After 3 years, I am FINALLY starting on my baby and trying to get it on the road by May or June. I have the engine out and have gotten it down to the bare long block. and I am wondering a few things.

I am trying to decide on how far I should go with the engine before installing it in the car. I am replacing the head temp. sensor, oil pressure sensor, and oil pressure sensor. I am going to replace the valve cover gaskets and oil passage plugs. I bought the engine from GAD three years ago and they assured me that it was a running unit when they pulled it. The engine turns over easily with no hangups anywhere.

Should I go all out and replace all the seals including the head gasket rings, or should I just do the minimum, throw it in the car and see if it runs before going that route?

What would you recommend?

Good luck.....what you have described so far does not sound like you need the engine out. Was it in a box somewhere? Galley plugs are the exception of course. Do some searches and get the skinny on those. To do it correctly and safely you will need to split the case. You will probably hear from different sides on the head gasket comment, so you just have to choose for yourself.

Have fun

The engine is already out of the car. I don't want to dive deep into the engine if I don't have to, mainly concentrate on getting the car on the road.

Any other suggestions? All comments welcome!

we have an engine running stand so what we usually do in that case is run the engine on the stand to completely check it out. The stand also acts as an engine service stand so if anything is wrong we can repair it right then. If you do not mind installing the engine and then having to remove it, it would be best to run it before taking it apart as the more you take it apart and perform repairs, the greater the possibility of creating more problems and variables. I would CERTAINLY check the compression while on the ground and or leakdown (compression simply by hooking to the trans and starter) and check the oil strainer for metal flakes.

So, I was going ahead and re-sealing the engine and decided to pull the heads to re-seal the push rod tubes and get a look at the cylinders, and all but number four were in great shape. There is a little surface rust on the wall of the cylinder, but the piston moves really smooth along the entire stroke and there is no pitting. The picture will show you the difference between the two on that side. I know I probably SHOULD hone all four cylinders and replace the rings, but I am trying to get the engine and car on the road on a shoestring budget at the moment, so I am looking for some info. Can I just have the one cylinder honed and let it go, or do I need to replace the rings in that cylinder as well? How might this affect the rest of the engine?

I can't seem to get the pictures to attach at the moment, so I'll put them up this evening.

Any info. would be helpful.

Thanks.

Your'e already in deeper than you need to be. You didn't need to pull the heads to reseal the pushrod tubes. If it turned freely, why open a can of worms? What are your intentions for this engine? Honing a cyl requires a deck plate to pretension the cyl so it can actually come out round. You also need to get rid of the ridge at the top of the cyl so you don't break the new compression ring. The real fix for this is new cyl/piston assy's. At this rate you might as well disassemble and rebuild completely. A perfect example of DWD (Dirk Wrights' Disease)! This is not to discourage you, but doing one thing always leads to ten more things that should be done. Put it back together!

That is exactly what I intend to do. I'm going to clean the cylinder and put it all back together. I'm just trying to get the engine in the car to drive and do a rolling restoration. The idea is to drive it while I build another engine with my spare block. I figure at this point if it runs, great; if not, then I will worry about it.

This one might be interesting. Subscribed!

You're just waiting to se how long before my engine detonates, aren't you ?

I know I told you to just put it back together, BUT Len and Jake have said to replace the valve springs and retainers as a minimum in a thread on World. I have an old 1.8 going back into my car until the 2056 is built and will be doing this.

About how much does the 2056 run to build? This is the engine I am thinking about building with my spare short block once I get the car on the road.

I've been accumulating parts over a long period of time and I've not added it up. Starting today, I think you could easily spend $5K just for parts. Check out Jakes Type 4 Store.

So things have been quiet for a little while on the engine due to time and money, but that is hopefully going to be changing in the next few weeks, hopefully.

Here is the picture of one of the cylinders:

Click to view attachment

This is the only one that looks like this, but the cylinder is actually smooth, so will tempt fate and run it as is. I did clean up the cylinder, rotated the engine mulitple times after oiling the walls and there is no unusual resistance anywhere in the strokes. I realize that I SHOULD replace the cylinders, but money is the main factor in that one.

The other three cylinders look like this:

Click to view attachment

Like I said, this engine is temporary until I can build one from my other short block and this going to be a fair weather car anyway.

That cylinder is junk.

The Cap'n