You are doing way too much work for just some bent pushrods. Chances are that all you damaged were the pushrods. They are the weakest part of the valvetrain and bend before anything else does.

Pulling the heads means your gonna have pull the PS pully too, as well as clean everything, and I mean spotlessly clean and dry. Its not worth it since everything else is likely fine.

If you do pull the heads you dont need to pull the front cover off so I wouldnt even bother pulling the cover to replace the timing chain. How many times have you heard of a timing chain breaking on these engines anyway?

If you still decide to do it anyway, buy some ARP head studs.

 

Well we pulled the passenger side head off and well...

 

wow, good call on pulling the head. did it bend the valve? i cant tell in the pic

 

ouch....

 

Damn that sucks. Looks like that cylinder has been screwed up for a while.

 

Yeah it bent the valve, piston hit valve pretty hard it's noticeable anyway. We're going to just end up pulling the engine I'm sure at this point.

 

Damn man, remind me not to downshift like that ever.

 

You can if you want but there is probably no need to. I assume you drove it a bit with that cylinder not working which is why the piston is wet. A smoothing of that nick in the piston, have the heads redone or replace them if you have the $, put a an LS2 chain on it and you should be good to go. If you're thinking about a cam and have the $ now is also a good time. Turn this lemon you've been handed into lemonade, save the time and money of pulling the motor, do some quick upgrades like I said above and you'll be in good shape.

 

Thanks very much for the input. I will try to save myself as much hassle as possible and do the repairs with the engine inside the car. I will definetely be doing the cam since the heads and the front block are being disassembled. What cam should I look into getting if I want to replace it? I don't need anything ridiculous just something to maybe push the upper 300 hp range or possible 400 hp range with a new intake if I decide to get a new one.

thanks again

 

Something like a 228 would be a good cam and will get you over 400HP with a decent set of heads. Like said there is no need to pull the engine. What i would do to fix that area where the piston hit is to just flycut all of the pistons.

 

LS6 CAM! I love it.

 

Put together a combo based on your requirements. I don't see headers etc. so you need to decide what you want the car to do. If you're staying with the stock manifolds for a daily driver then a nice conservative setup is the way to go. Bigger is not better, it's all about combo.

 

 

How would I go about smoothing out the piston? Just get a high grit piece of sandpaper and smoothe it down or use a metal file? Will the nick in the piston mess up compression or anything? I just want to make sure I do this right.

Thanks again

 

You'll probably get lots of good ideas on here so stay tuned...

Clean the piston with a scraper (plastic), scotch brite pad, and either brake Kleen, WD40, etc. what ever works - here again I'm sure there are some good ideas from the board. You want to be careful not to score the piston, the block surface, cylinder wall etc. Bring the piston to TDC of course to gain good access. Once it is cleaned then smooth the nick with a file, emory cloth, etc. I don't recommend sandpaper simply because the sand will be coming of and getting down around the rings. Vacuum, blow it out with air, when you're done. You just want to be sure to get rid of any sharp edges in or around the nick that can heat up and cause detonation. The volume of the nick is not a worry for compression, it's really pretty minor.

 

dang!!!!! im not downshifting ever again!!!!!!

 

Guys I think I did the same thing! I opened my valve cover and found a broken spring. Put a new one in and still no compression from #4! only checked that pushrod and it was fine. Anyone have any ideas? would that be the only pushrod that could be bent from #4? Do I need to pull the head as well? That is about as far as I can go since I don't know much on how to work on this thing.

 

Well I have not pulled my heads yet, but I am certain I did the same thing you did only most likely worse. I did it at the race track with M/T (accidental 3 to 2 shift) and it killed the motor. After coasting around to the return road I tried to start it and had very uneven cranking (at first I thought it might have broken a rod or something but there were no vital fluids leaking out from under the car) and it was reluctant to start. It eventually started but runs rough, has a miss, and pops out of the exhaust. Instead of spending the money replacing valves and getting the stock heads reworked (I have the 1999 early 2000 castings, 8xx or something like that), I decided to order a set of TSP ported 5.3's and go ahead with a cam and head swap. Good luck.

 

you guys can check for bent valves by simply doin a compression test. pull all the plugs, buy a $30 compression test set from sears/whereever, and crank the eng. over 3 revs for each cyl. what your looking for are cyls. that are alot lower then the others. usually a bent valve will be lower the 100psi. the readings should be around 150psi on most engines. I havent ever tested this on an LS1 before. but basically the bad valve cyl. will be alot lower then good cyl.s.

 

On LS1's cyl psi should be around 180-190 if im not mistaken. But yeah look for the ones that are off par from the others.