Ecotec top end rebuild project

[csimmo]

Oh what a fun week it was. I thought I would just throw up a few pictures. The last time I pulled a head off an engine was an 80's Corolla. This was a fair bit more intensive
The engine was running pretty well, except drinking about 1L of water per month and a noisy lifter. But with 238,000km on the clock, I figured I would just do a full top end rebuild.

Things I got:
ACL VRS Kit $155 eBay
Blue Streak racing lifters $189 eBay
Heads completely reconditioned with 20thou shaved off to up compression, 3way valve seat grind and new valve guides $665
Second hand extractors and Y pipe from my local wreckers $175
Injectors serviced $165
Sealants, tools, a couple of new hoses, fluids, builders lube, anti-seize, spark plugs, dremel bits. The entire project ended up costing $1400 (broke now)

I have only done 35km at the moment, and being gentle for a bit. Also the new Y pipe is hitting the chassis making and awful noise, so will get that fixed up next week.

I cleaned everything as best as I possibly could. I am actually quite proud of my accomplishment. I am by no means a mechanic. Also the help I had was fantastic

The valley cover gaskets had failed. It would appear it was feeding water vapour into the centre chamber on the right bank. When I pulled the heads off, they were a little white on top.

I cleaned the tops of the pistons. I got advice before hand saying just to try and get nothing around the piston itself and not the touch the block surface. I was careful not to do damage to the coating as well. There was a good 1mm of carbon on them. After cleaning the top with the dremel brush ( I went through 3 of them) I spread WD40 in the chamber, then turned the engine down to the bottom of the stroke, cleaned the crud off the cylinder wall with a really soft cloth, blew it out with compress air, then repeated 3 times till no more crud came up.

I used a Stanley blade on a steep angle to scrap off excess head gasket then 1200grit sand paper to polish it up as best I could, wetting it with WD40 the whole way. I then wiped it all over with white spirits and then Metho to remove any residue so the head gaskets had a clean surface to bond to.

The old lifters were very gritty when rolling them, so glad I just replaced them all.

I got reusable rocker bolts from Mace and torqued them up to the recommended 23 foot pounds (31nm), even though the Holden manual recommends 19nm+1/2 turn. But there are no valve train noises so I am happy.
It took about 5min for the lifters to fill up. Following the procedure that came with the lifters, I soaked them in oil for 24 hours, but did not pump them up. The instructions stated this would mess up preloads!

I rebuilt the intake at work since it was a very quiet week for a custom computer shop. Used the dremel on a wire to flush all the carbon out the intake. Cleaned it up to a new state. Got the injectors cleaned. Flow rate was good, but spray patterns were poor on 2 of them. All fixed now. The ACL kit came with the 'O' rings for the plenum, but mine used a gasket. The old gaket was stuffed, so used gasket maker to form a seal.

Anyway, thought I would share my story.