Ladies and Gentleman,

I've got a 2013 Suburban with the 5.3(LC9) and about 170k miles on it. Due to new car prices and high interest rates we've decided to hold on to her for a while longer. With that being said I was going to remove the DOD and VVT systems in favor of a traditional cam from BTR. I'm a competent enough mechanic that I can do the work, but I'm wondering if I should just stop with the DOD deletion, or should I pull the motor to freshen it up with new bearings and rings?

I'm leaning towards the total rebuild but I also wanted to ask about some machine shop issues. If I'm pulling the motor and completely disassembling it, would I be smart to send the block and crank to the machine shop for some work? Currently the engine runs fine, I have no reason to expect anything to be wrong with it when I disassemble, but would I be smarter to have the block line bored, honed, and the crank balanced and polished? I'd probably take them the heads as well for a valve job as well, depending on pricing.

I'm concerned that I'll be wasting my time by doing all the DOD work and leaving the short block completely alone. Is it common to see these motors continue to run without issue into the 200k range?

 

Things that MUST be done whether you do a full rebuild or not; valve guide seals, O-ring on oil pump pick up, remove the oil pressure bypass in the oil pan and plug the hole, oil barbell-go to O-ring style-it's located behind the rear engine cover plate. I'm doing the EXACT thing you are doing on my 2012 5.3 aluminum block engine.. But... I pulled mine out completely so I could re-ring it, block the VLOM towers by drilling and tapping for 1/8" npt plugs, re-did the heads, installing a BTR stage 2 truck cam, deleting the cam phaser/vvt set up completely, and re-sealing everything.. I also put in new main, rod, and cam bearings.. I started yesterday with a clean block that was hot tanked-today I have a completed engine with re-worked heads installed.. I can't finish up yet because I'm waiting on parts to arrive.

As far as sending your crank out to be polished... inspect it first. Mine had minimal marks on it anywhere so I hand polished here at the shop. Follow this video: It stands to reason that if there are minimal marks or scoring, there will be minimal wear on the crank-but it does not hurt to measure EVERYTHING with a micrometer just checking for variance between rod surfaces, and then main surfaces.

On my cylinders-the cross-hatch pattern was still evident in about 80% of the cylinders. I just used a 3 stone type hone with 320 stones-LOTS of WD-40 and then final cleaning with transmission fluid.. The tranny fluid will pull tons of grit and dirt from the cylinder walls after you think it's clean using soap, or brake cleaner, go back with tranny fluid and you will be amazed. You can also leave a thin film of tranny fluid on the cleaned cylinder walls to prevent flash rusting while you assemble.

In regards to the heads I usually just lap my valves, check with Dye-chem that the valves are sealing visually, then vacuum test when I'm done, and replace my seals and springs.. On the 243's for this engine I sent them out to get a good 3 angle valve job, chambers polished, and pocket ported (all things that I have done, and can do, in the past, but I'm on a limited time line this time). My machine shop got the heads done in 2 days where it would have taken me two weeks to do the same work.
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I would pay a machine shop to hot tank the block, crack check it, measure it up ,
basically give you a second set of eyes and their machine does the cleaning work for you.. etc.
If its a decent mainline engine shop they should be able to do that over a normal workweek.
I've had this done for < 300 bucks.. Was worth it to me.
The hot tank strips them to clean cast iron. (Assuming in your area they still have hot tanks some areas don't.. )
I use a local machine shop that specializes in Aluminum heads, they don't even do iron.
usually about 70 bucks a head to have it milled to clean it up,

When I was planning my LS swap,
I wanted an Aluminum L33 and finding one used they were either stupid prices or basket cases.
I finally just ordered a crate motor from Jegs/ATK.
I got it in 4 days and its ready to go, just transfer all the external accessories.
1 day and the new engine was ready to go in.
cost about 3500 delivered long block.
I've gotten sale notices form them for about 2000 for iron block 5.3 and 6.2 liter long blocks.

Just a couple options..