I am happy to say that the engine Tres and I got from Wrench-a-part is in far better shape that I would have expected. Sadly as it normal with my shop, it took me an hour to make enough space to be able to get the engine off trailer. I also had to purchase another engine stand from Harbor Freight to hold the engine since my other one still has the Rover engine on it and the LS5 is sitting on the 350 engine legs.
After removing the intake manifold, which will not be re-used, It looked very clean.
Every single headbolt on this engine was nice and tight. I am starting to get the idea that this engine has been rebuilt lately. If you look closely at this head, it is the drivers side and therefore numbered 1,3,5,and 7, you may notice the exhaust manifold opening in the head for cylinder 7 looks oily. This will be a theme for this engine as it gets torn down.
After tearing it down to this level I am compelled to go a little further to make sure the issue with cylinder 7 hasn’t destroyed anything lower down. I pulled off the starter and the motor mounts, the front pulley and the oil cooler adapter. I then struggled with the un-greased engine stand to flip the engine upside down to remove the oil pan. Having come from the junkyard, the oilpan has a hole in it right next to the oil drain plug, which seems like a complete waste, but whatever. With the pan removed I inspected the oil pump pickup screen and tube and was very pleasantly surprised at the lack of gunk.
The minor milky spots on the pickup are from the inevitable moisture that will get into an open engine as it sits in a breakers yard. With this in mind I still needed to check the bearings and the cylinders. Knowing it is important to put everything back where it came from, I marked the con rod and caps with the cylinder number they came from using a set of punches from Harbor Freight.
I loosened the nuts and removed the cap and pushed out the piston to check both the rod bearing and the cylinder walls.
there is some clear wear on the bearings. The closest one is the cap bearing the the furthest the rod bearing. It looks like this engine was creating some serious power but nothing damaging to the crank. So it may just be a case of replacing bearings.
One of the lifters fell out while the engine was upside down so I cleaned it up and inspected it. It doesn’t seem too bad and may just go back in. The cylinder seems to be absolutely beautiful, I can still see the cross hatching in it.
Now the last thing to do is check the size of the bearings and the rings and order some parts.
