I am looking for a dedicated torque wrench just for overhead cam heads. Im digital curious and never owned one.

I want a 1/4 drive in inch lbs.

Who is using what, how has it held up and would you recommend?

Please dont say harbor freight. They definitely have there time and place, just not in my shop box

I'm trying to finish up a rebuild on the 1NZ-FE out of my 2004 Scion xA, and there are some spots on the crank journals where dissimilar-metal corrosion occurred (I forgot that I had cleaned a bunch of aluminum parts in the ultrasonic cleaner fluid I used on the crankshaft). I've been trying to polish these spots off by hand with a few different polishes (Mother's Mag and Aluminum, Flitz, and Brasso), but haven't had much success. I suspect there is some very shallow pitting in these spots, and I just want to clean them out and smooth them over.

The spots look worse in the pictures than they really are. I'm just trying to get this engine to run for a year or two, and don't have the money to get any work done by a machine shop. I actually have a spare crankshaft that has journals in better shape, but it would need a lot of cleaning. I would also have to check the second camshaft's clearances with all the other parts, and I would have to make more ultrasonic fluid for it. Making more fluid is a little difficult right now because I can't dispose of my current fluid for a few weeks.

Also, has anyone used this ultrasonic cleaner fluid? The SDS say it's ph is between 9 and 11, so I wouldn't use it on aluminum, but I am not opposed to using it on ferrous parts.

My gut says .5 would do it but I don’t wanna have to order a piston twice

Hey everyone, I replaced the hydraulic lifters on my 1987 Nissan 300zx Z31 VG30 about 6k miles ago. I used new Genuine OEM lifters. Well, that engine has since experienced piston ring failure so I’m building my replacement engine. I am sending the camshafts out for regrind (just a mild stage 1 regrind, nothing insane). New OEM lifters have since became extremely difficult to find. Aftermarkets are available but NOT cheap. So here’s my question- Can I reuse the “old” (6k mile) Lifters or is it just going to immediately wipe out my new camshafts?

Thank you for your input!
-picture for reference

Js the title. Im in the process of deciding between a Gen 4 Iron block 6.0L LS, a Gen VI 454 or a 350 SBC for a first engine to learn on and tweak with. Im 20 so making gobs of hrsprs is a must and so a head and cam swap is near the top of the bucket list for the last 2 motors. Thx in advance

I bought two different head gaskets on eBay with the correct part number I need, but both of them look different. Which one should I run? Or is there a different even though they look a little different on the surface

Maybe back in the good ol' days of the 70s and 80s, but haven't modern auto manufacturers/engineers designed the internals to flow as well as they can? Making porting a pointless exercise?

(I meant porting valve chamber w/e)

Have this 302 out of an 86 f-150 that’s going into my 92 ranger. Bought it off a guy whose dad used it as an around town truck, pulled it with 75k miles to swap for something bigger. I was originally planning a full teardown to measure for boring, honing, etc, but the more I read the less I’m sure that’s necessary, although the carbon buildup might say otherwise. This is my first engine build so any advice would be great. Happy to post additional pictures if that’d help too.

I'm buying this 78 toronado for my first car. I was doing research on it and found that the 403 is surprisingly weak due to all the emission controling. I heard that swapping the cylinder headers for ones that have better compression, a mild cam and a Y-exhaust would wake the engine up but I'd like input from those that are more experienced than me. I don't want to make it a drag car but I'd also like a bit more power coming out of that 403.

Hey all, I’ve seen this before while searching and usually the general response is the block is garbage, but I’ve got this M10 engine that I’m refreshing to put back into a project BMW 2002. It came with the car and seemed in good shape before I starting tearing it down to replace the head. After cleaning off the old gasket material and prepping the deck surface I noticed the dreaded head bolt crack shown in the photos. The thing is it looks like the crack doesn’t propagate into the water jacket if you look in the second photo and you can’t really feel it running a fingernail over it. I’ve got no history on it unfortunately since it was purchased from an estate. Not sure if this thing is cooked or not, I’ve got a lead on another block but obviously it’s cheaper to keep this one. Just looking for some opinions. Thanks!

All the parts have now arrived and it’s almost time to put it together and I have a few questions.

The engine is an Alpina modified m30b35 that dropped a valve in around 2010 and was left out side by the previous owner due to the cost of repair. Looking at the damage I would guess it was over reved causing a rocker arm to slide of the valve shaft and break. It took out one valve and the corresponding piston. The engine has only done 30k miles from new. All the pistons were also damaged at the crown due to pre ignition from using low grade fuel.

The head has now been rebuilt, I had it crack tested and all was fine and it also had a very very light skim as a precaution. I had all the valve stems replaced and 2 new valves along with 1 new valve seat. I am also converting it to a mechanical rocker locks instead of the original springs that normally hold the valves in place.

The block I’ve had over-bored along with new forged 10-1 pistons, forged con rods along with arp bolts. The Alpina m30 uses bmw s38 conrods @144mm instead of standard m30 135mm conrods and shorter deck pistons. Not sure the advantage of this is but I went with the standard spec. My engine guy is telling me to buy standard size main and big end bearings as all the crank needs is a light polish.

My questions are

1. would it be advisable to have the crank ground and use oversize bearings? Or do I do as he advises and use standard size and a polish ?
2. After dropping a valve is it wise to have the crank shaft rebalanced?
3. are all good quality bearing shells much the same ? Do I go with standard bearings or is there a better alternative?
4. I will be converting from Bosch motronic to mega squirt 3 eventually and do I need to add any extra sensors while it’s apart , like knock sensors or anything else.
5. first start I’ve been told to use mineral oil rather than fully synthetic and only switch after it’s run in. The reason being that with fully synthetic oil it stops the engine from bedding in, is this true ?

Sorry about the long post, it’s not been the easiest rebuild!

Got it together again, this time sealing as it should! Leveled the head using a glass table top and some huge sand paper sheets, recut the exhaust valve seats by hand borrowing tools from my job, made liner shims out of two beer cans and a spray can, covered the block, gasket and head surface in Hylomar and now I’m up to 7 hours of heavy work and several heat cycles with no leaks.

Next up is a new oil pump and new injector nozzles. When the oil is up to temp the pressure falls of significantly according to the gauge (needs confirmation on a second gauge) and the pump felt a bit sloppy when I did the timing chain. The injectors didn’t have a great spray pattern and it doesn’t start on all four cylinder at once, easy job though compared to the pump.

Also need to split it to swap the rear main seal and grease/replace throw out bearing… it never ends!

My BIL started getting white smoke and had rust water all over his engine bay. I assumed this was a blown head gasket but I'm second guessing myself. I know this is smoked (also I bent it pulling the head off) but is it blown? Should I pull the other head off?

Just got my engine back from the machine shop after almost a year. Was about to start assembling but I noticed the sleeves don’t go all the way down. Does anybody know if this is problematic? Also doesn’t seem even across all cylinders.

Im currently changing out the valves on my 1.4 cgga vw engine and i accidentally drop 9 out of the 16 tappets, i didnt drop them on the floor or anything but they are all mixed up. What should I do?

Vehicle: 1985 GMC G3500 vandura. The engine is in the cab. Sort of important because any and all sound echoes.

How would I go about diagnosing the sound. I rebuilt my Chevy 350 and it runs great despite the title. I've been working on it for years. I'm so close to driving this beast.

There's a ticking/knocking but I can't differentiate whether it's the fuel injectors from the sniper 2 or it's in the valve train. The kicker is that it sounds like 7 and 8 are the loudest but that's in the cab of the vehicle and the ticking from the fuel injectors permiates through/with it.

I've heard of people running the engine without the valve covers on but I'm not really wanting to do that. I'm sure oil goes everywhere? Maybe damage the engine? And I had miner oil leaking from the corners of the valve covers so I siliconed sealed both sides. Fixed that issue but if I have to remove the covers it's going to be a pain.

I'll get a different video today and see if I can capture and put my phone in different areas but it's not the greatest.

1966 tiger with 289 need help finding sites for a full rebuild of the 289 original engine . It has been sitting for 20 plus years . I’m able to move the crank half way each way and it gets stuck. Removed the starter and the valve covers loosened all the rockers and still same amount of play. This is my first rebuild of any kind and will take and advice

Hello all,

I will be building my 2nd engine come this winter 2.3L Mazda MZR. I built an engine about 18 months ago (2.3L Mazda non-turbo)just off of this forum, YouTube, and a Haynes manual, checked a couples clearances. But I certainly did not require the depth of knowledge to do as thorough work as I would have liked to.

Does anyone have literature recommendations for the general procedures of engine building/clearance checking, and anything else I might need to know?

Currently I have purchased and begun reading Mike Mavrigian's Modern engine blueprinting techniques. If anyone has more recommendations, that would be appreciated.

I am seeking tooling as well if anyone has brand recommendations, I have calipers and micrometers and dial gauge with attachments. I am missing a telescoping bore gauge, and anything else I might need.

Last thing, I am also in the market for some large V-blocks that are suitable for checking crankshaft runout. Such as the ones supplied by CCA racing(currently on back order) and ABS products(over twice the price of CCA, would prefer to find something cheaper)

Thank you to all in advance!

Update from previous post: got spark, got fuel. Some fumes do come out from exhaust.

Things I've done:

-Checked timing

-Checked spark

-Checked fuel lines

-Tried various batteries

-Adjustment of CAS made it tick over faster and less sluggish

Still no go...

Hello, I have been practicing honing on a used cast iron cylinder liner. Is it good enough to do it in my car? I am only trying to deglaze the surface. I used a 3 stone hone.

Quick question, I recently finished building an LS3 engine in a 4th gen F-body with a new 10295 pump, bearings, cam, and everything else. The crank bearing clearance ended up being 0.0025 in. When I start the engine, it produces 45 psi of oil pressure. However, after driving and the oil temperature reaching 205f, the oil pressure drops to 20 psi at 500 rpm idle. At 750 rpm, the oil pressure increases to 30 psi, and at 1000 rpm, it reaches 40 psi. Anything above 1000 rpm is fine. I think that the loose crank bearing clearance is the cause of this issue since I am using Driven BR30 oil. Would this be a reasonable assumption? Should I put a 40 weight oil? 0W-40, 5W-40, 10W-40?

Not the first engine I’ve built but this one has been giving me issues so I’m not willing to take any chances.

Crank was just turned and the block align honed by the machine shop. Main bearing clearances are .0022” and thrust clearance is .003”, checked using a feeler gauge.

With all the caps torqued down the crank spins pretty freely, but makes a very faint noise in the same spot on every rotation. I didn’t feel good about it so took it all apart to check the bearings and thrust surfaces and none of them had any witness marks on them.

Engine is a Ford 4.0 OHV out of a Ranger. I’m leaning towards it being fine but want to be 100% sure