"Ted Mittelstaedt" > writes:

>For the aluminum block, you can use a wire brush but be careful with it -
>don't use a wire brush on a drill, use a hand brush and stop brushing when
>aluminum starts to appear under the old gasket material.. There are chemical
>products out there that are designed to clean off old gaskets you might try
>those. For a scraper, use a plastic ice scraper, not a metal one.

I was going to use brake cleaner and a plastic scraper as a start and save the
aggressive stuff for later.

>I would also recommend chasing the threads in the block with a tap. Some
>people just drill all of them out and replace them with HeliCoils.

Ok, I've heard that there are two kinds of taps - real taps, and thread
chasers, made out of different material, where thread chasers are made for
cleaning up existing threads. Supposedly a thread chaser runs less risk of
inadvertently doing something really bad to the threads. I was planning to get
a thread chaser, but can you shed any light on this difference?

>How many miles on this? Frankly, an engine that was owned by an owner
>who neglected oil changes is a poor candidate for new heads. Your better
>off just rebuilding the entire thing.

200k. Well, I should clarify. By neglected, I mean he usually let it get up
to 5-10k between changes. This is neglect by my standards, but may be within
reasonable tolerance. The reason I noticed it was because the valves were
noisy when cold and I asked him about it.

Looks like a crank kit is about $300 and rings another $80. Plus the motor
would have to be pulled to do the mains and the oil pump. If the compression
is good and there is no play in the pistons, could the bottom end be that bad?
What about just replacing the rod bearings from the bottom, and doing the rings
through the top after getting rid of the ridge? I also don't know if the
cylinder would need to be re-honed for the type of rings in this motor to seal
up again, or if cleaning it would suffice.

Thanks for the reply.