[gtofreek]

Pic #1 = Boring the last cylinder! You can say this is a boring job! Literally! I like to use a flashlight on the deck so I can see down into the cylinder while boring to see how far it has to go or to make sure it's cleaning all the way around.

Pic #2 = All done with the boring stuff!

Pic #3 = .01075" or 10 and 3/4 thousandth's to hone until my final size of 4.155". This will give these pistons .0046" clearance. We leave at least .009"-.010" to hone. This way it insures two things:
1- That I hone all the way through the boring bar tool cut lines.
2- That I have plenty of room to get the cylinder completely round once torque plate is bolted on.

[gtofreek]

Pic 1 = Bottom of cylinders are sharp. Some had some factory chamfer, but this is cut with some sort of cutter bit and is rough and jagged. After boring it has a sharp edge where the cylinder ends and the chamfer begins.

Pic's 2 and 3 = I radiused the chamfer with a burr, and then sanded it with a tootsie roll!

[gtofreek]

Pic 1 = Getting ready to hone

Pic 2 = Rough honing from almost .011" down to .007" from final size.

Pic 3 = Rough honed and cooled off.

Pic 4 = Same part number gasket as what will be used in final assembly is placed on deck to be used with the torque plate. For those who don't know what a torque plate is, it is a plate that is torqued down to the deck to simulate the cylinder head being torqued down. This pre-distorts the cylinder so when it is honed, it is honed round for when the engine is assembled. Otherwise, if not done with a torque plate, the cylinders will be round when you install the pistons, but when the heads are bolted on, the cylinders distort a fair amount. This distortion can take 10,000-20,000 miles for the rings to wear into, and fully seat.

Pic 5 =Torque plate installed. Stud nuts torqued to 110 ft. lbs. with ARP Ultra lube.

[gtofreek]

Pic 1 = After torque plate is bolted on, and the cylinder has cooled down, I have .008" to hone. I will use roughing stones to hone it down to .004". It will take honing about .003" -.004" before cylinder gets round again.

Pic 2 = Honing away.

Pic 3 = After cooling down from rough honing, I switch to a finer, intermediate stone to hone it down to .001" from final size. I have .0047" to go.

Pic 4 = After cooling down, I have .0011" to go. This is where I switch to the final stones I will use for the finish I want. This finish will be for a Moly ring. Now I will finish down to the zero.

[gtofreek]

Pic 1 = Size at the top of cylinder. this gauge reads in tenth's. Meaning each increment is .0001" or one ten thousandth of an inch. That is 1/30'th the thickness of my hair. One revolution around this gauge is .010".

Pic 2 = Size in middle of cylinder.

Pic 3 = Size at bottom of cylinder.

Now I let it cool down. It will shrink up a little bit. Tomorrow I will Touch it up and get it back to zero, then plateau hone it. A plateau hone is a bristle brush, impregnated with very fine gritty powder that breaks the peaks off the cross hatch, or plateau's them. This way the rings don't have to do it, and the rings will seat faster and easier, and last longer. Pics of final job to come.

[gtofreek]

Pic #1 shows that the cylinder, after honing to the zero yesterday, shrunk up .0004" at the top after it sat overnight stabilizing.

Pic #2 shows the cylinder shrunk up .0005"[or 1/2 a thousandth] in the middle.

Pic #3 shows the cylinder shrunk up .0005" at the bottom.

Pic #4 shows the size at the top after I bumped it back out to the zero, or final size.

Pic #5 shows the size in the middle after I finished.

I would have a pic of it at the bottom but my camera batteries died just as I tried to take the pic. After I got new batteries in it, I took a shot, but it was blurry. I could post the blurry shot, but I figure, whats the point. It's zero down there too.

[gtofreek]

Pic #1 shows the first bank[left] all done, but still oily.

Pic #2 shows, the cylinder after finished to size, but still showing the bore gauge lines running down the cylinder. These bore gauge lines don't hurt anything, but they drive us nuts. We swishy hone a few strokes with very light pressure to remove the lines.

Pic #3 shows the cylinder after I removed the bore gauge lines.

Pic #4 shows the cylinder on the left has been brushed with the plateau hone, and the cylinder on the right has not been done yet. After brushing, the cylinder will feel like glass. The un-brushed cylinder will feel like a finger nail file. The rings are much happier and seat easier after the plateau hone. The un-brushed cylinder just wears the rings more as they try to seat.

[68GoatMan]

Awesome thread!! Subscribing. Nice work guys!

[gtofreek]

Here is the cam. The "Stump Puller". 230/236 @ .050", 112° LSA.

Pics of the oil pan and pickup, along with the balancer.

[1969GTO]

why the deep pan for a street car?

[GOAT WHORE]

Ever watch your oil pressure drop when you take right hand corners with a stock pan? I run one of these on my 70 and they have awesome oil control. Hard long corners no longer a problem.

[1969GTO]

my car is mostly strret drive,some 1/4 stuff once in a while.
I don't get into many high speed turns or cornering on the street.
I have the stock 6qt pan,windage tray and crank scraper.

[GOAT WHORE]

So finally got to work on the car again today. We put the valance and bumper on a few weeks ago and did some fitting. I should back up a bit and say that when we were fitting the front clip we did a little tweeking of the bumper to make it fit the fenders and hood better. The bumper really was in great shape to start with. We cut this 2x4 to fit inside the nose and drilled out the backside to accept part of my porta-power. Placed the porta-power between the engine cross member and bumper to push the nose away from the hood just a tad.


Well we had the bumper on the car and had to make the fender meet the bumper in places and now we have to make the bumper meet the fenders so we used epoxy repair material out of a gun. Paul at fast, a member here, has given direction in great detail about how to repair the endure bumpers and I am trying to follow his directions. Here are a few samples of two different epoxy repair materials that we are using.

The upper one is the thicker of the two and we used it to build the bumper out to meet the shape of the fenders.

Mike built it up on the car and sanded it to the correct shape then we took it off again to sand the back side that you see here.
Next time we get to work on the car we plan on using the thinner of the two epoxys to do most of the other repair on the bumper.

[GOAT WHORE]

So thought I would share a photo of the bumper repair work. The material to the left is sanded and the glossy material on the middle and to the right is spread out, dry and ready to sand. Lots of work for sure.

[Greg Reid]

What'd you wind up using?

[GOAT WHORE]

We have been using a little of both. They are very similar. One sets a little faster then the other and both sand about the same. Still have a few more days to finish the bumper. By days I mean weekends! Sure wish I had more time to work on it!

[NYGTO]

I'm very much enjoying this thread. So nice having this car stay in the family and your grandmothers specific GTO choice was so fun and cool. She had to be a great lady all around.

[gtofreek]

Well, guess it's been a while since I posted anything, so here goes. Got the crank balanced today. Being new, it had never been balanced for anything. Initially, it was off 150.3 grams in the front, and 33.3 grams in the rear. It was a lot closer in the rear because they are normally balanced with a counterweighted flexplate/flywheel. This one will be neutral balanced without the flywheel. I will neutral balance the flywheel and dial in the balancer also.

After I finished, the final balance was .3 grams front, and .3 grams rear. I was able to get it balanced with only one hole in the front counterweight, and one in the rear. My camera batteries died, so I will get a couple more pics when I can.

Now it's off to the other room so I can polish it and clean it for final assembly. It's getting close. Just been pre-occupied with a 475 inch Pontiac blower engine I'm also trying to finish. For those interested, it's featured here;
http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...=711959&page=8

[gtofreek]

Forgot to mention, I was able to neutral balance because the rods and pistons were lighter than stock. This bobweight came out at 2250.1 grams. Stock is around 2450. The reciprocating weight was really lightened up as the reciprocating factor was only 999.7 grams. By comparison, a stock 327 Chevy reciprocating factor is around 1040 grams. This should rev pretty quickly. Stock 400 Pontiac would be over 1100 grams.

[gtofreek]

Here are some pics of the rods being checked for size and setup up for correct piston pin clearance. The housing bore is on the small end of the limits[2.3247"]. I will torque a bearing up in it to see where I am for clearance. If I have too much clearance, I will have to hone the big end bore a little bigger. I know this doesn't make sense[honing the big end bigger to loose bearing clearance], but when the housing bore is small, the rod complies more so to the bearing shells and becomes more egg-shaped. By making the bore size a little larger, The rod doesn't comply as much to the bearings, and the hole stays rounder and smaller.

Also, checking the stretch on the rod bolts. Eagle spelled out 63 lbs. ft. of torque, but that was with the old ARP Moly lube, which they don't use anymore. I checked them at 63 lbs. ft. torque with the new ARP Ultra lube, but they only stretched about .0045". The Ultra lube usually needs at least 5 lbs. ft. of torque more to accomplish the same values as the old Moly lube. 68 Lbs. still didn't get me quite where I wanted to be so I found I had to go to 70 Lbs. Ft. of torque to get .0056" Stretch. They were all pretty consistent at this so I left them there.

The pin bushings only had about .0003"-.0004" clearance[typical], so I opened them up to the needed .0008" clearance. Pin bushing clearance is dependent on several things.

1. The thickness of the piston pin wall. The thinner the wall thickness is, the more clearance is needed as the pin will flex more.

2. The power level of the engine. The more power it makes, the more the pin flexes, so the more clearance it needs.

3. The length of the pin. The longer the pin is, the more it can flex. Short, stubby pins don't need as much clearance as long pins.

4. The intended usage. Street engines for the most part[there are always exceptions] are expected to run for a long time, so this has to be taken into consideration also as to not have noisy piston pins in a quiet street car.

Not enough clearance in any application will cause the pin to try to dig into and gall the piston when it flexes under power. This can be evidenced by black spots in the pin bore of the piston.

Pistons had .0008" clearance already, so I didn't need to do anything to them.