blew off of the roof last night.
We park our cars depending on the latest NOAA weather report in order to decide which 100 foot tree is most likely to crush them like a beer can based on the wind direction.
The moral of the story..
If you move to Seattle, dont date a girl who has moss on her head and smells like a wet dog and has lost all her shingles

thinger2 said:

Not overkill in the PNW at all.
It is never dry up here.
We have forums dedicated to moss removal.
Rain gear and gore-tex and stinky wet dogs are a part of dating strategy and often used as pick up lines at the bar.
We walk around with our chins up, not because of pride.
We are trying to see how many shingles blew off of the roof last night.
We park our cars depending on the latest NOAA weather report in order to decide which 100 foot tree is most likely to crush them like a beer can based on the wind direction.
The moral of the story..
If you move to Seattle, dont date a girl who has moss on her head and smells like a wet dog and has lost all her shingles

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My case study was back in MI where plastic rusts.

When it comes to cylinder bores, I'll measure them with the digital caliper and use a straight edge to check for wear. If there's an issue, it goes to the machine shop, otherwise I roll with it. If I were professionally building motors I'd buy the high-dollar micrometers for measuring the bore, but I'm a low-dough-*****.

I got burned by buying a busted LQ9 back in 2014 or so. Plan was to put in in my 99 Silverado. The front main bearing had spun. I half-tore into it and stayed like that until last summer. By then water had gotten into it. I did finally get it disassembled, after struggling with seized stuff. The first 2 mains seem the worse, but the cam, rod and remainder of the main bearings actually looked okay.

Decided against rebuilding for the time being because I don't really have the knowledge, money, and time effort. A local place quoted me like $1,600 for a complete rebuild. I had bought a book on rebuilding LS engines too. But it does get expensive quickly. Bearings, complete gasket set, and misc. items add up. Don't even get into rotating assemblies, forged stuff, etc. Sadly, the engine block is in my backyard with a plastic bag, probably getting wet.

My buddy kept trying to persuade me to rebuild it, as those engines are pretty popular. But the only way I can think of doing it on a budget is to get ahold of precision measuring instruments that I don't own and take my own measurements and see what it really needs to be done; basically, be my own machinist. At the bare minimum probably needs align (line?) boring, crankshaft grinding, and I don't know what else...

Maybe I'll rebuild it at some time down the road, but in the meantime I got a complete, working 5.3 for my swap for a whopping $400.

From a certain perspective, bore wear is easy to judge.

Clean the carbon off the bore walls with some solvent (carb spray, mineral spirits, gasoline, etc.) and a wire brush. Especially scrub the area above ring travel.

Can you catch a fingernail on the ridge, anywhere, on any cylinder?

Engines with feedback fuel injection, quality oil, and overdrive transmissions don't create top-of-cylinder ridges the way carbureted engines did. When I got into this business, I was told in Trade School that a cylinder could have up to .007 bore wear, (.0035 ridge) and still be usable for a "grandma" car. Now. service limits are .001. (.0005 ridge) I had .001--.0015 wear on the block I stuffed into my K1500; so far, so good.
Sure, you sometimes run into bores that have something other than typical bell-mouth wear. It's possible that you could have some other problem with the cylinder walls. Point is, USUALLY we see the most wear at the top of the ring travel. If that's worn enough to be a problem, there's no point to going any farther with home-grown measurements, calipers, straight edges on the bore walls--it's bad. Save the straightedge and feeler blades for the gasket surfaces.

I ran a 3 stone hone down my LT1 for a garage rebuild back in 2015. No ridge for the fingernail as it had under 100k on it (I ran it low on oil and spun a rod bearing because racecar) so imagine my surprise when the hone revealed how unevenly worn those cylinders were! As Schurkey pointed out, the worst was at the top, but specifically it was near the top where the thing was firing. There were 2 distinct imprints from the rings. They went away with a few more passes, but they were definitely there when I started.

Schurkey said:

Engines with feedback fuel injection, quality oil, and overdrive transmissions don't create top-of-cylinder ridges the way carbureted engines did.

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Not trying to call you out, but I believe it's more an issue of better metallurgy and tolerances. According to my friend who sold me my '76 Cadillac, it had 300,000+ miles with the stock 500. The machinist measured the bottom end five times because it had "no discernible wear" (his words) on it. There was no bore taper. That was with a Quadrajet, the same oil, and a non-overdrive TH-400. They're high-nickel-content blocks, and on initial assembly they graded the bores and pistons to match. There were twelve piston sizes in .0002" increments. My '69 Cadillac's 472 had the same grade markings and a similar lack of wear. Our motors don't have the same blueprinting, but I do believe GM's metallurgy improved in the interim. The improvements you mention probably also deserve a lot of credit.

Erik the Awful said:

Not trying to call you out, but I believe it's more an issue of better metallurgy and tolerances. According to my friend who sold me my '76 Cadillac, it had 300,000+ miles with the stock 500. The machinist measured the bottom end five times because it had "no discernible wear" (his words) on it. There was no bore taper. That was with a Quadrajet, the same oil, and a non-overdrive TH-400. They're high-nickel-content blocks, and on initial assembly they graded the bores and pistons to match. There were twelve piston sizes in .0002" increments. My '69 Cadillac's 472 had the same grade markings and a similar lack of wear. Our motors don't have the same blueprinting, but I do believe GM's metallurgy improved in the interim. The improvements you mention probably also deserve a lot of credit.

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Excitedly wringing hands as I get more and more anxious about picking up my 500 inch Caddy....