Once the engine is out, and i remove the lifter i dropped in the windage tray I'm going to replace:

-Rod bearings
-Main bearings
-Piston rings


Any other tips or suggestions on things i should replace or check with the motor out? Also for the piston rings, what's the stock bore is it 3.989?

 

Unless you are going to have the bores kiss honed I would not be replacing rings on old cylinder walls. And then once you hone for cross hatch for the new rings your piston to wall is going to be looser and what have you really gained if there was no problem to begin with?

How many miles?

 

40k miles......What about the rod/main bearings, should i go ahead and replace them?

 

Don't bother with either the rings or any bearings. You'll cause more problems than you may prevent, especially if you plan on spinning that engine over 6000rpm. Instead I recommend you replace the rod bolts with ARP bolts, and make sure to do them one at a time - do not remove the main or rod caps!

 

Yep - leave them both alone, bearings don't wear unless you have run the motor dry, let crap go through the oil, or really over-heated it. I pull down motors with over 200k on them and the bearings look brand new because the maintenance schedule was strictly adhered to.

Everything that I know about fasteners and machining says to not replace rod bolts without resizing the rods to account for the change in distortion, I have never seen a set not go out of round due to this change - but I guess there's a lot of LS people out there changing them in chassis without problems....


If you plan on spinning more RPM than stock you should just replace the rods with some cheap but very strong Scats and have the rotating assy. balanced.

 

I'm not planning on spinning beyond stock RPM, my cam isn't that big. I just figured all this would be a good idea since the motor is coming out. I did however have a slight knock/tap (most likely valvetrain) but i don't shoot myself in the foot by installing everything and still have a knock, would it be a good idea to go ahead and check all my clearances on the bearings?

 

You should have diagnosed the tap before taking the motor out - rod knocks are easy to differentiate from valve train ticks and taps. Did you see any bad lobes on the cam or rollers on the lifters? Any bad rocker arms? Could it have been a simple exhaust leak?

Did the noise get louder under load? Did it go away on de-cel?

 

The whole valvetrain looked excellent when i removed it, i haven't inspected the lifters yet. The noise would go away when for example, i would do a quick rev and once the rpm's dropped the tap/knock disappeared for about 15 seconds or so then it would return. I've had that noise ever since i purchased the car in 2004 and it had 9k miles. I haven't been gentle with it either all the way up until now and it has a little over 40k miles with no issues at all. Oil pressure was always good, never found any metal shavings while changing the oil or anything else out of the ordinary.

 

Noisy lifters/valvetrain - nothing to worry about.

 

If you are just dropping the pan to get that lifter, I would just throw it back together and call it a day. No point in fixing what isn't broke. My only advice is to make sure you torque the pan properly, though, since it is structural.

-Geoff

 

Would it harm anything if i just do a clearance check on all the bearings, including the mains?

 

I wouldn't mess with it unless you have done it many times before without problems - I don't know you and although you may be perfectly capable of doing it properly, but I have seen too many instances of the inexperienced causing themselves trouble and extra money spent because they bit off more than they could chew to recommend when nothing seems to be wrong.

 

I'm a diesel mechanic, i've done countless bearing installations among many other things. For some reason though, when it comes to my car i won't do anything extreme unless i have to.....I'm going to go ahead and just leave everything alone, once i get the car running again i'll see how things go, if i run into bottom end issues then i'll be a serious tear down. Thanks for all the help.