On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 08:53, Frank Swygert <farna@xxxxxxx> wrote: > I don't know, I ran a 196 for 14 years. When I rebuilt it there was well > over 100K miles on it. The bearings showed nothing unusual that I remember. > No knocks, but oil pressure was down a bit... but still nothing I was > worried about. Hey Frank, we went back and forth on this, but I just want to make sure we're OK here. I certainly don't doubt your experience with the motor. I'm certainly not blaming design shortcomings on general unreliability (if you torque on sked yadda yadda ...). I think the real "problem" is that they are all REALLY REALLY OLD now (besides any screwups I made on the headbolt lube etc). Your 14 years of driving one was a while back, right? (At least 14 years :-) This motor is in "Model A" territory in a lot of ways. It's unreasonable to expect to hold them to modern standards of highway buzzing on old worn parts and 'fresh up' rebuilds. I'm saying I likely screwed up and my parts are now older than yours, and not that I'm in any way doubting your experience or knowledge here. Was at the machine shop yesterday pickup up my excess parts. I cleaned up 18 pistons and rods, two blocks, etc ... * The "blue" block (my NORS) unfortunately had pitting where the pistons sat for 30+ years. It didn't hone out, it will need an overbore. It's too bad, it's at .040, probably 005 would clean it up but the next increment is of course 60. * My "original" block, the rebuilt thing that was in the car, the bores are completely perfect, round, and the hone pattern is fine. A quick hone cleaned it up and I can use the .040 over pistons from the "blue" motor with new rings. Going chrome moly, and I'll just be patient in breakin. * My "original" block was about .004"? lower in the middle than the ends. There you go. I am paying a bit extra for more attention to the deck and will get it under .002" and a relatively fine surface (I asked for 100 microinch). * Crank is out for refinishing, hopefully .002 cleans it up, but my guess is, they'll do .010 to get it done in one pass, oh well. * I bought, sight unseen, one of Doug Galvin's custom ground cams. The spec sheet is in the box, so I'll run it through Dsktop Dyno to see, but it's supposed to be an "RV" type cam, which sounds a bit silly with this motor, but you don't want to rev to 4000 very often in this thing, so there's not much up there to sacrifice anyways! This means I have a "spare" brand new, unused crankshaft. I can send Galvin's the worn but decent one as a core. * Doug Galvin has a very specific three-step breakin, he says he's done more than a dozen motors and none have leaked. I'll try that. It's overkill, but my own labor is cheap here. * I bought Joe Gibbs breakin oil,. 10w-30 because I will not preheat it. Many thanks to Nick ALfano for his posts to this list; I've gone through them a lot in the last week or two. Overkill? Fine by me. Crazy zinc level, old flat tappets won't mind. * Bought an "oil pump kit" (gears and relief spring) and will make a 3/8" steel cover with outlet, exactly the same as stock but outlet is 180 degrees mirrored, about perfect. I assume the remote oil filter kit (Summit, years ago) is Brand C, whatever the 350 v8 uses I'm sure, no brainer. * Bought NEW valves and NEW springs for my NEW head. Since I have like 48+ rockers I'm sure I can find good dozen and I have, finally, an non-worn rocker shaft. Abandoned all thoughts of balancing anything. $$$$! I'm $1200 into this thing and the crank is not even in the block yet! Typical motor build, every item is $100 and there are a lot of them. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.amc-list.com/pipermail/amc-list-amc-list.com/attachments/20100205/e0c36c16/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ AMC-list mailing list AMC-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://list.amc-list.com/listinfo.cgi/amc-list-amc-list.com