Thread: Has this ever happened to you?- "Freshen Up"

Tweet

you can get away with an awful lot , my first ever rebuild was a 454 in my dads 74 chev worktruck back in 1983, i was taking my mechanics training and took the motor in, it was burning oil and needed some tlc. i remember it had over 10 thou taper in the cylinders but crank was clean and pistons looked good. Our instructor at the time said it will work fine
took it and had it tanked put cam bearings and cam lifters timing chain in it hand honed the block used iron rings and standard bearings plasigauged and away it went. This motor lasted 18 years of dirt filled farm field use with little to no matinence except oil changes till the cam broke in half, probably 70 -80 thous miles and dozens of overheats
now i have a rebuildable 454 4 bolt block in my possesion that is still in pretty good shape.
I rebuilt my 500 cadillac last winter basicly the same way and hand honed the cylinders eyballed the piston clearances as they looked good had the crank cleaned up and rebuilt the heads. It has about 40 1/4 passes on it and about 600 hw miles on it and runs great. When i took this motor apart it was missing part of 1 of its rod bearings plus the lifters and cam were completly shot (best of 12.9s on this grenade)
Of course you can run into trouble by doing this as opposed to the proper measurements and procedures but sometimes as i said you can get away with a lot.