boogiewonderland

If uncle Sam can take a 18 year old kid with no skill what so ever and turn him in to an egress environmental cryogenic service tech on an 80 million dollar aircraft in nine months than a you with all the time in the world on your hands can build a v8 in your garage.. Pay attention read follow instructions. That is whats wrong with the hobby now it started with the people that were building cars to go faST in their garage now everyone wants to have some recourse if it breaks, the flees come with the dog that is a part of the hot rod culture. If you want a warranty go buy a new Camaro and shut up while one of these junkyard dudes eat your lunch at the light...lol BUILD IT BRO. THEN BLOW IT UP AND BUILD A BETTER ONE.. BUILT NOT BOUGHT. MAYBE ITS ME....

tcranger

if you decide to not do it yourself, have someone else put it together. that guy thinks he's the best and no one can do it, if he isn't doing it.

highgear

I would probably just buy an assembled short-block from one of the sponsors here. It should come with a warranty.

black00ssFL

iTrader: (24)

Build it yourself man. I just built my LQ4 by myself, first engine build ever. I've helped before on a 350 and a 2.8-3.1 V6 build, but that's it. I bought that "how to rebuild ls1's" book that was mentioned earlier in this thread. Bought it about 3 years ago just to learn more about LS1's in the off chance I decided to rebuild one. As luck would have it, I blew my engine and needed to build another one, lol.

And as for saving money buying a shortblock from a vendor. Look around locally and online for deals. I'm $630 into my rebuilt shortblock. That included the block, piston, rods, new bearings, piston rings, ARP rod bolts, and machine work for the ARP bolts. I got lucky and a guy at my local machine shop personally had the block/piston/rods that he wanted to sell, had a fresh hone on the cylinders too. At that price and two days worth of work (one day putting together the long block, one day putting it back in the car), I feel the risk of having a "non-professional" build it is worth it. And, I have no one to blame but myself if it fails. Right now it has 400 miles, doesn't smoke, doesn't eat oil, and haven't seen any shavings in the oil since the first oil change after the first start up.

SpeedGreed750

Wouldn't a feeler gauge be better than a plasti-gauge? Saying they don't work implies there's something better, but I've never even hear dof plasti-gauges before and a set of feeler gauges is less than 10$, so what's better than that?

G Atsma

Try using a feeler gauge to measure bearing clearance in place. Plastigauge does that. Been around for many decades, I thought everyone knew about it.

Che70velle

iTrader: (6)

Ummm…ok. Your obviously new at this stuff. You can’t get a feeler gauge in there, and if you could it would not be right. You need telescoping gages, a dial bore gauge…is optional, and a really nice mic set to do that correctly. Lots of dead thread revivals lately, by the way. Gary, you losing your touch on us?

G Atsma

I was being sarcastic with trying to use the feeler gauge. Obviously the poster knows zip about that.
C'mon Scott, gimme a break.... purty please?? LOL
SOME of the dead thread revivals are pretty legit, so I let 'em coast....

Che70velle

iTrader: (6)

No, I was only referring to the old dead thread revival. Been crazy lately.

SpeedGreed750

So, would it be worth the 150$ investment to get a good one? From what I can tell it seems like the type of tool you'd need to build most engines anyway. And yes, I'm very new.

Che70velle

iTrader: (6)

In my opinion, any tool is a good investment, because of future usage possibilities, but I’m a tool *****. If your going to do it your self, you must have the right tools. Even if it’s a one time use on your end. When your done with it, put it up for sale on here…I’ll likely buy it.

G Atsma

Copy that...

99 Black Bird T/A

iTrader: (4)

I may do a set of 1.85 SLP rockers on my 02 Z28 instead of a cam just to have an excuse to nerco a dozen threads that are ~10 to 20 years old...wink