Boy Rich, I've been following these threads about your "rebuild" and nobody likes to say this to someone. But I think you really got the shaft on that engine rebuild. It really sounds like these guys haven't got a clue as to what they were doing. If it were me, I'd write it off as a REAL BAD experience, take the hit on the money that they stung me for and turn them in to the better business bureau. Then find a shop that had a good reputation and have it gone over before my head and block were completely ruined.
I've had heads done at two different shops, both costing about $450. For that money they baked and bead blasted the head, they Magnafluxed the head for cracks then pressure tested it, milled the surfaces, installed all six exhaust seats, replaced all the valve guides, checked the spring pressures and replaced all the valves with new valves and gave me back the old parts in a box when I picked up the heads.
I take the ball from that point and do my own installation and adjustments. That was about eight thousand miles ago, the situation was right to pull the short block this past winter and I had the same machine shop do the block. And they again, baked the block, bead blasted it, checked for cracks, checked the line bore, bored the cylinders .020” over and fit new aluminum pistons, reworked the rods for insert bearings, installed new cam bearings and freeze plugs of course, ground the crank .010” under and resurfaced the flywheel then balanced the whole rotating mass. Since all they do is rebuild engines I let them do the easy part also, i.e. drop the pistons in, bolt the crank back in and adjust the bearings. And again, I take it from there and do the installation my self. While the block was being rebuilt I disassembled the head which they had previously rebuilt to clean it up just to make sure nothing was askew. Cost for all of the work on the short block was about $2500. So for about $3000 total I’ve got a brandy new engine.
I got side tracked for the last 6 months but got back on the main line the last couple of weeks. Here are a some of pix of where I’m at this week. Look to the bottom 10 rows of this album (no ads, just pictures):
http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/under_hood&page=all Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL
