First Time LS1 rebuild!! Any advice!?!
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From: central coast, cali
First Time LS1 rebuild!! Any advice!?! well, i spun a bearing about 3 months ago so instead of buying a whole new block, ive decided to just upgrade the internals since the block was still good. I went with forged internals and im having it honed/bore and parts balanced right now. Once thats done, im goign to be putting it back together. My buddies and I took the motor out ourselves (through the top, better believe it!) and we dessembled it ourselves. So far, it seems like we should just do the same steps but in reverse. The only thing that scares me is having the bearings dead center where they need to be on the crank journals and rods and what not... besides that, i already know that i have to torque to yield. But if anybody can give me advice just in case you went through the same and missed something vital, so i wont have to go though it myself!!!!
install the main caps correctly. if you install backwards it wont turn over.
buy some heads. put it back in from the bottom with all the headers, poly motor mounts and wiring harness all on it instead of trying to do it in the car.
buy some heads. put it back in from the bottom with all the headers, poly motor mounts and wiring harness all on it instead of trying to do it in the car.
Get your machine shop to balance and blueprint it and then assemble it. your gonna have to get your crank polished anyway. Some things are best left to the pros.Engine assembly and f*cking rearend are like #1 & #2 on my list.
Im an advocate of doing it yourself, go buy a good book on how to assemble an LS1 and read it several times before you pick up a tool, you will want your machine shop to set up your clearances by polishing the crank and micing your main/rod journals and ball micing all you bearings. there are a few things that are different about ls1s versus the old chevy small blocks like shimming the oil pump(WHICH IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!!!) and other things like connecting rods and rod bearings only being able to go on the crank journal do to one sided chamfers. on second thought maybe you should consider having a pro build it if this is your first engine buildup or ask someone who does it for a living if they would help you out on a weekend. a lot of these guys enjoy helping a newbe build his first engine. GOOD LUCK!
If you have th inclination to do it yourself, no reason not to. The two popular ls1 books are a good reference, although they both contain their share of minor errors. Im sure theyll get you through.
If you really want to do it yourself, just make sure you keep everything very very clean... put lots of oil everywhere, clean some more, and you can use plastigague to check your clearences, if you dont have the right tools to do it. I would recomend just paying the little bit of extra money to have a pro do it. Also, if you have a subscription to GMHTP, there was a good article called, "My first stroker" where they went through step by step showing you how to assemble the shortblock, long block and everything else.
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Like people have said before just get a good book on it. Also be sure to label and store everything in the same way it came off. GM designed it to be relatively fool proof so that helps. Also the crank bolt is a pain to get off so be ready to hold the crank still with something. Also as mentioned above cleanliness is next to godliness.
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