So I tore apart my spare motor tonite

Well, decided to tear down this motor I have had since May. I paid 200 for the complete engine, accesories and all. It has been sitting for almost 4 years on stand in a garage, but there was still tons of dirt in there. The driver front cylinder had some rust along with tons of soot. THe headgaskets looked OK. Do these look pictures look normal? What else should I check besides bearings? I would like to get this motor set up as a backup in case something happens to the one in the car.

was the engine running well when the guy u bought it from took it out ? i just pulled my heads off last week and my exhaust valves were white like yours. i was getting codes for running lean and thought thats what may have caused it. but im told its just normal.

your cylinder walls look good, i can still slightly see the cross-hatching and the pistons look good, just need to be cleaned up a bit.

Looks like every SC motor I have taken apart.....

Any idea what kind of mileage it had?

How did the cam, main, and connecting rod bearings look?

not sure on the mileage at all. I'll be tearing into the bearings this week and will post some more pictures. Hoping to just put some new main and rod bearings in and be good to go.

Looks about like my 90 with 160k that I just took the heads off. Your valves are a bit more crusted than mine, but I did run a cleaning agent through mine. If it was mine, I'd just clean out the cylinders and take the rust off with some emory cloth, but I haven't heard any exact procedure though. You mentioned the bearings. I am actually pulling this engine out to put it in my LX (the body is literally rusted away on the SC) and would like to freshen the bottom end. Can one just pull out the bearings and put new ones in and of course torque the retaining bolts, or is there any machining/procedure to do this? I don't want to do a full rebuild right now, just get it so I don't do the engine swap and blow it up in a month or find I washed out a bearing when the HG's blew (the reason I have the heads off).
But anyway back to your question, loks ok just clean it up real good before it goes together. I ran an engine flush on mine a while back and got chunks of goo out of the oil when I drained it after the flush, and it looks like that engine has some miles on it. Hope this helps.

Don't use an abrasive in the cylinder linings to clean up rust. Use something like diesel fuel and paper towels to try and dissolve the surface rust.

I just used some good old WD40 and most of the rust wiped out.

No that's wrong, take rust off with a die-grinder! Just kidding. I'm glad you guys chimed in on this, I always wondered if even a soft (1500 grit) sandpaper was alright on cylinder walls. No one listen to my first post.

Put new piston rings in also. New head bolts, make sure to clean the oil pick-up tube out really good.

So I asume from the way you guys are talking that I can replace the bearings without needing to send anything to a machine shop?

backtobirds said:

So I asume from the way you guys are talking that I can replace the bearings without needing to send anything to a machine shop?

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The only way to know if the crankshaft can be used without machining is to mike it out to see if it is within specs. The journals must be perfectly round and within tolerances. If you don't have a good set of micrometers your machinist will be able to check it and can tell you if it can be used without turning undersize. At the very least it should have the journals polished. John

Which bearings? Main? I suppose you could. You'll want to check the dimensions of the crank bore to make sure a new bearing isn't going to go south on ya.

Folks have likely slapped these things together in the past so it likely would either work or not. (real helpful huh?) The only way to know for sure though is to measure everything.

Well, guess I'll go get me a mic a pull the oil pan off. Oh, and since we are on this, is there a rebuild guide with specs and procedures for the 3.8? Plenty of stuff for the 5.0 but I've never seen anything for our cars.