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Finally got around to popping the valve cover on my L33
I bought a L33 w/ 60k miles on it from an online parts yard a year or so ago. It was a good deal on a fairly tough to find action in my area. I have been working on finishing my garage and I'm finally getting to the point where I can work on my engine.
Originally, they sent me an lm7. I took pictures and told them that it had neither 799/243 heads or an aluminum block. They told me they had made a mistake and sent out the correct engine. I got the new one, I cut a little piece of the plastic away to check the casting number on the heads and check that the block was aluminum. Everything looked good, so I didn't unwrap it so that it would in good shape to store.
Fast forward a year later, I cut the plastic away and noticed what looks like a mileage number written on the back of the engine in a few places with a paint pen. The number reads 160592. I popped a valve cover and it looks pretty decent but I don't have a ton of experience with ls engines. I was hoping I wouldn't have to rebuild this before throwing a cam and springs in it.
How does it look to you guys. Any thoughts? I need to change the pan so I can take a look at the bottom end at that time. I wasn't planning on removing the heads. Tbh I'm just really excited to start working on this thing!
That's true and by the looks of things under the valve cover, it's in pretty decent shape. If it is a 160k motor, I wish I hadn't paid 60k mile money for it.
Pics don’t look terrible. Oil pan should look the same. I’d cut oil filter open, but I’m a weirdo. I bought an L33 in 2012 that had 48k on it and it was the absolute cleanest used engine I’ve ever seen. I pulled the pan and it looked like it had 5k miles. Oil was obviously changed a lot. I was impressed.
Lots of folks these days get caught up in a 10k mile oil change, because the oil companies claim that the oil is good til 10k miles. 10k mile oil might be ok as far as its ability to still lubricate and hold up thermally, but it’s dirty as all get out. The results are a filthy engine internally. Most don’t care because a vehicle is nothing but a tool to them, and is disposable.
As G stated, miles aren’t terrible for a maintanced LS engine. Hopefully you didn’t overpay and engine is in great shape.
Looks decent inside. I've seen much much worse. It could be 60k or 160k though, no real way to tell. A well maintained 300k motor could look identical under the valve covers.
Did you put a gen4 /tbss intake on it? Cause if that's the fuel rails/ intake it came with you should make sure its a 24x and not a 58x.
I agree with Scott. Looks like it had poor oil change maintenance, as in was ran long amounts of miles on changes, or forgotten about.
For what it's worth I've seen engines with low miles look that bad, and here is a pic of the head on my 2004 GMC Sierra with 190k miles on it... the dark color doesn't really tell you much about how many miles are on it
Looks decent inside. I've seen much much worse. It could be 60k or 160k though, no real way to tell. A well maintained 300k motor could look identical under the valve covers.
Did you put a gen4 /tbss intake on it? Cause if that's the fuel rails/ intake it came with you should make sure its a 24x and not a 58x.
10-13-2019, 10:51 AM
Finally got around to popping the valve cover on my L33 
