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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 at 14:03:21 :
I've been thinking, why does everyone always rebuild a tired engine these days rather than just doing a ring job? I understand about wanting to do everything right if you're doing a complete restoration, but what about a beater truck that's just doesn't have the pep it ought to have? When I was a kid, people still talked about "ring jobs" as if they were almost scheduled maintenance, while a complete overhaul was reserved for when things got seriously deranged inside. On an OHV engine, we still do "valve jobs", since it's easy enough to pull the head and take it to a shop to be "done", but when the loss of compression is in the bottom half, it seems like the general practice is to pull the engine, tank the block, bore the cylinders, grind the crank, etc, which is thousands of dollars depending on how much you do yourself and how much you value you time.
So, this is a philosophical question. Our flatheads were clearly built in the days when ring jobs were commonplace. They also are known for needing "rebuilds" every 50K miles or so. Is a full rebuild really necessary? Anybody here had good success freshening up a tired engine just by pulling the head, the pan, and the pistons with the engine in the truck, honing (but not boring) the cylinders, putting new rings on the exiting pistons, and lapping the valves in-place with a hand-held or drill-powered valve grinder? In other words, doing what any small-time garage in 1950 could have done?
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