birkhoff

If you can find a beam style wrench somewhere, they can't go out of calibration, provided they are zeroed correctly. Put a 7/16 socket on your click wrench and stick the beam wrench on that. Now pull the beam wrench and read off the torque when you get the click. Thats now I check mine. My 3/8 inch Mac click wrench tests within a foot pound or so against my Proto low-torque beam wrench, at least in the 20 - 40 ft-lb range. Yes, beam wrenches are a major pain to use, but bombproof in terms of calibration. If you can take your HF wrench into work and test it against a calibrated wrench, that could work. Testing a click against a click is a little more fussy, but by a sequence of bracketing tests you can zero in on it and get close enough for this kind of work. I never pay much for tools. I just keep an eye open at pawn shops and used tool places until something comes up. If it needs calibration or sharpening, or whatever, you get a good price and you can always figure out a way to do the latter.

Brand doesn't matter. If it is accurate, it will be fine for the build. Is it accurate? Two of my wrenches are click; the small one is analog dial. I can only say they are accurate in the sense they all seem to agree in their range overlaps. Can you get your wrench checked at work (I recall you work somewhere that has inspection tools)? Your question reminds me I should get off my butt and check my own wrenches properly one of these days Some fasteners are down in the 5 ft-lb range, which is probably off the lower end of your scale but you should be able to guesstimate those. I think there is an alternate torque procedure to avoid the 140 ft-lb torque on the crank pulley bolt that starts at 33 ft-lbs. Most other things top out around 50 ft-lbs (except for the head studs you are going to use). Stock head bolts take a mild torque and then the final set is by angle. I torqued EVERYTHING on my build. Something about aluminum and steel, and the hassle of getting metric inserts installed when things go wrong that just made this the way to go in my mind. If you pop back into my build thread you will see some of the later pics with little paint marks on many of the fasteners. OCD it may be, but when a build runs over multiple months, and sometimes multiple weeks between activity, you want to know what has been torqued and what has not. Once a fastener was final torqued, I marked it. Never had to go back and re-check, or back up and disassemble to confirm something I may have missed three layers deep under installed parts.

Probably I missed this in the thread, but why new cam bolts? I'd go a different route and spend $20 to buy a really good 1/2 drive allen socket. Something like a Snap-on, Blue Point (same thing), Proto, Mac, Grey -- whatever. Find a truck or go online and they'll mail it to your house! After all, you still have to get the cam bolts out, which is where the drama seems to start. You haven't talked much about tools yet. You will need to have (or borrow) a good breaker bar (1/2 inch, around 24 inches long) for taking things apart, and a reliable mid-range torque wrench for putting things back together. I have three, covering different ranges. 95% of the work on my build was done with a 3/8 drive mid-range tool. Some with the little inch-lb one. The crank bolt needed the big daddy 1/2 inch drive. I popped the cam bolts out lickety-split with a 30 inch breaker and a Grey allen socket I've had around for years. I use the bar all the time -- sounds overkill but it lets you to remove tough fasteners with ease and control. Ditto for installing fasteners with torque-angle specs. Put a good socket on it and it also does an impressive job breaking off bolts with no apparent effort

You can see the squeeze bottle at work in my rebuild thread. Post #41 here The tip can be tuned to be much finer than what you see there. At that point I wanted a fairly wide bead. For the front cam cover, I would recommend about half that width. Just make sure it is a continuous bead going the right way around the bolt holes.

Any idea if this is the same as Fuji Bond or Honda Bond? If yes, then I'd like to second this recommendation. I have a big tube of Fuji Bond here that I used on my rebuild. It's quite a bit thinner than Ultra Grey and has a longer open time. Very nice stuff to work with. And as FLleg says, you only use a fraction of a tube on an engine, if you do it right.

While this is being discussed, there are a few things that don't seem to be in the master gasket kit 10105AA720. At least the one I got. There are no half moon plugs for the heads. You need 4. Seems like a strange omission but well documented. There are no exhaust gaskets, even for the manifolds to the heads. Need lots. I didn't find any copper washers for the various banjo fittings. You need something like 14 (all one size?). I just bought a bunch in various sizes online and now I'll never be short. And I can pull banjos to my hearts content, knowing I will just chuck the washer and grab a new one. At some point I had pretty much sanded off my fingerprints cleaning up those things for re-use. Precious little of this goes into the short block by the way. 5 O-rings, 3 aluminum washers for the inspection ports, 6(?) special washers for the wet case bolts, and a rear main seal. About $20 if you buy individually.

Yes, sorry. Not sure that's a widely used term, but common enough amongst the old crowd up here. Firedeck = mating surface on block where the head sits. After you bolt it down to keep it from falling off.

Clearly, you plan to take my home-brew rebuild to a new level! Good for you. When you pull the heads and split the block, back things out a little at a time in the reverse-to-torque sequence. It takes a lot of time to correct warpage in a cylinder head with sandpaper! If it is any comfort, the engine I just took apart showed non-measurable warp in both heads and fire decks. You may get lucky too.

The bearings my machine shop first sourced for me were King. They were awful. Tabs poorly formed. Shell sat funny in the bore and oil holes didn't line up. Tossed those. I went ACL for everything and they seemed high quality and mic'd perfectly to spec. Two sets of mains by the way, in order get my clearances right. ACL was the only brand I could find at the time that had a +0.025mm shell. Maybe I got a bad set of Kings, 'cause they get a lot of good press in these forums.

No need to get too crazy with this. Find a place with good light and stable temps near the target. Avoid large woodworking projects in the same space while all this is going on. Wear gloves while handling mics and setting the bore guage. If you can get repeatable measurements, then you are probably getting accurate measurements and can trust them. If you can't, you may have to up your technique, but all in good time. The process is quite fascinating, and rewarding when you get it all working. Unless you have to make your living doing it.

It might be best to hear back from StkmltS about what he finds, then we can chime in about whether there is a serious problem or not. FWIW, I expect you (Andrew) will find a fairly straight mainline, but quite oval bores. Especially #2 and 4, the skinny ones. The oval may make it look like the mainline is out. Check for straightness along the parting line where the pounding is minimized. Measure oval on all bores with the case torqued together and see if you can account for the gaps in the saddles by oval measurements. Anyway, that's what I'd do it. It is really all a bit of a muddle since whenever the case is split, everything changes compared to when it is torqued. This is the main reason I gave up on plastigage after a couple of sessions and brought in a bore gauge. Saved me countless bolt-torque-unbolt cycles. There are still plenty of mysteries lurking however, even with fancy tools. I had an interesting chat with a fellow at Outfront a few weeks ago, on the grounds that I have a case here I may want to put back in to service. Their approach is to NOT cut the cases at the parting line, rather to bore the mainline straight, round and slightly oversize. If I understood correctly, they can source shells with thicker backs that take up the gap (King?). That way, the centre stays on centre, and the rear main seal bore doesn't go oval. Sounded like a heck of a good idea to me. But all this is drifting far from the playbook outlined in the first post.

Wow, you are going to be busy. You also might go a little bit crazy with all those measurements. A lot of them are hard to do even once at the tolerance level we are talking about. I found repeatability to be a major issue as the mic heated up or the bore guage found some speck of something. Do you have a clean room with temp control at your disposal? Sounds like you might. For the crank I did each journal perp and parallel to the oil port. A little random checking for taper and that was it. I found enough out of round to cause me concern already; I wasn't looking for more bad news. I did re-use the crank at larger than spec oil clearance, though. I also spent a LOT of time fitting bearings. You may want to reconsider your unwillingness to engage a machine shop. There are some basic things they do very well that are difficult to home-brew yourself. You could have a perfectly good block there that will go a long way, but you need a proper hone to achieve this, in my opinion. Not decking the block seems a risky move. You will have trouble getting flatness measurements until the top is cleaned up anyway. I just added up the machine shop bill on my build. About $225 to put the case through a wash cycle, deck, hone 4 cylinders and polish the crank. The latter was probably not necessary, in retrospect, and added $75 to the bill. That is in $CDN. More like $180 in greenbacks. If you have serious alignment/oval problems in the mainline, then the case is pretty much toast anyway. That is the first thing to check.

Subscribed. This was exactly how I was thinking when I started mine last year. I think it worked out quite well in the end. I'll update my thread with SB build data shortly. I bailed on the bottle brush hone idea and let my my local machine shop do it once I realized how important a good hone is for the fits you need to hit. The factory hone goes, like, 150K miles and with a little luck, might go further. Not sure a bottle brush could do this. Plus, you will want to deck the block which means a machinist will be involved at some point anyway. The cost of a good hone by an experienced operator may be negligible once they get the block in the shop for decking. When you get things torn down, measure everything before you finalize your plans. Preferably before you buy anything. Your bore gauge and mics will get a good workout on this project, for sure!

Looks good. So much nicer when you haven't had a major failure with accompanying shrapnel before rebuild. What do the bores look like? How are the camshaft journals and their respective bores?

If you are wondering about the best way to split the case, I strongly recommend the wooden dowel method. Cut one that is long enough to span the cylinder walls (through access ports) and big enough to be a decent fit in the wrist pin bores on the rods. Just like a wrist pin but about 2 inches longer. Once all the pistons are out, set the block on the bench and drop #1 to BDC, insert the dowel and turn the crank gently until you just begin to see a little separation at the front end of the parting line. Now do the same thing at the back (#3 or #4, doesn't matter). Repeat front to back and walk it apart until you are just about free of the dowel pins. There rest can be done with a soft hammer on some convenient part of the casting. Do NOT put anything into the parting line, of course. If it does not split easily with this method, then you may have missed a bolt somewhere (the small ones at the water pipe or back end are sometimes missed). So don't force anything until you are sure, and you shouldn't really have to. Using a scissor jack (another published method) seems kind of brutal, and only works on one end of the case. Simply pounding it apart with a BFH is, of course, poor workmanship at the very least.

If you run out to .002 then I guess the obvious question is whether you can flow enough oil. Setting my mains at .0015 I have to admit I was curious what would happen with oil pressure. Turns out to not be a problem. I'm holding ~ 20PSI hot, at idle which is well above the minimum. Pressure pops up to 80 PSI pretty quick. This is with 10-30 FWIW. The donor block I purchased had a 50K oil pump with it. On inspection, it showed only light polishing on the running surfaces and clearances were all down the middle of spec, so I just reused it. That is a 10mm pump. The pump I took out of my 180K engine also looked good, but measured at the max for tip and side clearances. I wouldn't reuse that. All this indicates you will probably be fine with a little more room on the mains. Check the NAISOC board for posts from builders who have actually done this. Also, there are lots arguments there about the pro/con of larger oil pumps etc. I don't have an informed opinion on that. As for the block, it's at 100 miles on the break in. Everything is looking good (touch wood). No leaks of any kind. Runs smoothly and it idled well after about 5 minutes of relearning by the ECU. Before first startup I primed by cranking with the plugs out and had full oil pressure in a couple of revolutions. I also cracked open the banjo connection at the turbo CRH to confirm oil was there. Made a big mess pretty quick! After that, coolant and oil are staying where they are supposed to. Once you break open the block and measure things, let us know what you find.

Someone already offered you a set of stock pistons `cheap'. You should be able to get what you need for $100 - 200 off this board, with rings. But you are right, saving a few hundred dollars here and there on the bottom end is false economy if it won't handle the parts you want to bolt on later. Green plastigage goes down to .001. Stock clearance on the mains, for example, is .0004 to .0012. You can estimate/extrapolate from the scale but I found I got different measurements with it every time I torqued the case together. Ended up using a bore gage. That was reliable and repeatable. Because I was trying to use my old crank and mix and match bearing shells, I had the case apart many times. My mains ended up at .0012, .0013, .0014, .0016 and .0014 so basically 1.5 thou, except #1 which was tighter. Only one of these within spec but the others were close to the 1.5 thou that is a common target you'll hear from the rebuild guys. If you do buy a new crank, you may have better luck with plastigage than I did. I think a lot of my problems came from the slight out-of-round conditions on my old crank, even though it was checked and cleaned up by a machinist and cleared to go back in the block.

Probably I'm speaking way out of turn here, but have you considered going back to your original plan? The budget rebuild? Tear it down. Get some stock parts and rebuild it to stock HP, at least the bottom end. That way, you have a DD and will learn a lot in the process. You may change your plans/expectations completely by the end of that project. There is a lot to like about the stock setup! After all, you bought the car and drove it pretty much stock, right? Maybe you have built dozens of motors and have access to a clean assembly room, and all the nice tools and whatnot that the pros use to make this a day-in day-out proposition. They can't afford a screw up because they make a living doing this. You can't, because you don't have the money to blow it up and walk away. If you don't have the pro-setup (either not a lot of experience, or not a fancy environment) I would argue that pulling this off at stock HP levels will be plenty challenge enough the first time through. It is not difficult to find another SB with bad ringlands that you can use to start building up your ultimate monster. Having something on the road to run around with (that is also fun, admit it, even at stock power levels!) could be considered a bonus. Just a thought.

Got hit by this problem. I guess one too many times pulling the pump and clamping it out of the way, upside down on the wheel well with hoses all akimbo! The closest standard O-ring is a 014 (dash number) but when I tried it, got a leak just like everyone else. However two of them seem to work if you put them on the spigot back to back. Temporary, maybe permanent fix. If you do this, don't torque down too hard on the clamp bolt as the flange doesn't quite meet the casting properly and you may crack something. Just snug it down and make a note to pick up the correct O-ring at the dealer. BTW, a leak at this joint is quite dramatic -- with red foam spewing out the reservoir cap almost immediately. What a mess! UPDATE: Well, this worked for only 10 days or so, about 100 miles, before it started sucking air again. Still, long enough to get the official part from the dealer (who had to special order). No leaks using the supplied silicone ring, which appears to be metric. It measures about M2 x 13 and that is a standard size.

Once you get the crank/rods out, clean the mating surfaces and torque the case halves together. Now measure the mainline (without shells). You will likely find #2 and #4 pounded out oval. Now measure the crank main journal. Also oval, a little bit at least. Trouble is, each of these can be out by like 1/2 the spec running clearance, or more. Put them together and you have a real challenge to hit any consistent clearances, even by mixing and matching half shells, trial fit, moving things around etc. A couple of options to simplify things. If the mainline is half decent, consider a new crank. That gets some of the problem out of the way and you can get slightly oversize (+0.025mm from ARP?) shells that are handy to clean up main clearances. If the crank is decent, you can have the mainline honed out to take ever so slightly oversize bearings (for example. . . King?) and probably hit your main specs pretty close. If both are pretty bad, consider a new SB. But then your goals in post 1 may mean dropping the stock pistons and putting in forged. Hard to classify this last option as low budget!

Say it ain't so! Welcome to our world.

Rears come out same as fronts, once you get the FW out of the way. The RH access port is behind the big cover. Lots of us have seen pristine cylinder walls but found broken ring lands on teardown. Don't be too hasty -- check carefully. Unless your pistons are forged or super low KM, it may be easier/safer to buy a new set on the board. Not too long ago I got a set of new OEM pistons, pins, keepers and rings for less than my dealer quoted for rings. Worth keeping in mind. If you don't split the block, you may save yourself some headaches. I think you can pull the rods out of the bore (never done it myself, but it looks do-able; normally the crankshaft and rods go into the block as a unit) break the glaze and replace like with like, in terms of piston grades -- they are stamped on the pistons and on the top of the block. Then the only measuring needed is to gap the rings . . . and to hope for the best which is another kind of measuring I suppose. Having said that, it looks like you plan to put some $$ into the top end. Will this investment survive a bottom end meltdown? Once you spit the block and start measuring, that is a whole other deal with these engines.

Fishbone is right. In fact, the interference of the hub bolts with the ABS sensor ring WAS solved by getting rid of the play in the old hubs (new units both sides). However the spline length was a hopeless mismatch. The end of the spline actually came past the end of the new hubs (it was just flush with the old hubs). Torquing down of the axle nuts will just jam on the end of the axle shaft. I had about 1/16 axial inch play in the spline after snugging up the nut. This is actually quite dangerous. If you are not paying attention during the install, just assuming the axle is a good fit, and IF you are lucky, like I was, and the ABS ring cleared the hub bolts, you would drive off with an essentially unfastened axle at the hub. End of the hub at the very least. Beware. In the end, I put the old (150,000 mile) shafts back in to get on the road! Back to the drawing board. Does anyone have a source for aftermarket shafts that are reliable and a good fit? I don't mind rebuilding shafts, but at that high mileage, seems a little bit dodgy.

On these MAC halfshafts, I believe the castle-type ring is an ABS input mechanism. Our setup does that within the hub itself, so the ring is a free bonus feature. There are a couple of 'issues' I found with installing the MAC halfshafts. The outer spline distance (from seat at the inside of the hub to the end of the spline) is longer than OEM. You can see that clearly in the picture. When you install the outer spline, check very carefully that the axle nut is taking up on the hub, and not just interfering with the end of the spline on the halfshaft. Second, the ABS sensor ring is VERY close to interfering with the hub mounting bolt heads. Be sure to check on the install that they don't hit. I had two marginal front hubs with quite a bit of play in them. Everything looked fine while on the axle stands, but when the weight went down on the wheels, the hubs shifted just enough to cause interference. Found that out the hard way! The inner joint seems to be a good fit. Went in with no issues. The axles are shipped very compressed. When you pull them out into place, the boots collapse. Not to worry; a couple of times around the block and everything adjusts. The boots fill out. I have new hubs going in. Since others have used these shafts, I assume that the clearance issue will be settled (just barely). To the fellow from MAC who was monitoring this thread -- is it possible to remove the ABS sensor ring? That would give more clearance, but then the bearing shield behind would now be quite far from the hub. Probably not a good idea. Can you source axles that are a little better match to OEM? MAC's service is good. Price is GREAT. But the fit is . . . well. . . time will tell.

Hate to do this as I know it is here somewhere but I can't find it under any reasonable keyword search. Looking for the complete list of diagnostic codes valid for 2005 LGT as reported by the on board diagnostics system. When I find it I'll bookmark it! I promise. And thanks to the user who originally posted this list. Chris