paulm
May 17th, 08, 10:12 AM
Man, I have missed two weeks of racing now....I'm starting to get the cold sweats and shakes, LOL! I pulled my motor a week ago or so as I was tired of the blow-by! Took it to a shop as my 383 just never seemed to be everything that I thought it should be.
They tore it down and found that a piece of weld from one of the crank weights had broken off and gone through the motor, uggghhhh! On top of that the retainer grooves where pretty beat up so I guess my valve springs weren't getting the job done.
So the main bearings and stock GM crank were trashed, the stock GM 5.7 rods really couldn't be reused as to make them right would put them out of tolerance, the block was never plate honed so to do that would require forty over pistons which makes my hyper thirty overs "spare parts". My cheapo timing chain was way stretched....whatever, change that too.
On a positive note, the block, cam, lifters and heads (minus the valves and springs) are good! I guess I'm lucky that I got my 11.99 BEFORE I had a catastophic failure, LOL! All in all my little 383 did pretty darn good as the main bearings/crank were spewing metal, the rings weren't sealing as they had mucho metal shavings on them and the valve springs weren't keeping valves in check.
The shop that did the machine work on the block did say that they would make it right as it was their weld that broke, but after seven years of abuse....I think I got my fifteen hundred dollars worth, only a portion of that was for the machine work but I think that fifteen hundred is what it cost for the short block back then. Man, I must be used to nickel and diming together motors as there is a big price difference between that and dropping of a motor and telling the shop...."just make it right", LOL!
They tore it down and found that a piece of weld from one of the crank weights had broken off and gone through the motor, uggghhhh! On top of that the retainer grooves where pretty beat up so I guess my valve springs weren't getting the job done.
So the main bearings and stock GM crank were trashed, the stock GM 5.7 rods really couldn't be reused as to make them right would put them out of tolerance, the block was never plate honed so to do that would require forty over pistons which makes my hyper thirty overs "spare parts". My cheapo timing chain was way stretched....whatever, change that too.
On a positive note, the block, cam, lifters and heads (minus the valves and springs) are good! I guess I'm lucky that I got my 11.99 BEFORE I had a catastophic failure, LOL! All in all my little 383 did pretty darn good as the main bearings/crank were spewing metal, the rings weren't sealing as they had mucho metal shavings on them and the valve springs weren't keeping valves in check.
The shop that did the machine work on the block did say that they would make it right as it was their weld that broke, but after seven years of abuse....I think I got my fifteen hundred dollars worth, only a portion of that was for the machine work but I think that fifteen hundred is what it cost for the short block back then. Man, I must be used to nickel and diming together motors as there is a big price difference between that and dropping of a motor and telling the shop...."just make it right", LOL!