89 Crew Cab resurrection.....

[wyattglock]

Originally Posted by 87 chevy silverado

i bet u loved all those wires i know i did on my 87 haha

Oh yeah! That wasnt half as bad as the 90 Trans Am a friend and I built up to a 10 second street car back in the late 1990's. It was a complete nightmare! This wasn't to bad, still sucks compared to a carb truck though!

[wyattglock]

I got the engine and trans unbolted from the truck tonight. Thought I had everything, and of course I forgot something. Totally forgot to break the oil cooler lines apart! Realized this at about 7:40pm, so I went ahead and cleaned up so I could watch the Bud Shootout. I'll try again tomorrow after I get off of another unproductive double time day at work.

[wyattglock]

Got the engine and trans out. Lots of fun with a low ceiling and a tall unloaded suspension. I had to take the front wheels off and lower the truck almost to the floor in order to get the clearance needed to get the engine out of the truck. Other than a few very dried out clips that shattered on me, everything went about as I expected.

[wyattglock]

Got the trans and engine separated tonight. Went to the hardware store and picked up some new bolts for the engine stand I borrowed from a friend. Got the engine mounted to the stand, and remounted the starter. Took off the TBI unit also. Tomorrow I am going to do the compression check and get that done before I tear the heads and intake off.
The absolute best part of the day: The gas tank in the 1987 full-size Jimmy finally got such a huge hole in it while I was at work today, that it ate a hole in the pavement. So until I get the new tank I can't drive it back to work. So now I have 2 trucks sitting at my house that are dead in the water for a while. I had already ordered the gas tank, but it seems that it takes an act of Congress and a permission slip from God in order to ship a gas tank these days. Advance Auto had the best deal with their online rebate, so I am in a holding pattern while they ship it. Hopefully that gets here by this weekend so I can get the Jimmy running again. Of course then I have to get it inspected at work before I can bring it back onto the property. I understand about the damage to the lot, and dont mind them checking it out, but it is just one more thing that is piled on to my list of crap to get done.

[87 chevy silverado]

that thing was it the air ......good luck

[wyattglock]

Originally Posted by 87 chevy silverado

that thing was it the air ......good luck

Yeah it was a little scary for a while there. I would have preferred to have it a lot lower, but it just wouldn't cooperate.

For an update. I did a compression check tonight since it is on the stand and easy to get to. Here are the numbers;
Cylinder 1 3 5 7 2 4 6 8
PSI 153 115 153 153 90 120 150 151

I am going to short block it over the next couple of days and see if I have a burned valve, bad cam, cracked head gaskets, or any other issues that I don't want to get into right now. I will keep you updated as I go.

[wyattglock]

Yesterday my friend and I got the gas tank in his Jimmy swapped out. So now that I have a truck to drive to work, I can get back to my project. I will have to take a break at some point in the next few days so I can rebuild the brakes on my wife's van. But that is a small price to pay for the peace of mind of knowing it was done right the first time with good parts.
The plan is to finish stripping the block back to a short block and check out the bores and internals. Then move forward with replacing or rebuilding the engine and get it back in the truck. I will post more pics as I go.

[wyattglock]

Tonight I got the intake and drivers side cylinder head off. Since I hadnt gone back through the pushrods again, I paid close attention to the order of the sizes when I pulled them out. The drivers side were reinstalled correctly when I did the valve stem seals, tomorrow I will pull the passenger side and check that out.
I will also take some pictures and put them up tomorrow. The valves in cylinder #3 did not look right to me, and on my compression check I had only got 115 psi. The cylinder doesnt have any marks in it, however there was a pretty thick carbon ring at the top of the cylinder. The valves look white in color, like they were either very lean or not firing at all. They also have a grainy look to them, and I need to check, but it looks to me like they are not seating correctly. Now I am really interested in what cylinders #2 and #4 look like. I'll post more tomorrow night after I get more done.

[wyattglock]

I got the passenger side cylinder head off this afternoon. It didn't have a cracked head gasket either. Good and bad. I went ahead and tore down the drivers side head and took a look at it. If you refer back to my post about the compression in each cylinder, #3 was at 115psi. I found a piece of carbon under the exhaust valve that was directly in the seat area. It was holding the valve open, so more than likely that was the problem with that cylinder.
I also had to come up with a set of cylinder head stands. I didn't want to wait on some from Jegs, or Summit Racing. So I went to Menards and got some 1/2" x 6" carriage bolts, a 2" square piece of steel that had been predrilled with 7/16" holes, some 1/2-13 nuts, and 1/2 washers. I used a uni-bit and bored the second hole in to 5/8" on each side. Then I used a spacer, washer, and nut inside the tube and threaded the carriage bolt through them. Once I got them tightened down, I ground the threads off the bolt on my bench top grinder. The only reason I did this was I couldn't find a 7/16" carriage bolt. Taking the threads off allowed the shank of the bolt to hold the head, but not give it a whole lot of wiggle room.

[wyattglock]

Got the passenger side head broke tonight. I found a huge piece of carbon on the exhaust valve seat of cyl #4, and #2 had a lot of smaller pieces of carbon built up around the edge. Plus #2 had some pretty ugly pitting in the seat. Now I will be looking into either rebuilding or replacing the heads. I found a guy on ebay that has a set of heads for $325 totally rebuilt. He does buy cores, so if mine are rebuildable we are going to try and work out a deal.
The white arrow is pointing to the carbon on cylinder #4. The other pic is of #2, and the last pic is of my little gearhead! He is all about "helping" daddy work on the truck. At least he is interested in mechanical things of all kinds. For only being 3 years old he is VERY into learning how things work. Last spring he made me take almost 1 full hour to explain how everything on the lawn mower worked before I was allowed to cut the grass. But he could tell you exactly how to start it when I was done!

[wyattglock]

I got the engine broke down the rest of the way today. Had a rare day off of work. Got the cam out, the oil pump removed, the rear main seal changed, cleaned the carbon off the pistons and headfaces. Cleaned the outside of the block a little, and started getting ready for reassembly. The cylinder head rebuild is the big project I need to get going on this next week. Trying to decide what to do there.
Anyway, when I took the oil pan off. I found a perfect example of why silicone should be used sparingly on oil pan gaskets. There was a large piece of silicone that had been sucked into the pickup, and was blocking a large portion of the intake on the pickup. I am changing the pump and screen anyway, stupid not to at this point. But I thought I would put up the pics of it anyway. Enjoy!

[wyattglock]

I am taking the heads to a local auto machine shop tomorrow to get a quote on a rebuild. I will probably see about hot tanking them no matter what. That way I would at least have them clean so I can preserve them for later if I decide not to go with the rebuild. I keep finding heads on Craigslist, but either they dont want to sell or they "forget" the details of the heads. Good deals that need $750 of work dont seem so good later on! I'll post what I find out for prices tomorrow.

[wyattglock]

Going to finish dialing in the cam today. Should find out what the damage for the heads is tomorrow. Then it is a matter of buying all the little things I need to finish assembly. More to come!

[87 chevy silverado]

at least you found some of the problem...

[wyattglock]

Originally Posted by 87 chevy silverado

at least you found some of the problem...

I hear you on that! I need to put a good pic of the stock cam gear from the timing set. It is pretty clear that the chain was skipping teeth, definitely not good! I got the Edelbrock 2162 cam and matching timing set installed and dialed in. That should take care of the timing problem.
Good news! I talked to the machinist that is working on the heads, he said $325 for new seats, bronze guides, and .005" off the headfaces. That also included the hot tank and three angle valve grind on the valves. Believe it or not, the valves were just extremely packed with carbon. So they cleaned and ground them out and they look like new.
Today I got my new harmonic balancer and valve springs. I got the balancer installed and put the timing tape on. Should help a lot when I start the engine up for the first time.

[wyattglock]

Took some pics of the cam gear and some of the stuff I got today. I just bought a OEM replacement Jegs 8" externally balanced harmonic balancer, an 8" timing tape, and the Edelbrock valve springs. Getting pretty excited to get the heads back so I can really move forward with putting the engine back together.

[wyattglock]

Got my cylinder heads back today. Total bill was $319.83. That was for .005" off headfaces, new seats, new bronze valve guides, and a three angle valve grind. Not bad for only being at the machine shop for a week. I will take pics and post them tomorrow before I start assembly.

[wyattglock]

Got the heads assembled tonight. Went to a friends and tack welded the pickup tube on the oil pump screen so it won't move. Made a list of hardware to get while we are out tomorrow.
Here are some pics of the heads and my intake. I took the intake to work today and cleaned it while I was on break. Since I work on cleaning and inspecting engines all day, I figured the tools I have at work would clean the intake better than what I could do at home. It looks like I was right. The crossover passage in the intake was completely blocked off with burned carbon and oil. I had to run a carbide burr bit through it and then chip the rest out with a punch that I had sharpened. Had to wash it 3 times so I could see what I had missed and clean another layer out. You guys will like the pic of all the crap I got out of the heat shield on the bottom of the intake.

[wyattglock]

BTW, does anyone have an opinion on whether the heat shield under the intake is needed or not? I figure if the engine is running correctly, and it isn't all plugged up, the oil temp shouldn't be hot enough to cause early combustion in the intake.

[joe231]

Cooler air into the engine equals more oxygen equals more power... But I'm not sure that little shield does much of anything.....
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[wyattglock]

Thanks for the input. I figure I can try it, and if it doesn't work out I could put it back on. However, I can't find an aftermarket intake that has the shield on it.

[joe231]

Yeah
I thinks that's due to aluminums much better at dispersing heat, dunno though.
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[wyattglock]

Good point about the aluminum being better with heat dissipation. I didn't think about that.

[Gordonr1973]

Great thread....lots of info!!

Keep at it!

[wyattglock]

Originally Posted by Gordonr1973

Great thread....lots of info!!

Keep at it!

Thanks! I am going to keep plugging away as time and money dictate. Between working 2 regular jobs, and a handful of odd jobs, plus raising 2 kids, and the truck. Time management definitely is being tested!