Hello, This is my first engine rebuild and I bought this off facebook marketplace. please let me know if it looks okay. and also let me know what could be up with cylinder 7 i think it is. i understand that the rest are just carbon build-up, but the last looks like it cool be worse. it is a small block chevy 350

 

That’s a lot of sludge in there and that one cylinder had water in it. The block might be OK, but won’t know until you tear into it some more and start checking measurements.

What is the motor? 305? 350? Been rebuilt before?

 

it's a 350 and has never been rebuilt before I checked and there was only that water at the top and non in the rest of the cylinder

 

She's pretty haggard but probably savable. Sludge means it lived a hard life.

 

what would be recommended

 

Clean it and look for pitting in the bores. If the pitting is too deep the block will either need to be sleeved or junked.

 

You should HAVE BEEN PAID to take that off of the seller's hands.
But it might not be all bad. You will have to spend some money first just to find out.

Once you get it completely disassembled, load the parts up and take them to the quarter car wash AT NIGHT.
Leave the sludge there.

 

At 100K miles with almost no sludge my block had a huge amount of junk in the water jacket, some holes were completely plugged resulting in a melted a piston. Well the turbos didn't help...You will want to use an engine block brush kit like crazy or have the block tanked. Tanking might mean machine work tho.

 

That engine---or what's left of it---is going to need a LOT of machine work and probably all-new rotating parts due to the fact it looks like it's never seen an oil change. It's your money, but in this day and age, I wouldn't put a penny into any non-roller engine rebuild. You'd do well to junk that engine and find a roller motor to rebuild.

If for some reason you decide to proceed with what you've got there, don't spend a penny on that block until you get it hot-tanked and checked for cracks. Same with the cylinder heads.

 

I second this advice. ☝️

 

I third.

 

Fourth.
Yeah, looks like the oil was never changed..

 

looks like that is from a 1988-95 truck: #638 block and #193 heads.Get it the rest of the way apart to check for any major problems including cracks and go from there-you can usually get very decent results out of a budget rebuild even if the cylinder bores have some wear,scratches,taper,etc. Oven cleaner works great to remove that sludge.

 

I hope you didn't pay any more than about $25 for that. It's the absolute bare minimum possible, crappiest, least of the least modern 350 you could get. And of course, in TOTALLY HEINOUS condition; looks like the oil hadn't been changed in the last 50,000 miles or more. Plus, it's been sitting out in the rain for who knows how long. Complete garbage. Trash. I've paid people to come haul that kind of stuff off of my property; which means, that thing would have NEGATIVE value to me. As NoE84 hinted at. I pay people to take that sort of thing off my hands.

Get your money back if possible. If not, throw it in the trash, or send it on down the line to The Next Greater Fool (yes, there's always one out there), and chalk it up to a life lesson learning experience. Don't rip em off though, $50 max. Then go to the junkyard and pay whatever it takes to get the absolutely most CHERRY low-mileage well-maintained 96-2000 350 they have. Whatever it costs, it'll STILL be less than even minimally repairing that worthless POS, and you'll have a REALLY NICE motor with good potential, instead of a motor that even if was TOTALLY CHERRY on its own, would still be a POS, since that's what it was the day it was born, and now is 100 times worse.