Today is going to be some final motor work and some cosmetic work.

The cabin fan sounded like it had mice living in there when it was on, so I pulled it out to see if I could get at the bearings to lubricate them.  No luck.  It’s just not worth the trouble.  I picked up another one for $30 and replaced it.  It’s not terrible to get at as far as these things go.

You have to move the ECU out of the way (silver thing on the right), remove its mounting from the coolant expansion tank, the expansion tank itself, and the frontmost stud that the expansion tank mounts on.  Two of the bolts (towards the fender) are pretty terrible to get at, and this is yet another “SURPRISE!  We decided not to use metric fasteners here!” area.  For the fan itself only, of course (they are 15/64).  The rest of the things you need to take out are all 10 MM.

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It’s been a long time.  Too long.  At the end of Part 9, I mentioned that I had cross threaded the crank bolt.  What happened there was when I used the steering wheel puller to remove the crank pulley mount, I didn’t leave the bolt in place (it doesn’t interfere with the pulley mount), and the threaded rod of the steering wheel puller mangled the first few threads.  In an  attempt to make it easy to turn the motor over during the timing chain and head gasket jobs, I wanted to put the crank bolt back in with some shims (to ensure it wasn’t bottoming out on the back of the crank threads), and when trying to thread this in through the damaged threads, I made matters worse.

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First up, let’s get a timing chain on this thing.  I’ve pulled the old gears, chain, and tensioner.  The oil cup plug has a hole in it. This is where the oil sprays on the timing chin to lubricate it:

There is a tech service bulletin out on this.  The new ones have a slightly larger hole to supply more oil to the chain to prevent timing chain failure.  So we need to get the old cup out and install the new one.

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On closer inspection and after a good cleaning, I can say that there was definitely no contact between valves and pistons (I’m sure I would have seen that in the head already, but still). So this is set to go. The bores are definitely worn, but with the exception of a couple of spots generally look worse than they actually are.

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Head is cleaned up (enough) and I’ve lapped the valves back in:

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So it doesn’t actually look like any valves are bent. They’re really just that nasty from 230,000 miles of neglect.

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S10 Update:

I couldn’t find my compression tester, and ran out to Harbor Freight to pick up a leak down tester so I can stop borrowing them from friends. This is just going to be easier than a compression tester with the state the motor is in.

Bottom line: I have at least 2 bad valves that won’t seal.  Bent or cruddy?  Don’t know.

For anyone interested in a leak down test on a motor with the exhaust manifold and throttle body already off, here it is:

So I changed my mind after some rumination. I decided to leave the head on until I pulled the front cover.

To do that, you need to remove the crank pulley (easy) and then the crank pulley hub (not so easy). There is some chevy specific tool for that, but I just grabbed the steering wheel puller, a wrench, and a breaker bar:

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Progress is being made after another hour or so working on it:

And GM, seriously….making me go through the wheel well to get the last bolt off the alternator? Who do you think you are? Ford?

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My goal for this is to find common vehicles that are selling well (a 4 cylinder work truck absolutely fits my idea of that), obviously that I can make a profit on with minimal investment, and that don’t cost more than I can expect someone to show up with in cash. I’m thinking nothing over the $6k mark (yes, I’ve bought plenty of things with cash well over that, but I don’t think you’ll find non-car-guys doing that kind of thing, unless they are drug dealers). I also want to do things right. I value my reputation in life, and I’m not out to screw anyone at this. I believe that the market is good enough right now to do things right and have both me and the buyer happy with the deal they get.

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