Thread: Spun rod bearing in my engine, Series III is cheaper than Series II, should I?

Still cleaning, I have one side done:


Casting:

Plastic gasket:

Purple Power, soak it in a 1:5 mix for about half an hour and wipe it off. They really weren't that dirty to begin with so they're easy to clean. The valve cover that came with the motor is cracked by the oil filler neck so I have to clean up my old one and it's DIRTY. I also bought a polishing type kit for my dremel to clean up the timing cover oil passages, bur I'm gonna clean it fully first...it's about done. Here's the timing chain

I haven't pulled anything off of it yet.
Is there a way to check the timing chain for stretching?

I also noticed that there is 120483 written on the flywheel, so I think they might have been wrong on the mileage. Either way, it looks like it was well cared for.

I have the forged rods, I found a picture of some other rods that have the same casting as mine and they are l32. Mine are cast with 4509.

Oil pan is cleaned and back on, screen is clean as well. There's a bit of cross hatching left, doesn't look like 120483 miles. Timing cover is back on, and so is the water pump, thats about it for today. I went through the oil filter mount and clean up quite a bit of casting flash to help oil flow, lol.
Pics:
Connecting rod casting:

Date stamp under oil pan, not sure if it's Dec '03 or Dec 03, 2007, etc. I'm inclined to believe Dec '03.



Cross hatching:

Done for the night:

I forgot to get a picture of it, but I did clean up the casting flash on the oil filter mount. There were 2 spots that were really bad, they had to of reduced the flow by 50%, I swear. Right now I have the mount attached to the timing cover, but it'll be coming back off right before the engine goes in. I put it on to see what it looked like, and not loose the bolts\gasket\mount itself. Bolts aren't torqued, so it'll come right out. My little workshop isn't all that big, and there's damn near 2 engine in pieces laying around here.

All that's left for now:
Clean intake side of heads
Wipe\blow everything off one last time then pour oil all over everything inside the engine, a cap full in each cylinder, then drain the oil pan.
Finish intake - wait for JB weld to set up a few more days, then finish up cleaning it, sand JB weld, plug coolant holes, and grind the coolant passage at the end.
Install Intake
Paint\install valve covers - old front cover is still soaking, gaskets are ordered
Finish cleaning and possibly paint supercharger
Finish cleaning engine bay - about 70% done as it sits, I also need a new motor mount.
---Drop the engine back in it's home---
Install supercharger
Drill\tap throttle body
Various other small things

I hoping to have it in during the next week or 2, I'm also doing the DIY shift kit to my transmission while flushing it at the same time. After this whole project, I still have to do the 12 inch brake upgrade, struts, the list goes on.

I'm a little lost here.

Since when did SIII heads flow better?

They have the same crappy castings. Slightly larger valves, but they don't do much.

Also since when was the SIII timing cover worse?

It has much larger openings with smoother transitions.

If you're referring to the bumps in the walls, they really don't make that much of a difference.

The SIII covers do flow worse because they changed the type of casting when Series III's came out, due to the maintance costs to keep the old casting\machines going. The oil passages are much rougher and do no flow as well. Read this: 3800 OILING -TECH- analyzing deficiencies - Page 6 - 3800Pro.com Forum

As far as the head's, I agree. The intake valve is a whooping .03" bigger, I'm sure it adds at least 350 CFM to the flow (just kidding).

Here's a post with pictures from the same thread claiming the opposite of what you're saying:
3800Pro.com Forum - View Single Post - 3800 OILING -TECH- analyzing deficiencies

Who's right? No one knows.

Whoops, I had it bass akwards, because I was referring to that same post...just that these work computers give slow a new definition so I didn't have time to look it up. I swear that i read a post in that thread talking about how the series III were a different casting that was cheaper to maintain or something of the sort. When I get home tonight and have a descently fast computer I'll look through it again. My bad.

Just to clarify, I'm not arguing. Before I had both timing covers in hand for comparison, these places are where I got my information from...

3800Pro.com Forum - View Single Post - 3800 OILING -TECH- analyzing deficiencies

L67 vs. L32 short block durability - 3800Pro.com Forum

Either way, I have a S III cover and that's what I'll be using, lol. It appears the best cover to have is a SII with that passage bored out, and modifying it to be able to use a SI oil pump.

Progress for this build will be in my build thread here:
http://www.grandprixforums.net/2000-...ics-76934.html