Engine out

I eventually got out the engine. You have to be very careful to keep the torque tube and engine aligned with the load leveler and it’ll pop out. It’s way easier to pry from under the car than up top. You just need to lower the car around the engine to get enough height to get it over a fender. 

Oil pan had plenty of sparklies in it. Not a lot in the way of bigger chunks. Pickup tube was clean.

I did find the other 3 lifters. 2 damaged, one fine. The piston rings were in surprisingly good shape. All of them moving freely. Though the rod bearings a lot of them had a wear pattern at the top under the piston

The rod journals all had fine scratches. 99% of this you can’t catch a nail on. Probably would polish out.

The main bearings are similar, but the bearings themselves were in a bit better shape. In general nothing catastrophic. Again, only a very few lines that barely caught a nail. Probably okay to polish.

So decision time-

I need for sure

• Rod bearings
• Main bearings
• Cam bearings
• New lifters
• New cam

DIY maybe

• Dingleball hone the bore for 3.898 pistons.
• Polish the crank with 800/1000 blue magic
• Glass polish the head surface

1. DIY polish the crank, dingleball hone and throw it back together with new bearings and rings? Super cheap, but leaves me with weak crank bolts. I know there are arp kits, but apparently you need to resize the rods which gets rid of the main advantage here, avoiding a machine shop. This combo I’d expect in the low 400rwhp. 6500rpm is really the max safe limit due to the rod bolts. Maybe $200 in bearings. $200 in tools.

2. Upgrade the rods and pistons. I could still DIY polish the crank, and dingleball hone. However I would need someone to balance the crank for the new setup. If I’m interacting with a machine shop it’s probably worth having them do the block as well bore, hone, and cam bearings. This would spin to 8k safely. I could bump the cam, etc to work more up here and have mid 400’s hp? $1200ish in parts. $750-1000ish in machine work?

3. Stroke it. I can get a balanced rotating assembly. The bearings are easy enough. I’d probably need the block bored as most of the kits are for 3.903 or 3.905 pistons.  I’d expect to get 7k rpm out of this. 7100rpm is 5kft/min. Likely I wouldn’t need to rev near as much with the torque curve. Probably close to 500rwhp. $2700-2800 in parts. $400ish in machine work?