Doing the top end a 350 for my truck (winter beater) and have questions.

I pulled the bearing caps on my crank (engine is on a stand) and on the main bearing at the back there is one scratch that I can feel with my finger and finger nail but the crank looks fine. It is like a piece of foreign material got in through the oil and scratched the bearing.

My question is how bad do the bearings have to be to change them out??? If they still fit to oil clearance tolerance can you have a couple of scratches, keeping in mind I am not buidling it to 500 HP just using it as a stock 350 for my truck.

Tried to post in LT1 tech where I usually communicate but I don't think anyone has an answer.

 

"Embeddability" (I think that's a word) means the bearings are soft enough to do exactly what you said, and eat a piece of dirt without hurting the crank.

Are you doing this with the engine still in the truck? You've just dropped the pan and one cap?

As for changing the bearings, you might look at the other crank journals. If none are scored, you might just leave the old ones in. If it were my winter beater (you don't want to know what mine is. ), I'd probably just leave things alone if I wasn't having problems with the lower end.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." seems to me to have been written for the production SBC.

My $.02

 

thnx