Hello everyone. Just joined today and am hoping I can get some help. I recently purchased a Lloyd Eliott LE1 cylinder head with an aftermarket cam along with everything needed to basically do a complete top end rebuild....gaskets, intake manifold, throttle body etc.....My dad is mechanically inclined and is telling me it would be ill advised to add all these performance top end parts to a stock block with 115,000 miles. I am in a dilemma when it comes to what I should do. I really did not want to have to pull the engine out of the car because it seems like with these cars its a hastle. Also if it is suggested that I just take the whole engine out and reman the block would it be easier/ cheaper to take my original block and bring it to a machine shop or just buy a completed one online for 1500-2000. Thanks in advance

 

the heads your talking about are not that drastic of a change so i think youll be just fine doin it. the motor will go 200k miles easy so long as regular mantanance is done. why are you doing the head job may be a better question. if the oil has been flooded with antifreeze and ran then that changes things.

 

With those kind of miles, the one thing you might run into is winding up with more blow-by past the rings, now that the valves and guides on the new heads will be sealing tighter than the old ones. Even though you have new heads, the old rings will still be worn.

 

this is why I wish automotive engines had hour meters like marine engines.

115k miles is nothing in a properly maintained vehicle if it was all highway miles. If it was a bunch of stop and go, city driving, then it's a ton of hours. We could give you the advice that you want to hear, or we could tell you to be conservative and do a rebuild.


Technically, your dad is correct if you wanted to know the best way. But, will it break your engine just doing the top end; probably not.

 

Hey thanks guys I appreciate the responses. I figure since winter is right around the corner and I put the car away I might as well just take the engine out and replace everything so I dont have to worry about anything for a while (I hope) haha. As a side note however....if you guys were in my situation would you prefer using your original block and replacing the components of it or rather just buy an already built block online for what I see runs about 2 grand.

 

If you must rebuild, google ellwein 355. You'll have a strong reliable motor with the above components.

 

i was in your situation and i picked up a vette 4 bolt block. so now i have a block to build when funds allow. stroke to 383, splay the mains to 4 bolt and use everything else off the motor in the car.

 

i've heard a lot of bad things about ellwein. just so you're aware.

take your stock block to any machine shop that has a solid reputation for small blocks. the block cleaning and what not is pretty much the same so you will be fine with them. now if we're going 383 or bigger, then we talk about a machine shop that knows more about LT1's specifically as it starts to differ a bit.

if you dont' want to use your stock block, you can always find a cheap block to start from. or do like craby did and find a 4 bolt block which is a bit stronger than our 2 bolt blocks. however, with the power you will be making from the LE1 package, a 2 bolt main block will be able to handle it without an issue

 

There must be other Ellweins, I was refering to ellweinengines.com

 

as was i