I guess if your flipping it reapiring the motor might make sence.

To me a rebuild on a high miles motor is Bored, new pistons, Crank turned, Block line bored if needed, Rods resized, new rod bolts, new Cam, liftes, rockers. and a master kit. I like to hold .0005 on my bearing clearances and .002 on my Piston clearance. You can not do that when the crank is out of round .002 and cylinders are out of round .010. Anything else is a bandaid, How many miles is the CAM good for? You already have 140K on it and atleast one overheat.

I paid less then $1000 for a LT1 with 31K on it. You can barley buy a CAM/lifters for that.

 

Flip it over and check to see if it's a 2 bolt or 4 bolt main. 4 bolt and you have yourself a 'Vette engine or possibly a LT4 block. 2 bolt, it's from a F-, D-, or B- body car with a head upgrade (excluding F bodies). Either way that engine will work. Any chance you could get casting numbers off the heads?

 

I'd grab that engine in a second. You will have to buy a new optispark, your current 94 is a different style than what that 96 uses. Buy one for the year engine, not the year of the car. I wouldn't have reused your old opti anyway though.

 

I went and picked it up tonight. It's really clean from what I can see, and appears to be original. Guy bought it from his brother in law who owned a dealership, they brought a car in for work because of knocking so they replaced the engine, and it still knocked - turned out to be the flex plate so they just ate the cost and had the other motor setting around. He was told it had 24k miles on it. It needs to be cleaned up (dusty from sitting), I'll pull the pan tomorrow night to make sure there aren't any surprises there, but it looks good from the outside.

 

You got to love warranty replacements. We had a brand new 88 Camaro right of the truck with low compressing in one cylinder. Since the customer was waiting for their car the factory sent a compete engine right off the line. I had to wait month because of GMs warranty hold time. When I pulled it a part it was a bur from the piston grooves did not let the rings expand. All I have to buy was gaskets. With a little fab work the 88 2.8 was a nice upgrade to my 82 120K 2.8 Camaro.

At one point I was able to build a L98 short block from warranty parts for a nice 87 Monte SS upgrade. The good old days

You may not want to flip it once your done!

 

So this thing isn't locked up, but it has been sitting for a while, I'd like to put something in the cylanders and turn it over a few times just to clean it up a bit without scratching the hell out of the walls with what dust may be in there (I'm not pulling the heads)...

Would you recommend just a bit of oil, or penetrating oil, or something else? I plan on pouring oil down the top of the heads and lifter valley and letting it drain out with the pan off to clean out any dust that might be in the oil passages.

Or... am I just stupid thinking this?

 

Also, if i'm using a 96 engine in a 94, do I need the ICM for a 96, or will my 94 ICM work? I don't know how it interacts with the 96 opti i'm buying

 

94-97 icm are the same.

 

Weird, they list 95-97 for the ICM, and 93-94, and they're different prices.

 

Is it possible it's a different ICM because of a different PCM? the obd1.5 being in 95

Granted, I'm looking on rockauto.com and it's possible they just don't have it right on their site. Just not sure I don't need a new one to begin with because I had some odd issues with the old motor.

It turned over like the battery was dead and would barely start, but if I unplugged the coil it turned over how it's supposed to. could have have been the opti acting up? I'm not completely clear on what the ICM actually controls.