Went and bought a 99 lq4 from a junkyard in Philly, brought it home to find out that it is in worse condition than I was told. Upon tear down, I found water made it into the cylinders and caused buildup. After cleaning some, and a slight hone, I was able to clean it up...kinda. What do you guys think? Do I need some machining?

 

Larger pictures would help.

 

Get it machined



better safe than sorry.

 

The pics are too small. I had the same problem in my 01 6.0. I hones it out with the piston on BDC. Ran for nearly 4 years before i just ran it low on oil. The new 6.0 from my 01 3/4 ton had the same issue. I just dropped it in my mustang, so we will see with that on as well.

 

Sorry about the pics, I did this on my phone. Ill fix it when I get home. But when I opened it up, there was a good amount of built up surface rust on the cylinders. I'm hoping that I can skate by with just a hone

 

Pull the pistons and push a dingle-berry hone down the cyls a few times. If theres pitting after, it should be honed for best performance

 

If you attempt this you will want to make sure you do even up and down strokes, and also do every cylinder the same amount of times.

Or you could approach this the safest way and take it to a good engine builder to see what he says it may just need a touch up hone, not the ball hone but with a real honing machine. He may have to go oversize depending on how bad it is. I cannot tell from the pics.

Best Wishes

 

I ran the dingleberry hone through my Lq4. I have a youtube video of it up somewhere.

Here's what I did for a "poor mans" refresh. My build will differ slightly, because my crank was trash.

I gutted the motor. If your crank is good, clean it up with the rest of the parts. Cleaned the cylinders as good as I could with a rag and cleaner. Ran the hone through with lots of oil. As others have said. You have to do the same strokes, try to stay consistent, and keep the drill speed/stroke speed the same. Watch your cross hatch to get it where you want.

After that, using a 4" bore brush, I used piping hot soapy water to just wash the heck out of each cylinder. Did this a bunch of times.

THEN...I used ATF on a blue paper towels, to clean the cylinders, until I got nothing on the towel. You'll be surprised how much black stuff shows up.

Once I was satisfied, I used brake cleaner to wipe each bore down, and then coated with motor oil.

Finally, I dropped the block off at a machine shop to be hot tanked and new cam bearings installed. This was pretty cheap, and turned out to be a great choice. Block came back super clean. When I got it back, I just recoated the cylinders, and all gasket surfaces, with a little oil to keep surface rust away.

Tape/paint the block. New rings, bearings, re-assemble, check your clearances and you ought to be good to go for a basic build! And you really havent spent that much money for the piece of mind. Cam bearings were $25 to install at the shop. Why not? I forget what the tanking cost, but it was worth it to get all the gunk out of the passages and off the surface.

As always, just my $0.02!

J.

 

I finished tearing down the motor the other day. Every. Single. Piston. was seized up in the cylinders which resulted in some physical labor in order to get them out. Although all of that effort was needed, the cylinders were in kind of good condition. I appreciate all of the help from you guys. I was pretty hot when i pulled the heads to find i dropped 800 on a seized motor :/

Definitely going to hot tank the block, and do new cam bearings as well.

Any tips cleaning pistons top to bottom? I read a pin up on ltxlsx.com and found a guy soaked his pistons in Berrymans B12 chemtool. apparently its good stuff, but im willing to try other methods lol.

Tyler

 

I like Valvoline Carb cleaner...its in blue cans and Ive only found it at advance auto. Good stuff. But Im a fan of just spraying them down and working at them with some scotchbrite or brass bruss. They'll come clean.

Take an old ring and break it/cut it. Then use the FACTORY end to clean the grooves. You dont want to dig in, but it makes a nice cleaner for scraping out the gunk.

Soaking them could work too though. Im just impatient. haha.

J.

 

OUCH...
think you want to check your decks for flatness...
good luck with it.

 

I always spins jy motor by hand before I buy it.

 

Man that sucks. These things are not cheap to rebuild

 

Always a good idea. But always be prepared to run into snags like this. For instance, I spun my LQ4 over a bunch before buying it. Only after I started pulling the crank pulley did I notice the excessive thrust play. And then once I got it apart more, it became more obvious. So I still had to deal with a fubar crank.

From now on, I bring a big screw driver or pry bar to check thrust. And hopefuly Ill never have to impliment that plan hahaha.

J.