[gtofreek]

Originally Posted by 68azbird

Comes back to basics
If a so called machine shop cant perform the basic machining tasks on any engine make to specifications in the book or to a manufacturer specifications they should not be called a machine shop.

Exactly! We can machine any engine, as long as it fits in our equipment. We even worked on a 1915 Packard engine, I think it was!

[72projectbird]

Originally Posted by zeebo

totally agree. thats why i hesitate to sell cars that have virgin engines in them. cars are rusty, but motors are fine--run great for stockers. and the 455 i have has 65000 original miles on it..little hard to find today.

My 455 has 72k on it and it is smooth as silk. Very clean inside also

Sadly I've been seeing more and more posts about bad machine shops lately.

[68azbird]

Found a few pics of the 1967 YT block that was destroyed by a machine shop. They originally built the engine using HYperutectic pistons and apparently never read the instructions for gapping the rings. Crazy as it was the rings just wore out the cylinder walls to the tune of a 300,000 mile engine and left 1/2" of metal in the oil pan. This engine was only in the car running for 2 weeks.
Long story short and against my recommendations the ownder took the engine back to the butchers and they put 8 sleeves in the block. i guess they had a bever working for cheap labor so they had him gnaw away the chamfers in the block. The chamfers were so big that the fire ring from a standard felpro gasket would not seal on 4 of the cylinders.
They also re used the pistons with the damaged ring lands but cut the top ring lands wider to use a spacer under the top ring. Funny thing is they apparently still did not read the instructions(maybe because of ILLITERACY) for the pistons and setting the ring gaps. The ring gaps were still not correct.
One more thing that was F ed up was apparently they had an old stripped out pipe plug sitting in the scrap bin that was just the right weight they needed to add to the crank. A few tack welds are good for holding the plug in right?

[mgarblik]

Wow!, where do you begin on that YT block. First, the amount of work required to put 8 dry sleeves in an iron block is huge. Not to mention, a decent quality sleeve is going to be $40.00-50.00 each. The chamfers are huge as you mentioned, and likely not needed at all or could be 1/2 that size. Personally, I don't like to put weight on a crankshaft counterweight vertically like that. Sometimes, I have to do it and I always use a full penetration weld all the way around. I have seen the results of a weight like that coming out and it's never pretty. You can ruin the entire engine and endanger the driver if the weight goes through the oil pan in the traps. I much prefer to drill and ream the counterweight horizontally, then press the mallory metal in. No welding and it won't come out.

[gtofreek]

I remember that engine! Wow! What a piece of work.

[68azbird]

Originally Posted by gtofreek

I remember that engine! Wow! What a piece of work.

Well after all you did fix the crank and we used it in the 77 400 engine. The rest was junk.

[hurryinhoosier62]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

Wow!, where do you begin on that YT block. First, the amount of work required to put 8 dry sleeves in an iron block is huge. Not to mention, a decent quality sleeve is going to be $40.00-50.00 each. The chamfers are huge as you mentioned, and likely not needed at all or could be 1/2 that size. Personally, I don't like to put weight on a crankshaft counterweight vertically like that. Sometimes, I have to do it and I always use a full penetration weld all the way around. I have seen the results of a weight like that coming out and it's never pretty. You can ruin the entire engine and endanger the driver if the weight goes through the oil pan in the traps. I much prefer to drill and ream the counterweight horizontally, then press the mallory metal in. No welding and it won't come out.

IF you have the CORRECT equipment and a machinist that is qualified to use this equipment, sleeving this block wouldn't be too difficult but I would have to wonder about the overall strength of the deck due to the amount of material removed from the cylinder walls. Most of the sleeves we dealt with had a wall thickness of 3/8" (.375) minimum.

[mgarblik]

I have a computerized semi-automatic Rottler boring mill, F5A. It won't go hole to hole and you do have to set-up each bank separately. I admit I am not a speed demon, but by the time I set up the two banks, load the program, bore the cylinders for sleeves, buy the sleeves, put them in dry ice, install them, cut down the tops to the deck, bore and hone the sleeves with torque plates, a customer is going to have a grand in that alone. It would take me about 8 hours to install and bore the sleeves and another 4 hours to torque plate hone the block. Even at $60.00 an hour, which is a very low labor rate around here, that's $720.00 plus the cost of 8 sleeves. I hope the Pontiac faithful won't take this the wrong way, but I can buy a good core 400 for around $250.00 and a 455 for $400.00 or so. I just can't see the benefit of this kind of massive chip removal from a typical Pontiac block vs a decent core. A rare block or 1 or 2 sleeves would be a different story. I put 8 sleeves in an original 64 hemi block because the owner wanted to keep it numbers matching. Also put 8 in a Ford motorsports 5.0 liter. I guess if someone brings the money and insists I do it, I would.

[68azbird]

The sad part is if the brain surgeon would have sonic tested the block it most likely would have been fine at 60 over. Pretty stupid to sleeve a block in 8 holes and go .030 so you can re use the pistons that were messed up anyway with spacers under the top ring.

[hurryinhoosier62]

Originally Posted by mgarblik

I have a computerized semi-automatic Rottler boring mill, F5A. It won't go hole to hole and you do have to set-up each bank separately. I admit I am not a speed demon, but by the time I set up the two banks, load the program, bore the cylinders for sleeves, buy the sleeves, put them in dry ice, install them, cut down the tops to the deck, bore and hone the sleeves with torque plates, a customer is going to have a grand in that alone. It would take me about 8 hours to install and bore the sleeves and another 4 hours to torque plate hone the block. Even at $60.00 an hour, which is a very low labor rate around here, that's $720.00 plus the cost of 8 sleeves. I hope the Pontiac faithful won't take this the wrong way, but I can buy a good core 400 for around $250.00 and a 455 for $400.00 or so. I just can't see the benefit of this kind of massive chip removal from a typical Pontiac block vs a decent core. A rare block or 1 or 2 sleeves would be a different story. I put 8 sleeves in an original 64 hemi block because the owner wanted to keep it numbers matching. Also put 8 in a Ford motorsports 5.0 liter. I guess if someone brings the money and insists I do it, I would.

F5A's a good machine. We had F90s and F80s. The F80s were used for nothing more than sleeving blocks. I would kill for a F67A. I can understand the Hemi, but 5.0 Motorsports blocks aren't exactly rare. I've cut the cam bores for roller bearings on one. NOT a fun job...........

[Goatracer1]

I picked a shop that was popular in the area and had been in business since the 1960's. They called me one afternoon to come get my motor because they were closing the doors forever. They said my engine was finished. It was finished alright. It was the last engine they built and I guess they just didn't care.

[68azbird]

Well it seems that when the baboons that previously did the machine work on this aluminum IA2 block they didn't take into account that the bore centerline is something that you should pay attention to.
Bore centers are off .040 from top to bottom. And the correct size head gaskets would overhang the cylinders. Also the sleeves are sticking up above the deck surface.
Don't bore and hone blocks while taking swigs of that moonshine fellas.

[Qball]

Originally Posted by 77 TRASHCAN

I can screw it up a whole lot cheaper than paying someone else to do same.

Words to live by!

[zeebo]

jesus. just awful..and as the skilled machinist fades into the pages of time, so goes the quality engine rebuild..

[gtofreek]

Not to mention the washers on the ARP splayed main cap bolts were upside down. One bolt even had a stud washer on it and not a bolt washer at all. Then there is the one hardware store bolt that was too long so they double stacked lock washers on it.

On the bore centers, it was clear that the boring bar they used does not center good, because on one bank, the sleeves are thin on the exhaust side, and the other bank is thin on the intake side. When the boring bar is off, it bores the second bank opposite of the first, because you flip the block around. Our boring bar offsets about .003", so I have to use a dial indicator to zero it in, to get it perfectly on center. This one is so far off that the thin side of the sleeve only measures about .055"-.056", while the thick side measures almost .100".

Is this some kind of a test for me Mike?

[Nicks67GTO]

All of this is pushing me to build my own again. I was going to contract it to save time and headache but after seeing this nonsense....I think ill just do my own.

[rtanner]

what it boils down to is there are a handfull of competent pontiac shops nation wide, as each year passes the cost to ship your parts both ways to them becomes more and more appealing, 68azbirds buddy right now i bet would think 400 in shipping was cheap!!!!!!

[rtanner]

BTW i still cant get a set of pistons pressed on pontiac rods the right direction first time,locally

[Nicks67GTO]

What is so different about Pontiacs? What is actually different in the required machine work and assembly? It would seem that if someone knew how to operate equipment good enough to do other engines that a Pontiac would be no different. It's a pushrod V8.

[68azbird]

By the attitude some machine shops display, they just don't care and just want to take your money. If it starts up and runs for an hour they did their job. When it breaks it's your fault and they want no part of it. They just hand you the jar of Vaseline and tell you to go on your way.