That sounds good, I'll do that. Now, when I put the valve covers back on I'm not supposed to wrench down real tight, am I? Or am I thinking of something else?
NO!!! 10 ft/lbs or so. Snug, but definitely NOT tight. I use long T-headed bolts and tighten them "firmly" by hand only.
Sometimes it's not easy to see the seals inside the valve springs. A vacuum gauge plugged in to the intake manifold will show if there's a problem with valve guides or seals. At idle the gauge needle will vibrate real fast.
Or, pull your oil pan and look at the screen on your oil pump intake. that is where I found most of mine. They were little chunks of hard plastic, and lots of them. By the way, with those things sitting in the oilpan, can that somehow cause bent valves? I took my stock heads in and they had to swap out 4 valves when they replaced the seals, and I see no damage to the pistons. So I am guessing when the seals went out, they may have gotten binded and bent a little. I still have the valves, and you can roll them and clearly see the bend in them.
With the amount of miles on these 30+ year old motors, usually they will need to be bored and honed. As soon as you go that route the new pistons, parts and machining add up. I recently have been trying to a rebuild an engine for as cheap as possible with me doing all the assembly and just having the machine shop do the bare minimum, which includes cleaning the block, boring, honing, assembling rods to pistons, and installing cam bearings. The cheapest I could get it done was $250 for parts (rings, bearings, gaskets, timing set, oil pump & cast pistons) and $325 for machine work. I ended up getting a good complete 5.0 HO engine at the boneyard for $220 that I can sell parts off of to make it very cheap (EFI intake, engine brackets, MAF, etc.). Plus, it has a roller cam and E7 heads, which make more HP. Pulling the motor at the boneyard was very difficult though. Good luck.
I've got tomorrow off, so I'm going to see if I can find someone to do the valve job for me. If that doesn't do the trick then I've got a hard decision to make..
You know, it you don't have the cash now, you can always drive it the way it is. So what if it smokes a little. Just keep oil in it and save money until you have enough to do a rebuild.
I've been driving it every day for 6 months. The problem is that I'm going to be moving soon and one of the cars HAS to go. I'm trying to determine which one. If I can get this one to stop smoking then I know I'll keep it. The other car has AC, but it's a 250. I'd been saving up for a rebuild until a bunch of crap fell on top of me (regarding a particular dead-beat) and all of the money went buh-bye. This is really a hard thing for me to do right now, especially since we're looking at getting another project as soon as we get into a house.
I am in Phoenix and 'Able' at Engine Locaters did a great job for me. It cost me a bit but I had an unusual job... cam kit,GT40P,.30 boar,blueprinting, magniflux.Thier number is 602-484-9732 . By the way the GT40p heads ROCK but are a major pain. After I solved the header/plug clear issues I could have just put some aftermarket heads.If i knew more I could have done betterfrom the start.I delivered the engine and picked it up.
I can tell you right now that it's gonna be expensive if you can't do the work yourself or have a friend who can do it. If your rings are worn out, I can guarantee that other components are worn out as well. A full rebuild or replacement is in order. It's up to you to decide how much you like the car and whether or not you want to keep it...
