Crème Brûlée in a cylinder?

Hey All,

Sorry it's been a while since the last post. I've been away with work and camping for the last 2 weekends. Blah blah blah, on with the updates...

So I was back in Australia for all of 2 hours and Dad gave me a call "Do you wanna work on the car tonight?" Is the Pope Catholic? Of course I do. The supervisor also came along (Bomba the dog)..

We removed the heads and were unfortunately greeted with a horrid site. As much as I like Crème Brûlée, I'm not such a fan to see it inside an engine cylinder....

The cylinder was full of water with a thick crust of rust. It even cracked nicely like a good Crème Brûlée. It turns out that the inlet valve on this cylinder was open, so it is most likely that water came down through carburettor and through the intake manifold. Not sure how, since the car was under a thick cover for the past few years. I guess Brisbane has had horrendous rain in the past year, so anything is possible. Oh well, that's life. We expected to find some challenges along the way.

The cylinder head doesn't look too good either.

After giving the cylinder a light clean-up, the bore still looks quite corroded. You can see the 'tide mark'.

So we've had a fair bit of discussion lately as to the future for the engine. We've thrown around options of replacing the engine with a modern GM LS1/2 engine. These engines obviously have many advantages such as being light weight, having electronic fuel injection, huge aftermarket parts range and also capable of bolting up to the same gearbox adapter plate (bar 1 hole). The other alternative is to rebuild the 350. We've decided to go with the rebuild option to keep the costs down. As tempting as it is to drop an LS1 in, there would be many hidden costs and further delays. If we decide to upgrade the engine in the future we can always sell off the 350 Chev.

The car is now pretty much ready for the engine to come out this weekend. I'll be getting hold of an engine stand and borrowing an engine crane off a mate.

Oh yeah, this project was a perfect excuse to buy an air compressor and air tools... Loving the rattle gun. It makes easy work of rusty bolts :)

Here's how the car is looking at the moment. I love working on this thing. It's so easy. The entire rear clip section was held on by two bolts and the air strut. I lowered it on to my garage creeper and wheeled it out of the way. Too easy!

Update coming soon..