For my first car, my parents gave me their elderly Chevy, which had a "stove-bolt" I-6. It needed a valve job (possibly from failure to adjust the valve clearances after its ring job of 40K miles earlier). I took it to a local country mechanic. Including one new exhaust valve, grinding the other 7 valves, and a new heater hose, his total bill for parts and labor came to something like $40. Afterward, it ran well as long as I kept it. I realize there has been a lot of inflation since then, but not THAT much! More modern engines do normally have the compensating advantage of needing such repairs less often, so I'm curious what cause CarlD will find.
Redy Yep in the old days-50's 60's there were machine shops that actually rebuilt motors or bored them changed pistons- or just rebuilt entire heads EVERYWHERE. Every small town had a machine shop that did engine work Heck my dad had to have the HEAD GASKET replaced on our 1961 Aluminum block rambler straight 6-about every 3 months-probably have to mill warped head everytime also. Boy he cursed that car! So parts maybe $200- even 10 hrs labor $1250-under $1500 ALL Total with 10 shop hours which seems excessive-but maybe they send the head out to have new seats pressed in?? but lowest quote is $2400 !!! What BS!
It wasn't THAT long ago! Early 70s. My parents had a '59 Rambler with the normal iron version of the same engine. It was trouble-free, as long as they had it (which wasn't long).
Got stuck trying to remove the crank pulley - tried to make my own tool but it failed miserably. So add another $180 for a tool I may never use again. Also the motor mount doesn't look so good so I'll replace that. Probably also replace the mechanical water pump since it is relatively cheap and easy to replace at this point. http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/medium/2005_FEH_head_removal_2.jpg At this point the valve cover, front motor mount, water pump pulley have been removed. The steel bar tool is inserted into the slots at the rear of the camshafts to hold them in place. Total labor on my part so far is 2 hours.
Doing work in the cold wet winter-don't envy you I'm in suburb of NOLA- and it is miserable lately- cold damp windy overcast I have to change oil-and maybe "trans fluid" onn both vehicles-SOON I really need to change my maintenance schedule(really just yearly oil change) to late march april-not Dec holidays
Couldn't get the crank pulley bolt off so bought an Ingersoll-Rand 2131QT 1/2" drive impact wrench. Even though it cost $200, it had no power and probably couldn't take the cap off of a bottle of beer. I exchanged it for a more expensive IR impact wrench (but still made in China) which, coupled with my $180 holding tool, easily removed the bolt. So next step is the intake and exhaust manifolds and then the head. If I had the proper tools to begin with, I would be about 2 1/2 hours labor to this point.
I need to change the oil on the K1500... It just seems that its never a priority on a vehicle that is rarely driven. It does need to be done before I take it to Florida for Bike Week in March though. I was going to do it a few months ago, but the damn oil filter chart at Wal-Mart only covers vehicles made in the last 10 years.
Crank bolts can be a royal pain to get off. Nice that you were able to get the impact wrench onto the front the crank bolt. I've had a few that I've done with just long cheater bars and it was nip and tuck wondering if something else was going to give out first. Keep us posted... interested to find out what happened here. Pat
That sounds familiar! The first time I tried that, it took so much torque on the "long cheater bar" that the car backed up the curb I had it against, with the parking brake on hard, in 5th gear. The second time that method didn't work because the clutch slipped, so I had to get more creative.
Had a couple of hours to work on the FEH but it was a frustrating day .. again. The lower middle bolt on the intake manifold has been a bear. Don't know how it will be going back on but I suspect it will be even less fun. Exhaust manifold/cat nuts came off very easily, though. The cylinder head bolts are socket head torx T-55 - didn't expect that so I will need to buy a 1/2" drive torx socket set. Also will definitely need a new timing chain tensioner. The shop manual says to compress the tensioner and then insert a paper clip to hold it in position. But no matter how I tried it wouldn't work. So I just removed the tensioner bolts and sort of wiggled it off. Even with the tensioner off I can't compress it and put a paper clip in to hold it due to the ratchet mechanism. Also the water pump was really tough to get off - definitely will replace that.
Wow-sounds worse than average winter cold wet short days pain in the AZZ repair. I bitc$ about the heat and sweat in the summer but doing car repairs in the winter-in driveway or garage-much worse -humid cold short days of winter!! Days are short-sun is low-stuck using lights-everything in shadows- lose nuts bolts fasteners tools I have to do a couple of dinky oil and filter changes(suburban and prius)-and I'm dragging my feet on doing them!! Maybe 2 hours depending on how poorly my half ass filter wrench fits I have 6-7 "made to fit" filter removal "things" lucky to get one of those SOBs to fit I end up using those half ass "pliers" which crush the filter and make it really tough to remove if it doesn't come right off!! SOB just reading this has put me in a bad mood!! You have my sympathy!!
Well I can't really complain about the weather, but I am really dreading putting this thing back together. After getting the head off, it looks like one of the intake valves in cylinder 3 is bent. Usually the only way this can happen is if the valve guide has worn quite a bit or if varnish caused the valve to seize but I guess I'll see once I take the valve out. If one is worn probably others are too. So maybe a complete valve job and new guides=$$$. The intake manifold runners are really full of gunk. Virtually no ridge on any of the cylinders, though. Obviously a lot of deposits in the combustion chambers. Guess the sea foam through the vacuum line didn't do much. EDIT: what appears to be gunk is actually hard varnish. You can see it in the lower left hand corner of the picture above. Also the piston in cylinder three has marks where both intake valves have contacted it.
Cylinder head place called and said all 8 intake valves are bent and 1 broken guide. So parts & labor for the head work $750 Looks like parts & labor (not counting my labor) is going to be around $1100 and my time looks to be about 10 hours total assuming re-assembly goes better than dis-assembly.
No, the 2.3L has a hefty timing chain and the tensioner was keeping it very tight. Mostly the varnish caused the valves to stick I believe. The exhaust side is perfectly fine. Only cylinder 3 has marks on the piston. The cylinder head shop says most of the intakes are only very slightly bent. They will return everything to me after the work is completed so I will see for myself. Note to self: use Sta-bil more often. Even considering Star brite Star Tron. EDIT: After cleaning up the top of the pistons, cylinders 1,3 and 4 have marks from the intake valves. Will post some pics.
That's interesting. What engine oil were you using? Was the varnish all or mainly near the head end of the stems?
I have been using the Motorcraft 5W-20 synthetic blend but who knows what the GSA used in the first 66k when they had it. The varnish is all in the fuel side. All four injectors varnished up too.
GSA? I used to work for the Gov't. Those cars lived a hard life. I'm not sure I'd knowingly buy a GSA vehicle without thoroughly checking it out, and it was cheap. Most often the Gov't would keep a vehicle long past the time that the time that an average person would junk it due to repair costs. Often times GSA would be ditching a car (finally) because of expenses, and another Gov't agency would step in, scoop up the car for free, then invest money in brakes, tires, alignment, and a cheap paint job, then say that they have to keep the car for 5 years to justify that expense, and over that 5 years, they continue to throw money at it. When I worked for the Gov't in the late 90's my office had an 1986 Chevy Cavalier that although it only had 30,000 miles, drove like absolute crap because they didn't want to put any money in it. Other departments had early 80's Dodge Diplomats. Very rarely did I ever see a decent car be retired and sent to auction.
