I pulled the heads off yesterday. Both head gaskets (FelPro 1074) looked uncompromised. I didn't see any failure areas even though I'd been pushing water for the past year anytime I stayed in boost. The interior of the motor looks amazingly clean. The ONLY thing I saw was that the upper side of Cylinder #4 had some surface rust on it. If it had standing water, I would've thought any rust would've occurred on the bottom wall, near the piston. That part was shiny metal. I sprayed WD-40 in all the holes and then hand cranked the crank around a dozen times. Almost all of the rust is gone and the metal is shiny again, except a little streak of rust at the upper reach of the bore. This is still within the area where I would think the ring pack would still traverse. I'll know more later tomorrow when I get another chance to examine it. The cam driven oil pump gear (Crane Bronze gear) looked decent but had visible 'thinning' from when I put it in over a year ago. I have a new bronze gear and a standard volume pump (Replacing the Melling HV that's in there now) to go in. What do you think about the surface rust? Okay or should I pull her apart and have every hole honed and some new rings put in all 'round?

 

Here's a picture of the surface rust. I see vertical streaks in this closeup too. Methinks I'll just pull it apart, hone all the holes and re-ring it.

 

Are those a bunch of vertical scratches there? And if the rings go up that high then they aren't touching that side of the cylinder, yet something made those scratches, if that's what those are? What side of the cylinder is that?

 

Imagine the block is on an engine stand, the passenger side is facing you, the harmonic balancer to your right, the flywheel on your left. On cylinder #4, the top of the bore, closest to the intake, that's where this rust is. I'm beginning to speculate that perhaps the top ring is stuck in the ring land. Otherwise, it seems like it would scuff off that rust.

 

I bet some moisture was in there with the vavles closed, not so much standing water. I would think the rings are fine however they can rust just as bad as the wall could, but still nothing a little heat and running wouldnt take care of.

You could scotchbrite the rust off, just slightly though, rings are actually wide and dont have much of a "scraping" effect to them unless slightly tilted.
You could slap some heads on and crank the engine for awhile and run a compression check.

 

We shall see. The machinist will be looking at it tomorrow with his bore gauges. I want to clean up those vertical scratches anyway.

 

Woot! Good news. The machinist looked at it and said I shouldn't bother with tearing it down just for that. I'll begin reassembling it tomorrow and continue on Sunday.

 

You should NEVER scotchbrite inside of a motor, the particles come off of those and go into the motor.

 

I got the pan off the block and replacing the HiVol Melling (55HV) with a stock pump. Everything inside is unbelievably clean. I've been using Brad Penn Oil from day 1 and WIX 51060 filters. I'll continue to use them.

 

Well, just got in from the shop/shed. I've been working on it pretty much all day.

WINS:

• Removed Melling HI Volume and replaced it with a new standard volume.
• Cleaned all head surfaces
• Cleaned all ARP head bolts
• Installed new oil pan gasket
• Installed new rear main seal
• Got one of the Canfields on

Setbacks

• My machinist said that the TCI LT1 specific Flexplate can't be used since he INTERNALLY balanced the engine. (I'll have to see if Jegs will take this one back and ship me a new one)
• Dowels didn't match right up. I had to elongate the holes a little and then it went on.
• The center head bolt/washer interfered with the Big Block Spring locators. I had to grind two flats on the washer AND the outter perimeter of the head bolt itself. Plus, even a socket had trouble going on to the head of the bolt, even with a thin wall socket.
• I just noticed that the Canfields don't use the bevel seat sparkplug like the stock LT1 heads. I gotta see what correlates to an Autolite 104 in a 'gasket' style sparkplug.

 

Good to hear - The pitting I had was quite a bit worse. I guess lesson learned. If I start pushing water, get it dried out asap.