I took a good long look at them today; i think not only were the pistons upside down, the rods were backwards as well.

In the rod where the bearing goes, there is a fairly flat side and a tapered side that sticks out. I always thought the flat sides came together and the tapered sides went toward the crank...

but when i hold them up it seems they were in the other way around!

and to make matters worse, the trough valve releif was on the bottom of the piston, where i beleive it should have been on the top while in the motor!

 

i also just noticed the rings look too small for the piston as well! they appear to be 1/16 rings, where im pretty sure my pistons take 5/64 !!! OH MY *** what kept this thing together?

 

if the rods are backwards the crank won't spin. the pistons have an arrow, notch, or some other identifier to show which is front.

 

good thing it didn't blow up.

 

Wow....

And people wonder sometimes why I build my own short blocks.

The caps go on the rods such that the bearing tangs are together, and are on the side opposite the cam (i.e., "down" or "outside"). The pistons have a mark of some kind that indicates the front. You should have 4 pistons on their rods in one direction and 4 in the other.

As far as the rings, it would have helped if your engine builder was paying attention while assembling your motor. I think whoever built that motor should never touch another one again for the rest of his life, and should find a new hobby like gardening or something; he's too dangerous to be allowed around anything that moves and can kill innoncent bystanders when it unexpectedly fails while in operation.

 

If you have only two valve reliefs, they should be installed toward the inboard side of the block (toward the lifter valley).

Con rods should be installed as shown:

 

Yep, i think Rods were in backwards, and pistons were upside down.


Although they say the crank wont spin if this is the case, i beleive because they are floaters not pressed they were allowed to move over enough to work and run.

Also ALL of my connecting rods are on the pistons the SAME way, not 4 and 4. this is correct though, because i only have 1 long trough valve releif so when you flip the pistons for the other side of the motor the flat end of the rod is still facing the other rod.

I have pictures but im at work. There is a post on the power adders board now, with pictures, When i get home ill put them here so STAY TUNED i want to make 100% sure it goes together right when i do it myself this time around.

 

Who did the engine assembly?

 

martha stuwart?

 

Here is a Great Engine Assemblier:
http://www.enron.com/corp/

 

lol i actually went to that site looking for info. stupid me

 

OK this is how i beleive they should go

 

Or do you mean DIS-assembler?

 

How do you put a piston in upside down? or did you mean 180 degrees out

 

he meant 180 out, with the valve relief closer to the exhaust port side of the block. He has a picture on the power adder board with a picture of where the valves hit the piston. and the picture he posted of the rod is correct

 

<b>How do you put a piston in upside down?</b>

hah i just caught that. yeah yeah i think i would have noticed THAT one! lol what a joke it would be.


85 Transam406 i see commander 950 in your list... I have that too! hows it working for you? i wrote a small software program that auto-tunes for you so you dont ever have to touch the base map. its written in VB6 and i used some cross-process subclassing to find where the pink box moves then check the O2 mod and change the base map based on the O2 mod and what the RPMS are etc....

not done with it yet. when i get this motor running again "right" ill finish it up.

 

Yeah, i've been waiting for you to finish that program, i wanna try it out. i'm just getting a hang of the tuning. Auto tuning would be nice, esp. for driving around town (this car is a driver, not a racer). That's one of the reason's ive been following your threads on your engine problems, so you could get it back together and finish up your program . i just got mine up a few weeks ago. I also am changing to the holley harness, i'm running my stock one (after repinning), my stock one is kinda jacked up, do you know where i have to make the changes to extend it? just add about a foot where it goes into the firewall? and do i have to extend the injector harness at all? i'm not running tpi, so i can't pass the connector uder the runners, looks kinda short.

 

Most likelly the Distributor 4-pin connector will need about 6 inches added, if not more. that was the shortest thing.

the injectors wireing reached fine... but the sensors in and near the Throttle body needed about 1 FOOT of extra length to reach. Without the extra length, they just ran directly over my valve covers, it looked like crap and made plug changes hard.

And also the injector harness, I just layed it out so the plug-in was at the back of the intake, that way i could run the commander 950's crap right around the back of the motor with all the rest of the stuff.

It took a while but finnaly i think its all hidden and looks... well... like nothing because you cant see most of it. which is what i wanted. took me 2 trys though, and i couldnt have done it if i hadnt pulled the motor out.

 

i'm runnin a mechanical advance dist. i had to clear the intake, i didn't know what to do about converting the wiring from old hei to smaller style, any way i can do this without having to by the adapters for the holley harness?

 

Well first of all, if you have a computer controlled distributor lying around it should be practically a direct fit.

but GM makes the external coil kind (adaptor needed) and the coil-in-cap kind (no adaptor needed) Ill assume you have the external coil HEI kind...

Which the adaptor comes with the commander950 kit in the box...

But if it didnt, all you need is the little plug from any 89+ External coil and simply crimp the large connector to the small one.

if you dont have a computer controlled distributor you can get one easilly enough though. I would use the external coil kind to clear your intake or plenum or whatever you have....

if you need pictures let me know.

 

pictures of your harness layout would be awesome. My question is my car came with an internal coil dist, i have to convert to the external style. i found the adapter that plugs into the dist, what about the wiring that goes to the coil?

 

Wiring for coil i made myself, since i have an MSD box. do you have an MSD? I was using it without an MSD but i already had factory wiring for the coil set-up. Ill see if i can get diagrams... and i can take pictures of my harness as it sits in the car but remember there is no motor in it right now;

 

pics with the motor out would be cool, i gotta pull mine anyway, changin oil pan and oil pump. i could wire it then as long as i have a general idea of where it goes.