MY ENGINE PROBLEM, CHAPTER 2

i AM jumping the gun; Let's say my test run proves unsucesful---the engine still smokes more than at a KISS concert.

Let us now discuss ALL the other possibilities of why an engine would produce copius amounts of smoke.


A) Discuss "valve guides" completely:

1) How to determine if this is the problem.

2) how to change them. If possible, use illustrations such as the ones i've provided in posts entitled "STewie's engine swap/ rochester 2GV". Or if you could recommend a good book, that would be helpful.


B) Re-ringing. Also discuss fully.

1) Will the cylinder walls need to be re-honed?

Stu, put this back in your original post as people will get lost trying to follow you.

Just as a matter of general curiosity where do you live Stewart?

1) Balt/DC. Why?

a) The bridge authority has tow trucks (in case someone breaks down on the bridges or in tunnels). In this case, i had one follow me across the chesapeake bay bridge with it's lights flashing. How embarrassing.

b) If you're familiar with Coleman brothers and Ladd's porting service, i've got them in my rolodex.


2)CHAPTER 2, CONTINUED:

Ok, i ran the 350 on the test stand today for a few minutes. And, so far so good because there was no smoke or steam whatsover.

BUT
The engine temp only got to about 140ish; I couldn't run it no more because:

a) it was too cotton-pickin' loud; The test stand has open headers. i am working on getting mufflers ASAP.

b) The headers were getting really, really HOT. And i had to stand near it in order to keep the throttle open because it kept on wanting to stall out.

Now, i know that there was water in the block because it started to leak a little bit on top of the manifold where i screw in the water temp sensor---this is near the thermostat housing.

So what i'm wondering now is, Is this short run (3-4 mins) good enough to determine whether the engine is now ok, that it indeed was the head gasket and my repair fixed it? Remember that the exhaust on the test stand is just open headers and thus no water in them left over from when the engine was last run.

Or should i run it to 195 degrees which is what my thermostat is and let water circulate thru the block and back into the radiator and then back into the block etc.?

Stewart,
Get a cheap set of header mufflers so you can run it for a while, even though 3 or four minutes is probably enough. Up the timing some and the headers should cool off, and it will probably run better too :)

If the temp only got to 140, does this mean that technically, water was not actually "circulating" through the block because the thermostat did not yet open?

i know water was in the block obviously. But was it moving?

As long as the water pump is spinning on a SB the water is circulating as there is a bypass built into the SB's water pump.My advice is if you're gonna run the engine on a test stand is to run it without a T-stat or use a restrictor instead of a thermostat.

Do a leak down test to see exactly where the oil is getting through, it could be a bad seal on the intake gasket.