My 350 spun a bearing the other day when I was testing my gtech. Apparently the motor was 2 quarts low on oil, even though the dipstick said it was full (later found out my father knew if the dipstick was rotated wrong it read wrong, now he tells me and there goes my enitire summer savings) and the high volume pump emptied the pan and bam, no oil. But in any case, i thought it was an exhaust leak (yeah im stupid) and drove it 75 miles and made 2 0-60 runs on it with the spun bearing. Is my block all shot? It stil had good oil pressure last time i ran it, it was a little weak on power though. In any case, if i cant fix the bearing from below, its rebuild time. What do you guys recommend I do? The block is a 71 4 bolt main. Should I rebuild this block as a 355, or take it to a 383. How much work is it to stroke one of these motors. As I recall it isnt a direct drop in the crank and go. Or what I was thinking was to get a 400 short block from PAW, drop it in there with my 487casting 76cc heads and go, as down the road I was hoping to build a nasty 406 with a blower, but this was more of the 5 years down the road thing. How much would a 400 short block cost? 350 rebuild w/machine work? 383 stroker kit and machine work. I can assemble an engine in the garage, so Id only pay for parts. Im hoping to do this for under 1500, under a 1000 would be even nicer. All I know is as of right now, Im limping around on 2.8 liters of camaro, and I miss the beast

 

First, find out for certain what's wrong with it. That probably means pulling it out and turning it upside down and popping the pan off.

If it's a spun bearing, and you know for certain that everything else about the motor is oK, then you could just crank kit it. Those rarely tear up the block, more often a rod bearing spins, and the mains are OK. On the other hand, if it filled the block up with metal shavings, a teardown and cleanup will be necessary, otherwise the leftover trash will fornicate a new crank immediately. But, even if it was a rod bearing, there's a good chance that it tore up that rod, which means that piston has to come out of the bore, which means that one at least gets new rings, which means it's probably better to do the other 7 so you don't have one cyl that's different from all the others.

Rotating the dipstick does not change its length. There's something else going on if it reads that far wrong. That said, I never believe one anyway; I always put the correct amount of oil in, and see where it goes on the stick, sometimes I even get really motivated and mark the stick so that if somebody else borrows my car or something and wants to know how much oil it has, they can tell too. sounds like you might want to consider doing something like that.

 

let me remember... i spun a main bearing in a 305 pickup one time. they did a "easy" fix on it. i want to say that they drilled a hole in the baering, and bolted it to the main. i don't think that's a good way to do it though. I just needed it to run so i could sell it. if it's a main bearing, can't they just bore it out, put in an oversized one?

 

nitrobreath: no you can't bore the block for a larger bearing, you can grind the crank undersize and run a undersized bearing. usually if a bearing spins on a main the block is trash. how in the hell do you bolt a bearing to a main? that i'd like to see.

 

Me too...I would love to see a pic of that one....Note to self. NEVER buy a car from a guy named Nitro....

 

What sucks is I put a new crank in the motor 3000 miles ago. Before the motor used to knock really bad, but theyre was something wrong with the crank and a blown head gasket. Motor is going to be started to worked on this week. One thing is for sure, I will check the oil on my car daily. The dipstick tube moves a bit, and thats how it read wrong. If it needs a new crank, is a 383 a direct drop in? If Im gonna pay the extra money, I might as well get the extra cubes.

 

No, a 383 is not a 'direct drop-in' at all. The crank itself might be, but building a motor around it isn't. usually a bunch of grinding on the block is required to clear the rods (and rod bolts), sometimes there isn't enough material in the block to grind off and you hit water, and of course the pistons are different from 350 ones unless you use stock 400 rods (which incidentally require a whole lot less grinding).

If you have to ask how to build a 383, you aren't ready to do it. I would instead suggest that you repair your 350, and this time concentrate on getting all the details right so you don't have trouble with it in the future. And i do mean all the details, inside the motor and out, whether they have to do with how fast it is or not. In your particular case I would recommend losing the high-volume oil pump and putting in a stock one with a high-pressure spring this time, and making sure the motor doesn't leak. There's not many things worse than having to rebuld a motor over and over because you skipped over some little thing like making sure some gasket seals correctly, and it comes back and bites you.

The dipstick tube moving doesn't change its length. If it comes out partway, that makes the stick read low, not high, which would make you put in too much oil, not too little. 2 quarts is over 2 inches of error on the stick. For the stick to read 2 quarts higher than the actual contents of the crankcase would require that the stick grow by more than 2 inches intermittently, or that the tube shrink by more than 2 inches intermittently, neither of which is consistent with the known rules of this universe. Basically, you might be able to tell that I don't believe the story about the oil being low and the stick reading right, because it's impossible. What actually happened is, the motor leaks or burns alot of oil, and you were out thrashing it without checking it, and now you are having to live with the results.

My advice would be to learn how a motor works; learn how to do a stock rebuild; learn how to take care of it; and learn to identify the signs of one being in distress, before you attempt to build a hot rod. Modding motors is alot of fun, but it gets real expensive when something goes wrong, and even more expensive when it's your daily driver and you lose your job because your car is so unreliable you can't get to work when you're supposed to. Learn how to make one reliable before you try to make it fast, otherwise you'll be posting lots more posts that sound alot like this one.

Don't get defensive or angry, just learn your lesson and be a better person for it, and don't try to make excuses for screwing up. Admit it honestly, realize you did the wrong thing, and do better next time. Good luck with your rebuild.

 

I spun a rod bearing last summer,once i had it on the stand and upside down,i could see where the #5 rod bearing had shifted slightly.It hadn't spun completely around,but made enough play to sound really bad.I was just going to buy new bearings and rebuild it,but i've heard that even a few minutes of running with a spun bearing can wear the journal egg shaped.I plan to have this checked out before i put her back together and i just thought you should be aware of it.I know i don't want to have it happen twice.