[MeanGreen1LE]

Well I’ve really done it now! While trying to clean up fly cuts and get them closer: things were going great, deepest point of cut on 4 cylinders so far were .090 to .096. BUT then I got to cylinder 5 it was only showing about .060” so I needed to take off quite a bit. Well as previously discovered only .005 of cut seemed to gain .028 of depth at the deepest end. So I attempted to use collar again. Snugged it down till I though it might strip and started. Drilled slow didn’t seem to cut kept checking collar to the guid with feeler gauge and it still pushed in. Gave the drill more trigger still didn’t seem to cut any and feeler gauge still Fit under collar. Ran it again sounded like maybe it cut. But still room under collar. Felt uneasy when I checked dial indicator. It spun way to far! Felt like I was watching a clock In A cheesy time travel movie. I feel nauseous; I quickly unbolt heads and HOLY frakin Shite. It finally cut alright. Oh no! It was actually storming during this with a little hail and good thing too because I’m not one to use expletives but my neighbors who live almost ½ mile away might have called the law. Ok so I didn’t like cut a hole in the piston but I measured and it was like .150” at the edge. I felt so stupid and really had one of those moments where I wish I would just have left well enough alone or at least just been patient and waited for the .040 gaskets.
So now while I guess I could probably cut the other pistons. It’s so deep I don’t trust it and it looks like ass! Plus I’m getting to the point of losing compression and compromising balance I think.

[MeanGreen1LE]

It’s currently late April 21
So I’ve ordered GPI drop in rods and pistons.
But of course they are on back order. (Specifically the rods I think. Thanks Biden bucks) and to top it off I now need that .040” gasket again which is still back ordered. (.040 is the thinnest you can run because the dome is a little taller)
Trying to ask Mast what can safely be milled from their heads and of course they won’t answer. I wish I had never ran across their heads and either just had mine ported or maybe bought the edelbrock rpm heads or saved for cdi. ( stinks too because they have some nice looking heads for big cube cathedral port I was really leaning towards for my 4th gen project)

Bought oil pan gaskets again and sway bar nuts
Bought bmr engine mounts and 4.065” ring compressor.
Went ahead and ordered .040 head gasket. I sure hope it doesn’t take till August like it says on summit.

.040” on back order. Ordered and received .051

[MeanGreen1LE]

Well it is now 10-8-21 my pistons came in a week ago (5 months+ after ordering) but they forgot to send the pins and rings. They showed up yesterday. I’m thinking about starting this project up again in the morning. It’s been so long I almost dread it. No! I do dread it. I ordered the mast heads over a year ago and my car has been tore apart since February.

107a reassembling heads after having the heads decked 20 thou. Put spacer seat and then guide. To prevent damaging guides I used this tool. Ended up using a blue shop towel between to protect them more.
107b unbelievably I did not lose any locks fully assembled both heads.

[MeanGreen1LE]

108a if you are new to this like I it is very important to lay the rods and pistons out where you decrease the risk of getting them oriented incorrectly. The chamfer side goes toward the radial fillet. Which is basically a little transitional area on the crankshaft. Drivers side chamfer goes forward and passenger backwards. The piston will have some sort of marking to establish the correct direction. These diamond pistons have an f for the front. (The f will be upside down for drivers side bank)

108b take note if you don’t know that there is and upper and lower bearing. It will also make the chamfer on the correct side.
Use a Rod vice if you have one. (Seriously suggest getting one this is a cheap one from summit but works fine). The rod bolts where already torqued down. Sorry no pics but I used an arp bolt stretch gauge to check the stretch and get another round of cycling. All but one worked out to be between 77-79 lbs feet to get the .005-.006 of stretch. (One was 73# I hope to be able to at least check it in car to make sure)

108c put spiral locks in front side of every piston. Then lubed up pins and attached rods to pistons. Then put in rod vice to install final two spiral locks in each piston. Remember 4! For each one. Spiral locks are not fun. Lots of good videos online but instead of a screw driver I used a plastic trim tool. (Blue in pic). Holy cow I’m so impressed with how good it worked. Was able to follow spiral without worrying about gouging my pistons awesome!

108d another step down. I hope they are correct ! I think it’s time to remove cradle then oil pan.

[MeanGreen1LE]

Nervous as all get out but here we go again start by loosening 15 mm engine mounts bolts up top.

Time to lift her up for the first time in like 6 months. Hope my hoses hold. (Discovered some of my outer jackets are deteriorated and need replaced.)

Umm no comment busted hose down a day and 180bucks. I got the car up in the air and was lowering it to put on locks and looked down to see a big puddle of red fluid. Holy crap seriously! I quickly raised the car enough to get it off safety blocks and lowered it down to place on wooden blocks. Was able to put wheels and tires on and push car over cables and hoses. Line was busted near motor. Could not see anything besides outer jacket frayed but it was squirting out. Fortunately found someone local that could make hoses so I was up and running again by late afternoon.

[MeanGreen1LE]

109 sway bar end links

Oil filter sensor remove again

Oil level sensor

Transmission lines. One on side of pan and the other front of cradle

110 aux cooler to cradle bolts 13mm

Loosened cradle mounts. They were on pretty good but not awful. The Ryobi was able to get them and it is weak compared to my air cat. I was worried because I thought I had put some orange loctite there.
Began to lower cradle. Forgot to take off the motor mount bolt id loosened then it easily came down.

111. Time for the stupid oil pan again. Bolts were easy but geez that silicone sticks that pan on there. My brother was over helping tonight and we pried everything place we could get to and finally he got it started up front this time. Again I hate this system.
Car is on lift with engine balance on jack stands. Hope to remove rods and pistons tomorrow and loosely place cradle and engine mounts to get the car back on ground for checking ring gap.

[MeanGreen1LE]

Was able to break loose rod bolts without to much trouble. Pushed pistons out the top. Was able to reach through and grab most of them.

My brother came to help out again. Since I had to lower the cradle I decided to buy bmr semi solid mounts. They were an easy install with so much removed and should make header install go easier later. I hope.

112
Time to try piston ring filing! I hate that there is no fail safe and after the fly cutting fiasco I’m gun shy. Actually I’m afraid I already went too far on one of the two I got finished. Hard to keep them square and when they are not your gap seems to big. I’m using feeler gauges and a manual crank filer. Using a roll of tape with an inch marked on it. Going to try and buy a 1” roll tomorrow and actually ordered a squaring tool.

Silver is top ring

Ok so yeah I ended up over gapping two rings by several thou. Do yourself a favor and buy a piston ring squaring tool. I picked up one from speedway motors. It’s the kind that’s open in the middle which allows you to pull the ring back up onto the tool. Works great.

I checked my bore with the miyotomo gauge I bought earlier and found them to be within .0005 of each other biggest to smallest.

[MeanGreen1LE]

113
Installing the rings was not nearly as hard or time consuming as gapping. There are numerous schools of thought on orientation but mostly just make sure the gap on the first two are across. I used this one in pic because it makes sense to me to not have the gaps on the thrust surfaces. But as I’ve seen many say they will rotate anyhow so it
May not matter that much. I used the wrap around method for the expander and oil rings and a lisle expander for the compression rings. It seemed to work good to me.

114
Lifted car where one person can sit underneath and I can put pistons in from top. Make sure you orient pistons correctly and Mach caps. Chamfered side faces front on driver and back on passenger so the chamfered side goes against the radial filet of the crank.

I had test torqued the rod bolts on the piston vise using an arp stretch gauge and recorded all the torque readings it took to get there. I had planned to use stretch method to install as well but it was a pita trying to do it overhead. So I just used my torque specs from before and duplicated them. My specs where from 72-79. I went ahead and bumped up that 72 figure as it happened to be the one I tried to get stretch done with the gauge. anyhow I’m reasonable confident they will be good being that many just use the torque spec and go. Be sure and adequately lube with the arp moly.

Back up top. Rotated crank to a few degrees before top dead center I put one spark plug in head and laid it on block without gasket and no bolt. Set dial indicator up over top of head. Rotated piston through top dead center and just beyond and watched for any dial movement. Luckily it didn’t even flutter so I don’t have any interference to deal with. I’ll admit I was nervous at this point.

[arpad_m]

MeanGreen1LE, let me know if you don't want comments in this thread and I'll delete this, but man, THANK YOU for this amazing story and the massive amount of helpful information. Can't wait till you post up all the steps and the final result

[MeanGreen1LE]

Originally Posted by arpad_m

MeanGreen1LE, let me know if you don't want comments in this thread and I'll delete this, but man, THANK YOU for this amazing story and the massive amount of helpful information. Can't wait till you post up all the steps and the final result

Thanks I appreciate it! And comments are fine. Hopefully it is not to hard to read through as I have literally just been copying and pasting the Google docs I made. I made it to help me remember everything and thought I’d share. Threads like this have helped me so much in the past. Stay tuned.

[MeanGreen1LE]

115
Rotate #1 piston to tdc is compression stroke. Look down through the lifter bores and you can easily see if cam is on base circle.
Install lifters; I think it is easier to put them in trays and then drop them in. I put oil holes towards back but I really don’t think it matters. My lifters have been soaking for months due to the insanity of this project but overnight should be fine.
Tighten lifter tray bolt to 106 Inch/lb.
mark crank bolt where tdc is so you can tell to rotate 360 degrees in next step.

Average exhaust 7.942875
Average intake. 8.0026875

Near tdc on ati balancer 320 straight up

Mod list for tuning.
160 thermostat
Gpi cam kit
226/246 .630/ .612. Lsa 115 icl 111
Msd Air Force ported by gpi
Ported katec 95 tb
Katech blueprinted oil pump
Rotafab dry
17/8 long tube off road
Mast black label medium bore heads shaved .020” springs are 160# at 1.8 and end up being 409/401 open pressure.
Callies/diamond drop ins
Jonson 2110
Factory rockers with Che upgrade
Aem wide band
Bmr semi solid motor mounts
Ati super damper 10% under

[MeanGreen1LE]

Super Damper Install
The Damper has to be assembled before you can install it. The instructions are not that great but it makes sense after you do it. I used this strap wrench to allow me to torque the bolts properly.
I have an installer from ICT Billet, (I think that is where I got it) After lining up the damper on keyway I put it on just using a half inch ratchet as far as I could. Then I used ARP balancer bolt. Make sure you use the right one as I think it is still listed incorrectly on their site. I used the supplied ARP moly lube but put Red high temp gasket maker under the washer to ensure it was sealed. Oh and one more thing! Do not install the damper before putting the oil pan back on!!!

I’m concerned about the angle I had to use to put the oil pan back on with. In addition to working around the dropped cradle I had to drop the rear of the pan down significantly to allow me to clear the damper. There was like .010” clearance.

Have I said how much I hate the GM RTV. I think it gives me near heart attack level stress every time. My wife helped me this time and started torquing the bolts back on. We potentially doubled up on one of the plastic guides in the hast in putting it back together. We tried to quickly figure out which one but did not want to disturb the silicone.

[MeanGreen1LE]

Sorry I’ve jumped around a bit here lately.
For example I neglected to talk about actually bolting heads on.
Biggest thing on that is making sure you put the short one In The correct spot.

[MeanGreen1LE]

Originally Posted by MeanGreen1LE

115
Rotate #1 piston to tdc is compression stroke. Look down through the lifter bores and you can easily see if cam is on base circle.
Install lifters; I think it is easier to put them in trays and then drop them in. I put oil holes towards back but I really don’t think it matters. My lifters have been soaking for months due to the insanity of this project but overnight should be fine.
Tighten lifter tray bolt to 106 Inch/lb.
mark crank bolt where tdc is so you can tell to rotate 360 degrees in next step.

Average exhaust 7.942875
Average intake. 8.0026875

Near tdc on ati balancer 320 straight up

Mod list for tuning.
160 thermostat
Gpi cam kit
226/246 .630/ .612. Lsa 115 icl 111
Msd Air Force ported by gpi
Ported katec 95 tb
Katech blueprinted oil pump
Rotafab dry
17/8 long tube off road
Mast black label medium bore heads shaved .020” springs are 160# at 1.8 and end up being 409/401 open pressure.
Callies/diamond drop ins
Jonson 2110
Factory rockers with Che upgrade
Aem wide band
Bmr semi solid motor mounts
Ati super damper 10% under

I used a comp cams pushrod length checker to measure for pushrod length. I counted turns up to ¼ turn, (.0125”) but used a digital caliper to get closer to actual. For me it was not that easy to determine accurately even ½ turn. I wish there were more than just the one line on these. For using the caliper remember that the length is not actual length. I measured the length of a “line” on measurement that was close and then adjusted for the difference. Then added that difference to the zero lashed check pushrod. Hopefully that makes sense. Lots of resources out there for finding zero lash. Personally I like finding that point where there is no sound up and down and still move side to side a little. I measured many times and was surprised at how much difference there is between valves. I feel confident in blaming the heads and think there is variation in either the seats or how rocker stands are machined. I think this explains why there was a little less clearance when I did piston to valve clearance in the first place. (oh if only it would have worked in the first place).