legacycentral bbs

I was gonna assemble this weekend, but I found a clump of metal shavings from the boring next to one of the oil squirters. I'm gonna have the shop tank the block again.

Even after tanking, you will want to inspect and hand clean all wear surfaces before assembly...

and yes, it is sexy. I don't care what people think, I love those simple little heads. Bead blasting those cool valve covers makes for a really cool look, as well...

word, have them throw the valve covers in the cleaner too, the'll look brand new

Matt, do you think I need to get it tanked again? I was just talking to a friend and we thought I could clean it up by hand if i blew out the oil passageways with the air compressor. I'm just worried about metal bits clogging up the oil squirters. I'll definately go over all bearing surfaces by hand before assembly. I've got some plastigage, but I don't think it'll be an issue.

Also, what kind of assembly lube do you reccommend? I've got some moly/graphite assembly lube.

As far as the deck of the block, I need to clean them up with a razor blade. How clean do they need to be for proper sealing? Should I go over them with a fine-grit sandpaper?

Anything else?

For the deck of the block, use Permatex spray gasket remover. Spray it on, let it sit for 5-10 minutes and scrape. I usually do it twice. The first time with a paint scraper and the second time with a razor blade. Then I clean it up with brake cleaner.

moly lube is fine.

On the squirters, remove them, soak them in carb cleaner and then blow them out with air. Then use thread lock when you reinstall them. They have been known to fall out.

Personally, I wouldn't re-tank it. Just do all the finish clean up by hand...

I wish I had some pictures of my polished covers to show off. They are damn sexy...

Roger that. cssshhhht.

I was just worried about clogging the oil squirters since I took them out before I brought the block to get machined. I'll blow everything out before final cleaning.

That looks sweet.

Very cool. So you are using the ARP head studs? Why? Just looking for perspective for what I am going to do.

Did you do anything to your heads?

I got the head studs cause I know they're good and I don't want to buy any more down the line.


Aside from the cams and replacing the exhaust valves, nothing done to the heads. I don't know a whole lot about porting, so I didn't want to dive into my heads with the mini die grinder. It'd be nice to be able to match the gaskets and use tham as a guide, but there's no gap on these. Oh well. I hope the Delta cams help out up top.

Thats alot of good stuff going in there WITHOUT swapping in some DOHC heads. Is this an option? While I would love to think and belive that our heads are good enough, I KNOW that if you are doing what you are doing (I am kinda doing the same) you might as well upgrade the heads.

I suspect I will be swapping just heads soon and I bet I get a 15-25 whp increase at 7 psi alone.

You really think that much doug, just swapping heads? Would the loss in compression take any away from that?

Well, I HOPE so.

I'm holding out on heads untill next year sometime. They are definately in the agenda, I just want to get everything together and running/tuned first. My turbo should spool really well, so I'm hoping with the cams, they'll do fine. I just found a guy locally that does ceramic coating for cheap, so I'm gonna have him do the exhaust manifold and turbo after I gasket match everything, so that should help.

I also want to take my time in finding some updated heads. STi ver. 7+ would be nice...

I am going the same route dan. Going to use the sohc for rightnow. I have some acvs heads that will go on later once I get the engin management down. I as well am having my turbo ceramic coated as well as my new exhaust manifolds, piston tops, combustion chambers.

My previous setup was all coated minus pistons and chambers and spool was amazing.

What did the cams run you $$ wise if you don't mind me asking...

$150 which included return shipping and a Tshirt. They claim a 10% gain. I'll have no way of testing that, but others here are happy with the results, IIRC.