<Project> 2000 Trans Am

[Lucky SOB]

Degreasing!

Yesterday I started the degreasing process and went through 7 cans of Gunk Engine Degreaser. I think it's quite the transformation.

Found a spark plug stuck in the Driver side motor mount




Some "before" pictures of the patient.






Some "during" pictures. I had previously sandblasted and POR-15'd the A-arms and spindles, so the cradle was pretty clean.




Annnd the "after" pictures.

[DynoDave]

Found a spark plug stuck in the Driver side motor mount

Oh man...I wonder how long they looked for that after they dropped it.

[Lucky SOB]

I think everybody goes dead quiet when they drop a tool and hope they hear it hit the floor

[mcalus]

The motor looks so clean Fred! Nice work!

[DynoDave]

I think everybody goes dead quiet when they drop a tool and hope they hear it hit the floor

Oh yeah. We dropped a bolt working on my sons truck the other day. Waiting to hear plink, plink, then the sound of it hitting the ground. We heard the plink, plink, then nothing else.

[Blue04ss]

Nice work!! Clean!!

[nascarnate326]

Are you just cleaning and putting the cam kit in or a full rebuild with turbos?

[Lucky SOB]

Just cleaning her up nice. It will be getting freshly ported 799s, the cam and all the other valve train stuff. Hoping to have it back together in early May.

[meissen]

Where's this shop at? Looks like quite a nice shop to work in!

[Lucky SOB]

Where's this shop at? Looks like quite a nice shop to work in!

Secret squirrel intergalactic headquarters

[Lucky SOB]

Dropped the trans off to my trans guy tonight. Ever since I've had the car, it's had a problem where it will slip out of third gear if I'm engine braking and don't physically hold the shifter in third with my hand. This is a T-56 for reference. Not sure what the issue is yet, but I'm expecting to hear from him by the end of the week.

[Lucky SOB]

Porter heads

Picked up the heads from my buddy Mike last night!

He CNC ported them, ran them through an ultrasonic cleaner and assembled them with the new valve train parts! The valves were also ground.



Exhaust port



Intake port

[sman]

Details on port job? I am thinking about having mine done or getting something else.

[Lucky SOB]

Teardown Complete!

Friday night we finished tearing down the engine. Just needs a final cleaning of the decks and it will be ready to go back together.




Head gaskets were surprising. It looked like the water jacket ports were plugged. At first we thought maybe some stop leak had been used. There was only about a 1/8" diameter hole in each port rather than the whole yellow/tan area. After we looked closer, that area was all gasket material and as I looked at pictures online they seem to be correct. Still unsure why GM would make the water jacket ports in the head and block so large, then only allow a fraction of that area for coolant to pass through...

[1BADAIR]

screw a waterpump bolt in the end of the cam...