Engine
Rebuild (Page 2) 
This page will show just a little
bit about putting the Ol’ girl back together and what she looked like when she
was done! This part of the job was the worst for me. Three weeks with no truck,
tons of money invested, short on time and patience! I just wanted to hear her
purr and take her out for a test spin!
This is what it looked like when I got it
back from the engine Builder. Yes I meant for it to be that color, I actually
wanted it that color. You can see in the background that I had the intake,
valve covers, and oil pan painted to match.
How about a before and after shot:
Big difference uh?
I stopped for a second while I put the
bottom end together for a shot. That’s me with the grease all over my shirt, as
if you didn’t know! à
Here
we are putting some finishing touches up on the right side of the block, can
you see the excitement in dad’s face? Actually what we were doing was cutting
the temperature sensor plug out. The heads on the 4.3L are reversible and when
they put the engine back together, they swapped the heads. So the plug was on
the wrong side of the block.
This was after I got the headers, intake,
valve covers, oil pan, water pump, and part of the front pulleys on. At this
point in the game, it’s ready to go back into the truck. Everything else will
go on once its back in.
Dad and Cory helped me sit the engine back in the truck. We barely got the engine lift high enough in the garage to get it in, I thought I was going to have to let some air out of the front tires!
Here
it is back in the truck and almost ready to start, all I had to do at this
point was put the cooling system back together, and a few odds and ends.
After
we fired it up and realized I had the distributor 180 degrees out, it ran
pretty good. I’ve spent some time tuning and playing with the timing to get it
the way I want it. But as I type this I’ve got about 7000 miles on it and have
had not trouble, I am VERY happy with the way it runs and performs. A big
difference from the old wore out engine I had before!
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