listen to this one. the past 5 monts has been the worst months of my 96Zs life. i got out of the military 5 months ago, and having just completed a tour in iraq i had some money to burn. so i decided to do some up grades to the z. i allready had almost every bolt on you can think of, so i decided to do a moser 12 bolt, and a le2 heads and cam package, pcm for less tune. i got it all together and it ran great, but i wasnt quite satisfied, i wanted alittle more. so i steped up my setup with a golen 383, and a le4 cam. after i got it all together i was finally content, it felt like an absolute monster. after putting alittle over 500 miles, i decided to open her up. it was a beast, i brought it up to 6800 and it still felt like it had some snot left. after a day of fooling around, i started to notice that at hight rpms my oil pressure would drop drasticly, and my low oil light was coming on. i brought her home, and cheked the oil, and to my suprise their was about 4in of my dipstick missing. so not really wanting to drop the pan, i pulled out the oil level sender so i could fish around for the piece. suprise #2 my oil level sender has broken off. i fished around anyway, and got suprise #3, i pulled out a big chunk of mangled metal wich sure as hell not the dip stick. so i preced to pull the pan. as i got the pan loose i felt something rattling in it, suprise #4. there it was my pickup sitting in my oil pan looking like someone took a grinder to it. crap. so nothing left to do but pull the engine and look for damage. got the engine out, and took off the rear main cap, and the bearing was mangled and the jornal slightly scored. so at this point, im thinking, im not to bad, take it apart clean the block up, new bearings, oil pump, pick, pan and im good to go.
suprise #5, i pulled the #4 piston and the bore has a nasty gouge in it. so now im at a loss. there is no way that gouge can be honed out. so these are my options, bore the block even more, make it a 385, and get new pistons, rings, bearings ect, or freshen up my stock short block and buy another le2 cam and have the comp retuned. oh and the pick up was pressd and welded onto the pump. the weld was horrible, you could see exactly where and why it broke, air bubbles all in the weld. the weld was done by highway welding on rt22 west in branchburg NJ, it think the guys name was eric (not positive). i wouldent trust that guy to soder tinfoil for me after looking at that weld. no luck. ther car gods definatly have no love for this vet. what do you guys think i should do. im definatly on a pretty tight budget. thanks for listning to my sob story.

 

Wow dude.... that's crap. Go yell at the guy that did the weld. At least you will feel better.

 

yell and screaming at the guy, wont solve anything, but beleve me, when im through with that guy, he wont be able to get a job glueing two pieces of paper together much less weld anything.

 

eek maybe I should get my pickup welded on? I just pressed it in there but its not welded!

 

Hey irish z, sorry to hear about your series of unfortunate events. This guy eric you mentioned, does he have a welding truck, white chevy with blue lettering?

 

im not sure. i know he works out of the shop.

 

That's why I like the Milodon pickups that have a bracket/retainer that bolts to the pump. I used some loctite on the bolt and called it a day.

 

Weld pickups.

 

Another option that i didn't see listed would be to sleeve the bad cylinder and then get it bored to the correct size.

 

i thought about a sleve. im kinda iffy about that, ive heard that they can leak. it almost seems like kind of a half a$$ed fix. im leaning more twards a 385. thanks for the input though.

 

Sleeves are perfectly fine if they're installed properly.

 

Ahh I have the Miloden pickup also with a bolt holding it in. I should be ok not welding it then right!

 

The melling oil pumps with bolt on pickups are great! Part numbers are 10552 and 10555 for the HV.

Jason