Dan the man
Well-Known Member
A friend of mine back in high school ( 1976 ). Rebuilt the engine in his Buick wildcat, everything was cleaned up at the local car wash, he used a ridge reamer, and a electric drill to hone the bores. Oil holes were cleaned up with a barrel brush for his gun, cam bearings were driven in with a piece of wood, crankshaft journals were cleaned up with ultra fine sandpaper. The valve's were cleaned up in a drill press and we used rough valve lapping compound, the valve's were put in the cylinder heads and then we put the stem in a hand held electric drill, this was better than lapping them by hand, the final phase of the valve job was the use of a fine lapping compound. The chamber side of the cylinder heads was cleaned up with a board with sandpaper glued to it. Before he put the engine back together he took it to the car wash for a final cleaning. The only new parts bought were the rings, rod, main,cam bearings, oil pump, timing chain, gaskets. It ran for a good 5 years that I know of. I think that he did a good job considering the money he had to work with as he also was helping his folks out with money.
. I removed all the oil gallery plugs so I could clean out the galleries and passages. I pulled a bottle brush back and forth through the galleries using a piece of a throttle cable wire then flushed everything out with "MANY" cans of parts cleaner. Flushed out the crank and cam with more cans of cleaner and blew everything out with compressed air. Popped the plugs out of the rocker shafts and used the bottle brush to clean the shafts out the best I could. Then I reinstalled all of the plugs and reassembled everything with assembly lube (had to do something the right way lol). I used new gaskets and seals etc. Oh and by the way I didn't even remove the pistons 
. I won't have the engine reinstalled for a week or two since spring things just take up a lot of time so I'm working on it when I get a minute here and there.
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