Mild lsvtec buildup: how to & pics

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nice. Let me know if you dyno with it, if it made a significant increase.

I just got home. I deglazed and honed the cylinders. Before hand, we removed the crankshaft to discover that it actually had ACL main bearings in it... I know Honda doesnt manufacture their short blocks with ACL bearings, so this block was rebuilt previously. I noticed on the rod journals that one journal had scoring and scratching... I realized that when i was removing the piston/rod from that cylinder, the rod bolt made contact with the journal and damaged it. So now, I have to have that one journal machined, and a new bearing for that journal be needed depending on how much they machine it.

I did not want to remove the crankshaft, but now I have no choice. New Main bearings and thrust bearing will be required so I will get those from the machine shop. Some pic's were taken tonight when we gave it a chemical bath & scrub but the deglaze/hone was a tad bit messy when I did it using ATF transmission fluid so I didn't take any pics of that. The finished product of the cylinder walls will be shown in a couple minutes after I upload the shots I took tonight...

Every cylinder cleaned up 100% wonderful except for cylinder #3, which looks like it could use a line hone, but I can get away with it for the cross hatches did come out great. As far as the ridges are, they were perfect. No ridge on the top of the cylinders at all, nice and smooth.
 
pistons arrived today, as well as my ctr crank pulley. Monday I will be dropping off the pistons/rods and crankshaft to the machine shop so they can press the pistons for me as well as shotpeen the rods, and machine the one rod journal and polish. I will be posting the pics in a few minutes...
 
This is the short block after removing the crankshaft and seals, crankshaft gear, oil and water pumps and front cover. When removing the crankshaft, I noticed that the mains has ACL bearings instead of oem... anyhow, this is before the deglaze/hone and chemical bath...

HPIM0786.jpg
 
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This is after the deglaze/hone in the chemical bath... trying to clean up the cylinder walls and pretty much the short block itself... the deglaze/hone was messy so I didn't take pictures of that... pretty much a drill with deglazing tool (beaded), cylinders get doused with ATF transmission fluid.

HPIM0788.jpg
 
After wiping it all down, we used an air gun to dry off the rest of the block with compressed air...

HPIM0789.jpg
 
This is the finished product. If I had more time, I would have spent more time in the chemical bath but time was an issue..

HPIM0787.jpg
 
CTR pistons came in...

HPIM0790.jpg


As well as the CTR crankshaft pulley (which will need to be balanced)

HPIM0793.jpg
 
Blanco said:
Something a friend of mine who builds Winston Cup engines once told me.

"I certainly hope you do that [machine work] with a bare block, unless you like metal shavings inside your engine."
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I know Blanco. One cannot do those jobs with the crankshaft in. Thats why I removed it. =)
 
This is the damage on the rod journal from when I was removing the stock pistons/rods...as you can see, the only thing that will cause those marks are the rod bolts... When I used the rubber caps on the rod bolts when pushing the pistons/rods out, one of them came off... no biggie, minor machine work and polish will fix this and from what they told me, I should be fine with the ACL bearings I already bought for the rods...

HPIM0794.jpg
 
if you want the block and the head looking real clean and like new, go get them glass beaded with the blaster. it doesn't cost to much

blanco, you should tell him about using oem bearing instead of ACL bearing if he really cares about this build.
 
Jixer615 said:
if you want the block and the head looking real clean and like new, go get them glass beaded with the blaster. it doesn't cost to much

blanco, you should tell him about using oem bearing instead of ACL bearing if he really cares about this build.
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What I should do is hot tank it, IMO. As for the ACL's, I've been using them for years and never had a problem. Ive used oem in some builds, but most get ACL Race. Never an issue. Some people strongly advise using oem bearings, some say ACL is just fine... You have to remember something, oem bearings are three layer, ACL Race is four layer minus the flash coating. If your clearances come out within specification, and the bolts are torqued to oem spec than it shouldnt have a problem with spinning a bearing.

An unbalanced crankshaft can cause bearing failure early, but The crankshaft and crankshaft pulley will be getting balanced monday.
 
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is this an all motor build or you planning on using others methods of power? if you going turbo, what head setup are you going to be using?
 
Look up at the pics of the pistons I posted... you tell me if I am going all motor or turbo =) The head is a 1st gen b16a head, with b16 valvetrain and itr cams. I am going to change the intake manifold/tb also. When I get to that point in the build I will post detailed pics
 
Blanco said:
Then why did you say...


Just curious. To me, that says that you were going to leave it in, until that journal got dinged.

I'm also really surprised that you don't blueprint and settle for "within tolerances" with your bearing clearances. Do you at least machine the block and rod bores as needed so you have a uniformed clearance with the ACL bearings? Or would you accept something like ".0014", .0017", .0016", .0018""? I've heard that most techs just throw in either all Green or all Yellow bearings during a rebuild, instead of looking at color codes, which could explain the outlook.
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I was going to leave it in, but I decided to remove it so I could do some cleaning up on the block as well as the cylinders BEFORE I even noticed the rod journal was damaged. As far as the Main bearings and thrust bearing goes, They showed very minimal signs of scoring. They were ACL's too... suprised me big time, that engine was opened up before obviously. Ive heard of builders using green throughout, not so much yellow. As for the rods, they are being machined as well as the crankshaft, and the machine shop has the minimum/maximum on the clearances and what is tolerable, they are going to get me new bearings for the Mains and the rods as well now. I requested that they be "slightly" looser. They understand why, as im sure you do also.
 
This started out as a cheap build with just a modified rod and higher compression piston deal. But now I feel the need to do more than just rod bearings. I want 0 headaches, so avoiding the machine shop for heavy work just isn't going to happen. =)
 
now when you say "blueprinting" doesn't this mean complete measurments of every moving surface? this doesn't need to be professionally done if you take the time to measure everything yourself?

getting it done professionally doesn't make me feel 100% sure its right because the shops around here dont really have a history with honda engines here in Mansfield, OH. now if i lived in cali, i would have no worrries.
 
for the new builder, most will go by the Tech. Manuals like i am for all that spec stuff, is there another way (more advanced) better then stock specs?
 
No, I do not blueprint. I go by oem clearances/tolerances. There really isnt a need to blueprint my setup being its an all oem build with all honda spec. clearances. If it were, say, je/eagle build, that would be a different story. I leave balancing/blueprinting up to the machine shop if they build the shortblock for me. But most of my builds consist of oem parts. I've done one gsr shortblock with JE/EAGLE, in which the rods had to be machined. It was a shelf-stocked rod, H-beam to be exact but for some reason the rod clearance with oem bearings was too tight so I asked the advice of a machinist, Eddie Banach. He did the machining and ever since then, he has been my #1 source for machining.
 
Blanco said:
Blueprinting is deciding what you want your bearing clearance, piston/wall clearance, piston ring end gaps, etc. to be and building the engine to those specs. Within tolerances is basically a rebuild where blueprinting is more an engine "build".
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When using oem honda piston rings, there is no need for them to be gapped, they come pre-gapped. I do check the gap to make sure it is within honda's spec, just to be safe. But so far, 10 times out of 10 they come out the same every time for me. As for piston to wall clearance, I did not take any measurements of the CTR's. Due to the good condition of the cylinders, which I did measure, I should not have any problems. I have built ls-vtec's with this piston many times already with no piston slap issues.

Like you said before, people have their own procedures when building engines. This will probably be my last oem build (for myself). I would like to learn more about blueprinting, and pickup some more precision measuring instruments so I can move onto forged pistons/rods. I enjoy this a lot and hope to become, one day, a very respected engine builder.
 
hey dtob did you feel a diference in putting that header on,, well it make a diference if i change mine i have a 4-1 dc sports on my b16 engine..
 
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