My 6L, cammed, manual WH2

[SirNemesis]

It begins...

 

[Cava454]

What happened to no LSx block haha

 

[SirNemesis]

Haha, exactly. Sometimes life presents you with an option that is just too good to pass up...

 

[SirNemesis]

Not bad progress for the day...

Rather unhappy looking main bearing. I thought I put in alot of effort to ensuring the block was clean, but apparently I didn't!

 

[enroh]

I'm liking the new direction...

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

[WogBoyz]

Double post

 

[WogBoyz]

Nar I can't justify the LSX block. If I go LSX I'm going to want to put a better crank and rods in it as well, and then probably better heads. Too much money. I'll just put an LY6 block in it, reuse the rotating assembly and fire it up. Should be back on the road for under $3k.

It begins...

Nek minnnit haha

keep the pics comming mate keen to see whats next

 

[SirNemesis]

Haha, couldn't help myself. I picked up the LSX block for almost the same price as an LQ9/LY6

All of the gear has been dropped off at the machine shop for inspection and machining. He works slow so it'll probably be a couple of months, but thats ok, I can't afford to pay for the work yet anyway lol.

 

[SirNemesis]

Not much to report for the moment. All going well I should finally get the block back from the machine shop tomorrow. They are just waiting on cam bearings at the moment.

I picked up some seals from Spencer Race Engines today and glued them into the rear block cover and the cam retaining plate. The LSX block is a little different than typical LS engines with these seals. The LSX has o-ring grooves, where the other blocks use bonded seal plates. This makes the LSX a bit dicky, but I got them glued in nicely.

My new rings also arrived from Total Seal.

 

[SirNemesis]

Ok, now I have some progress to talk about

Got the block back from the machine shop, was a bit disappointed they hadn't touched the mains as I specified I wanted them line honed. The guy at the machine shop was confident that I wouldn't need to as they measured up good and suggested I do a pre-assembly and bring the block back if it isn't right. I'd need to bring the block back to do the deck as it also hasn't been cut yet. This is because I need to measure piston height before I know how much of the deck to cut back.

So, first things first I need to get the heavy bastard out of the crate and onto the engine stand. This little gizmo made the job easy.

Done! Ready to put the crank in. Flipped the block and removed the factory main bolts and caps.

Mmmm dowels...

3 of 5 the caps had burs on them which would stop them seating correctly, all in the same position. A little work with the diamond file cleaned these up.

Then I went over the surface area with some emery paper to remove any little specs of rust which had formed.

Mmmm billet...

Put the bearings in. Cleaned and rested the crank in dry and added some Plastiguage. Measured the clearances and found about 0.0008" for all. This is wayyy too tight, so will need to be machined out to achieve the desired 0.0025-0.0030" clearance I'd like.

Removed the Plastiguage, cleaned the bearings and added some assembly lube. Put the crank back and torqued down the caps to spec. When torqued, the clearance is too tight to allow the crank to turn by hand, which won't help me with the next stage. Loosened off all of the mains to just over finger tight, which allowed me to turn the crank.

Cleaned up a couple of pistons and installed. Measured the deck to piston clearance which appears to be about 0.0021-0.0022".

Also went through and gapped all of the rings to suit. 0.0022" for the top ring, 0.0014" for the bottom ring, as per Total Seal recommendations.

Tomorrow I'm going to try getting the block back to the machine shop to do the rest of the job. Hopefully it wont take too long!