Quote Originally Posted by MadMax
Hi,
do you people bake your engine parts? I always hear rebuilders say the block and other cast parts were hot tanked and "oven baked" to stress relieve the casting. Now that sounds very sophisticated, but does it help and how do you actually do it? How hot and for how long? Will that cause any distortion in the block or decrease any distortion it already has from use?
I've heard that almost all cast iron parts are baked to clean and "for good measure" I guess
Is it something you should do when rebuilding an engine from scratch?

Just curious... Max
Max,
Generally when and engine is hot tanked and baked it is to first of all loosen the sludge("hot tanked" in a hot liquid) then oven baked (350F is my recollection) to dry every thing out so the crud can be first blown out then scrubbed with a detergent, wire brushed down the oil galleries then fully washed, again with a detergent. I generally use the laundry detergent Tide in a very strong solution

A previously used engine has had the stresses removed during operation. This is why a good engine builder will take a seasoned block, at least deck it, align bore the mains, check the cam bearing bores, replace or totally rebuild the heads, replace or rebuild the rods and sonic test for cylinder wall thickness and for cracks

A new engine - probably some builders will do this but IMHO, is unnecessary, costly and time consuming as there is no rule of thumb that says so many hours at such a temperature will remove casting and machining stresses. You can make a guess, but is it worth a the "cost" and for what gain?