Used razor blades on every block material out there and never had an issue. Scotch brite and brake cleaner on the pistons and the same on the deck once the big pieces are off with the razor. Always comes out 100% spotless. The factory gaskets are a little forgiving but why worry about how forgiving they are when you have the bare block surface in front of you? Just clean it up.

Scotch brite and WD40 on the heads before they go on is always how I've done them... Nary a head gasket problem.

 

Yep, just get it done right. Sure have had enough time. Machine shop called yesterday and said my intake valves were all bent. No clue as to why. There's no evidence of any PTV contact on the intake side. Any ideas? Just aggregates me to dump money into these garbage heads. I'd rather get some trick flows.

 

I wouldn't trust that engine as is. At bare minimum replace that hole and timing chain... I would venture to guess that you tweaked your chain when you had that PTV clearance and it caused enough slop to ping the other valves... I'd pull it and fix it. I've just gone through learning a hard lesson about that!

 

Wow... all of them? That's crazy!

 

That is pretty crazy. Did they show you the valves?

If you have the money for badass heads, they do it while it is apart. Yes people make good power on stock heads but you will make more.

 

I would find it hard to believe that all the valves are bent. The one that kissed the piston should certainly be bent. Did he mean the seats were slightly off? When I pull a head off I always turn it upside down, and fill the combustion chamber with alcohol. It helps to clean it, and if it leaks out you know something is bent for sure.

 

Yeah the whole thing is suspect and doesn't make any sense to me. I'm questioning this machine shop. I went with them because they're literally 5 minutes from my house. I work full time and with traffic can't really make it to other places before they close. When I took the heads to the guy he told me the valve guides would be shot for sure because he's "never seen a set" that weren't shot. These heads are 3 years old with maybe 35k miles on them, so I was perplexed and told him not to replace unless absolutely necessary. $120 to do that BTW. And not only that, I took the heads to them on Tuesday and they're still not done, another week with no running vehicle. Granted, Brian Tooley did short me one valve spring seat, so the guy had to modify a seat he had in the shop claiming it will be just fine. I called Tooley and he's mailing me another seat. The whole thing has me completely irritated. For the cost I'm spending on this garbage I could have had an entire junkyard motor, granted I am "upgrading" with better valvesprings, studs, and LS9 head gaskets. /rant.

 

Update: cleaning driver's side pistons and deck I found very light PTV contact on cylinder 1, intake and exhaust side. These PAC springs probably weren't the best decision on my part from the get go. So now there's some evidence to support the intake valves being bent. I'm wondering if contact on other pistons was present but minimal enough that there's no visible damage to the piston.

Anyways, I'm not interested in dumping any more money into this old motor. If it goes down after I button it back up, I'll park the truck for a while and put something in built.

 

At least you know the shop isnt dicking you around. Hope it all comes together soon!

 

Got the heads back yesterday, they look great. Guy did a nice job. I should have them bolted down tonight after work.

I also added a 160 Tstat and I think I'm going to use a c5 vette coolant reservoir.