Well I got out there this morning since nothing got done after work the past two days due to rain. In spite of teh motor being "bad" i had made an effort to cover it up since rain was expected, however this morning there was about a quart of water in the bottom of the intake manifold. Not a huge deal, since the engine was coming out today.
I made sure the wire harness was clear, supported the transmission and removed the bellhousing bolts. With the engine crane in place and some creative jacking below the transmission, I had the engine free of the chassis in just a few minutes. I did not take a lot of pictures at this point, since it was about 90% humidity and I was sweating like a whore in church, but I did take one or two.
This engine has had a bit of a hard life after being overheated, run hard by a volunteer firefighter, and partially disasembled for parts, being somewhat exposed to the elements. When I pulled the intake manifold, I really wasn't expecting to find the end of the rainbow. I didn't. But then again, it wasn't a compete turd hole either. The motor was not full of sludge. There was some old oil resude that had cooked on, like in most motors with a crap load of miles, but nothing to indicate it was completely wasted, or water logged for that matter. Then I spotted something a bit more troubling.
The #8 cylinder has at least one bad lobe on the camshaft. Back in the days of solid cams, this was not unusual on a high mileage motor, however, this engine has a roller cam, meaning the lifters that ride on the cam have little wheels that roll along the cam surface, rather than the nearly flat bottom of the lifter itself. Roller lifter cams are not known to wear and fail under normal conditions. The roller on the bottom of the #8 exhaust valve wore a groove into the lifter lobe, about 1/16"-1/8" deep, as best as I can tell. The PO told me about how it smoked (or steamed) after the head gasket blew. Surely he did not drive it like that for any length of time, making chocolate milk from motor oil and coolant. If so, the bearings throughout the motor, as well as the crankshaft are most likely toast.
I had already planned on replacing the camshaft with a torque oriented grind, so the loss of the cam is insignificant in itself. The cause is another matter, as roller lifters are normally reused when the cam is replaced, unlike traditional hydraulic and solid lifter cams. Roller cams are around $300, give or take. Roller lifters run about $16 each, or $256 per set, if the whole lot of them is bad. At this point, a lower mileage Craigslist motor would save me a lot in the long run, $400-$500 for the motor, $200-$250 for fresh gaskets and re-ring, plus the cam for another $300 puts me right at $1000ish for the motor. If I try to salvage what I have here, a full rebuild is pretty much in order, so figure $2k. I may just get a good sub-100k motor and swap the cam for now. I'm not in a rush, however, I'd like to have the truck at least move under its own power before winter gets here. My shop isn't anywhere near done and probably won't be fully funded until next year at the earliest. I'll dig deeper into the 360 Friday or Saturday and then it will be time to start looking at the body swap.
-Joe