Hi everyone. I have a 2015 Santa Fe Sport that I kept after getting a new car. I want to get into rebuilding car as a hobby and was wondering how difficult it would be to take out the engine and disassemble, clean, and put it back together.

So far I have done some simple jobs like oil change, coolant change, transmission oil drain and replace, alternator change on this car, but I realize taking the engine out and reassembling is a whole different game.

I have access to a lift, engine block lifter and various power tools. Is this a stupid idea without proper mechanic training?

Checking rod bearing clearances on an S54B32 I’m rebuilding and on bearing 2 the plastigauge is coming out wider toward the front of the engine. I’ve double checked there’s no debris behind either bearing half, and the plastigauge is within spec along the entire length. Is this something I should worry about? Not looking to make any crazy with power with this engine, keeping it stock and mostly to be used for daily driving.

Car bought by my dad in 1968. Dad build the engine while in high school. Has the old edelbrock scorpion intake. Though ya'll might like to hear a old school 383 build. One of the meanest sounding 383's ive heard. Pulls very hard to about 7400 RPM. 3.73 gears in the rear.

Parked the car behind his house in 2009. I got my hands on it this year, about 25k into the car. Only think left is the new wiring harness, then strip, body work, and paint.

(The drum brakes arent on it anymore)

Just got the original heads redone on my 454 BBC.

Aside from larger valves and new guides, I had the deck surface shaved down .060 to try and up compression more without changing pistons.

One thing I noticed with reassembly is the roller rocker contact to the valve tip is slightly off center now. I marked in sharpie where it makes contact in my photo.

Does this look acceptable or should I look for shorter pushrods?

Hitting the oil plug holes in an engine block with a chisel to give them some extra insurance to stay put seems to be a common practice.

When installing new plugs so they don't leak, what do we do about the old chiseled bumps that now make the bore out of round?

Is it silly to go 11.7:1 on a B20 with stock rods? I got the speedfactory pistons and was told my rods will be okay with arp rod bolts and proper machining, but should i just go for upgraded rods? Is there any specific no go zones with stock rods for B20’s?
Any advice is appreciated thank you!

What would be a good recommendation for a camshaft for a 94+ 351w. I'm not looking for anything crazy, just something budget friendly for a college kid that wants to build a carb swapped roller with a nice rhythm at idle. Im okay swapping valve springs, rocker arms and pushrods. I have little to no experience building an engine with aftermarket parts, lots of experience with stock parts though lol. Any help is appreciated!

1969 Ford XL(full size) 302 2v. Coolant is puddling in the rear two cylinders. A tiny bit in the adjacent cylinders. Compression seems fine at 140 PSI. Is it more likely that the intake manifold gasket is leaking or the head gasket?

I'm trying to finish up a rebuild on the 1NZ-FE out of my 2004 Scion xA, and there are some spots on the crank journals where dissimilar-metal corrosion occurred (I forgot that I had cleaned a bunch of aluminum parts in the ultrasonic cleaner fluid I used on the crankshaft). I've been trying to polish these spots off by hand with a few different polishes (Mother's Mag and Aluminum, Flitz, and Brasso), but haven't had much success. I suspect there is some very shallow pitting in these spots, and I just want to clean them out and smooth them over.

The spots look worse in the pictures than they really are. I'm just trying to get this engine to run for a year or two, and don't have the money to get any work done by a machine shop. I actually have a spare crankshaft that has journals in better shape, but it would need a lot of cleaning. I would also have to check the second camshaft's clearances with all the other parts, and I would have to make more ultrasonic fluid for it. Making more fluid is a little difficult right now because I can't dispose of my current fluid for a few weeks.

Also, has anyone used this ultrasonic cleaner fluid? The SDS say it's ph is between 9 and 11, so I wouldn't use it on aluminum, but I am not opposed to using it on ferrous parts.

My gut says .5 would do it but I don’t wanna have to order a piston twice

I am looking for a dedicated torque wrench just for overhead cam heads. Im digital curious and never owned one.

I want a 1/4 drive in inch lbs.

Who is using what, how has it held up and would you recommend?

Please dont say harbor freight. They definitely have there time and place, just not in my shop box

Hey everyone, I replaced the hydraulic lifters on my 1987 Nissan 300zx Z31 VG30 about 6k miles ago. I used new Genuine OEM lifters. Well, that engine has since experienced piston ring failure so I’m building my replacement engine. I am sending the camshafts out for regrind (just a mild stage 1 regrind, nothing insane). New OEM lifters have since became extremely difficult to find. Aftermarkets are available but NOT cheap. So here’s my question- Can I reuse the “old” (6k mile) Lifters or is it just going to immediately wipe out my new camshafts?

Thank you for your input!
-picture for reference

I bought two different head gaskets on eBay with the correct part number I need, but both of them look different. Which one should I run? Or is there a different even though they look a little different on the surface

Hey all, I’ve seen this before while searching and usually the general response is the block is garbage, but I’ve got this M10 engine that I’m refreshing to put back into a project BMW 2002. It came with the car and seemed in good shape before I starting tearing it down to replace the head. After cleaning off the old gasket material and prepping the deck surface I noticed the dreaded head bolt crack shown in the photos. The thing is it looks like the crack doesn’t propagate into the water jacket if you look in the second photo and you can’t really feel it running a fingernail over it. I’ve got no history on it unfortunately since it was purchased from an estate. Not sure if this thing is cooked or not, I’ve got a lead on another block but obviously it’s cheaper to keep this one. Just looking for some opinions. Thanks!

Maybe back in the good ol' days of the 70s and 80s, but haven't modern auto manufacturers/engineers designed the internals to flow as well as they can? Making porting a pointless exercise?

(I meant porting valve chamber w/e)

Js the title. Im in the process of deciding between a Gen 4 Iron block 6.0L LS, a Gen VI 454 or a 350 SBC for a first engine to learn on and tweak with. Im 20 so making gobs of hrsprs is a must and so a head and cam swap is near the top of the bucket list for the last 2 motors. Thx in advance

Have this 302 out of an 86 f-150 that’s going into my 92 ranger. Bought it off a guy whose dad used it as an around town truck, pulled it with 75k miles to swap for something bigger. I was originally planning a full teardown to measure for boring, honing, etc, but the more I read the less I’m sure that’s necessary, although the carbon buildup might say otherwise. This is my first engine build so any advice would be great. Happy to post additional pictures if that’d help too.

I'm buying this 78 toronado for my first car. I was doing research on it and found that the 403 is surprisingly weak due to all the emission controling. I heard that swapping the cylinder headers for ones that have better compression, a mild cam and a Y-exhaust would wake the engine up but I'd like input from those that are more experienced than me. I don't want to make it a drag car but I'd also like a bit more power coming out of that 403.

Just got my engine back from the machine shop after almost a year. Was about to start assembling but I noticed the sleeves don’t go all the way down. Does anybody know if this is problematic? Also doesn’t seem even across all cylinders.

Got it together again, this time sealing as it should! Leveled the head using a glass table top and some huge sand paper sheets, recut the exhaust valve seats by hand borrowing tools from my job, made liner shims out of two beer cans and a spray can, covered the block, gasket and head surface in Hylomar and now I’m up to 7 hours of heavy work and several heat cycles with no leaks.

Next up is a new oil pump and new injector nozzles. When the oil is up to temp the pressure falls of significantly according to the gauge (needs confirmation on a second gauge) and the pump felt a bit sloppy when I did the timing chain. The injectors didn’t have a great spray pattern and it doesn’t start on all four cylinder at once, easy job though compared to the pump.

Also need to split it to swap the rear main seal and grease/replace throw out bearing… it never ends!

All the parts have now arrived and it’s almost time to put it together and I have a few questions.

The engine is an Alpina modified m30b35 that dropped a valve in around 2010 and was left out side by the previous owner due to the cost of repair. Looking at the damage I would guess it was over reved causing a rocker arm to slide of the valve shaft and break. It took out one valve and the corresponding piston. The engine has only done 30k miles from new. All the pistons were also damaged at the crown due to pre ignition from using low grade fuel.

The head has now been rebuilt, I had it crack tested and all was fine and it also had a very very light skim as a precaution. I had all the valve stems replaced and 2 new valves along with 1 new valve seat. I am also converting it to a mechanical rocker locks instead of the original springs that normally hold the valves in place.

The block I’ve had over-bored along with new forged 10-1 pistons, forged con rods along with arp bolts. The Alpina m30 uses bmw s38 conrods @144mm instead of standard m30 135mm conrods and shorter deck pistons. Not sure the advantage of this is but I went with the standard spec. My engine guy is telling me to buy standard size main and big end bearings as all the crank needs is a light polish.

My questions are

1. would it be advisable to have the crank ground and use oversize bearings? Or do I do as he advises and use standard size and a polish ?
2. After dropping a valve is it wise to have the crank shaft rebalanced?
3. are all good quality bearing shells much the same ? Do I go with standard bearings or is there a better alternative?
4. I will be converting from Bosch motronic to mega squirt 3 eventually and do I need to add any extra sensors while it’s apart , like knock sensors or anything else.
5. first start I’ve been told to use mineral oil rather than fully synthetic and only switch after it’s run in. The reason being that with fully synthetic oil it stops the engine from bedding in, is this true ?

Sorry about the long post, it’s not been the easiest rebuild!

Im currently changing out the valves on my 1.4 cgga vw engine and i accidentally drop 9 out of the 16 tappets, i didnt drop them on the floor or anything but they are all mixed up. What should I do?