if there is no cross hatch, then it definatly needs rebuilt. my 95 blazer had 190k miles when i did head gaskets, and still had quite a bit of crosshatch. if its not bad, you can get away with cleaning the pistons and rehoning in the cylinder walls. that is what we did for darlingreject's motor. you already have it this far apart, whats another week and $150?

 

I plan on taking it to a shop this afternoon to get it cleaned and rebuilt- as you guys say, better safe than sorry, right?

I submitted an order sheet on PCMforless, then realized I hadn't gone through the actual purchase thing and paid for it and such. Whoops. I'm gonna give it today to see if they respond anyway since it did send an email to their sales department, and then I'll do it over again and right this time.

 

atta boy, do it right the first time. they may contact you as to what to do. if not, call them

 

I hate making phone calls with a passion; what I ended up doing is I went through here, paid via credit card, and then sent an email asking to be sure my payment was married up to the ordersheet I submitted earlier in the week.

Hopefully that does it. And hopefully the postal strike that's going on here doesn't significantly affect the delivery time. Or my income, since I'm part of it. >.>

 

Alright, for now we're looking good- got an email from pcmforless confirming that everything looks in order and said they'd contact me if they had any questions during the tuning process.

And the engine is going in this afternoon, after a couple delays. We're lookin' pretty good so far~

 

sounds good

 

Alright, the car is set to go into the shop tomorrow, so they can get started pulling the 305 out and take care of the other stuff it needs (heater core and shocks, might also see about doing subframe connectors now, if the quote isn't too much to handle right now.

Any suggestions as to what I should do with the 305? It is the original, numbers matching engine. Would it be worth keeping around and maybe trying to fix it myself, d'you guys think?

And we're set to pick up the 350 on Friday, and finish putting it together on Sunday. Then it's just a matter of getting it to the shop so's they can install it for me, and waiting for the PCM to arrive so it can actually run.

 

what did you have done to the short block?

 

The 350? Steam cleaned, cylinders honed and re-ringed, and the block painted. They suggested decking the block; I haven't said one way or the other if I want to. I suppose I will have to head by there today and check up on it~

 

if its only suggested and not needed, i wouldnt do it. you already will have a high enough compression. and its good it didnt need a whole ton of work. as for the numbers matching, i wouldnt even worry about it. you can take it apart for the heck of it and learn how to do stuff. pull it apart and see how it is, then put it back together and run it to make sure you did it all right. if not, no loss, its worth more in scrap than as a running engine