Here are some more pics:

Head washed and valves lapped

Valves were good with a lapping except for the exhaust valves we did cut them before lapping them.

Cylinders were good no excessive wear

Block after hot tank wash

Honed all cylinders

3 broken head bolts inside the block that had to be taken out.

Balance shaft bushings installed

Crank was not in bad shape either still in std

Got away with just a hand polishing

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Getting the pistons ready

Dropped in the new bearings and crank

Main caps and bearings

All pistons ready with rings installed

First one in

All in

Rear timing chain installed

Head gasket installed

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Head torqued down

Cams installed

Timing guides and chain installed, timing set

Valve cover and timing covers on, crank pulley installed. Done.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Cool pics, thanks for sharing

 

Great job

 

really cool info an pictures. I think this is the first 3.5L rebuild attempt posted?

 

I enjoyed this. Thanks.

 

How did the rods get bent?

 

I’m guessing too much boost lol I ran it pretty hard and would spike to 12lbs plus maybe 15 pounds of boost. Anything beyond 10 you are asking for trouble on stock internals. I was going to gap the rings to handle boost and slap the turbo kit back on but decided not to.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

How long is to do this ?

Envoyé de mon SM-T555 en utilisant Tapatalk

 

It took me around 3 months to complete the rebuild but taking my time doing things slow I was not in a rush. The engine itself with everything cleaned and all the new parts ready took 2 days to put together.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Great job and thanks for the pics...bet she runs great now.

 

Thanks for the post and great pics. Did you sell your turbo kit? Will you go back to forced induction now that you basically have a new motor? Other than the valve lapping, you do any other cylinder head or valve work?

 

No I have not sold the turbo kit I still have it. I really am not looking to put the turbo back on but You never know lol. We can actually fully rebuild cylinder heads new seals, 3 angle valve job, cutting of the valves if needed etc.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Never gets old! Thanks for the pics.

 

really cool. thanks for the pics!

 

Cool, I'm doing a total rebuild of the truck, engine was a question mark (still is).
Plan is to do a compression test and pull the top and bottom end, if everything is OK will clean and put back together... if not I will look at your post to guide me :wavey:

 

Okay, I have what I'm sure is a really dumb question, but what does the rear timing chain do? Obviously, it's not in any way related to valve timing. What does the chain drive and why?

 

Old guy to another OldGuy, it drives the balance shaft.

 

Thanks. After I asked the question, I researched it a little bit. Never heard of that before. I just realized, I've never rebuilt anything but v-8 engines before. Well, some inline outboard motors and motorcycle engines, but I've never run into anything with balance shafts before. Learn something new every day, right/
Thanks for the reply. Nice rebuild. How do you clean everything up so nice?

 

DOHCtor Honda, great post. For everyone's benefit please elaborate a little bit on the head. When these engines first started having prematurely leaking valve's under warrantee it was described as bad valve seats. GM always replaced the heads to repair it. Of course how many owners would have been satisfied if GM had tried to repair heads with a valve job while still under warrantee. All those heads that GM removed back then are now todays "Reconditioned Heads" with a list price of something like $1,200. That's one really expensive valve job!
There are a lot of people that still think that repairing leaking valves requires either replacing the head or the engine. The reality is the seats were easily ground and the root cause has always been the sub-standard valve guides. Quality aftermarket valve guides are cheap and easily replaced as part of a normal valve job and a quality valve job w/ new guides & seals probably costs around $350 for an I5 at a quality machine shop.
My point is please continue spreading the knowledge that the heads really are OK & can be easily repaired to like new operation with a simple high quality valve job + maybe a timing set. Yes, the head is a pain to remove & replace but you only have to do it once.

 

GC Russ you have a very valid point and I agree with you 100%. My rule of thumb has always been to assess the situation before jumping to conclusions. Like I said before I did not know what I was going to find before I tore apart this engine for the rebuild but I prepared myself for the worst. Starting with the cylinder head which was my biggest fear from everything that I had read about them. The first obstacle was of course breaking 3 of the head bolts when removing the head but I decided not to worry about it until I had to reassemble it back if everything checked out. My second step was checking the cylinder head for any warp with a straight edge, it passed it had none whatsoever. Finally I disassembled the head checking every valve for excessive play from the guides, checked all the valve seats to see if any were loose or damaged, inspected all the valves which surprisingly again all checked out fine. Before I decided to just do a 3 angle valve job I decided I wanted to investigate further and see where the problem areas on these heads were so I decided to lap all the valves as is before doing anything else. All of the valves were sealing great! I really do have to credit my old man which has been an engine machinist for over 25yrs and who I explained all the issues to about these heads and their prone to failure. So he himself gave it a once over rechecked all the valve guides for excessive play and the valve seats and the valve seating on the seats and gave me the OK! that was a big relief! He did suggest we cut the exhaust valves though since those did have a bit of pitting on the valve itself, let me remind you this was a boosted engine that was heavily abused I would really get on it. So that was all that we did and luckily were able to do in house and didn't have to take it to a machine shop. So overall i think that these heads were not really bad to begin with and some dealers will not waste time in diagnosing problems they will just want to replace everything with new parts and charge you more money. I also blame a lot of these wrong diagnosed to their faulty exhaust VVT solenoids and cam phasers.

Recap all I did to the head was clean and wash it, lapped all the valves, cut the exhaust valves and valve stem tip to compensate for the height. new valve stem seals.
that was it oh and I also ordered a bran new VVT AC Delco solenoid which have been revised again and now have metal reinforcement rings on the screens on the end to prevent them from falling off into the engine.

Also side note mine is a non EGR head which also made a difference on the exhaust side. Those tend to be in worse conditions when they have a EGR system usually just a lot more carbon build up.

 

Ok guys so what do you all think? should i put the turbo kit back on the truck??

 

Did you do any porting of intake or exhaust? I've heard that these castings are pretty poor and that some HP gains can be achieved by porting and polishing. I've never torn a motor completely down before without going back with a mild cam change, porting a polishing heads or intake, or shaving the head. I'm realizing that a lot of what we used to do on old muscle cars can now be accomplished with a chip though!

 

RE: Turbo
If you depend on it to do real truck work like heavy hauling or towing especially in hot summer temperatures (you are in Texas) I vote no. If it is a toy & not needed for truck duty it's your call & I will abstain from voting.