Any idea what type of pistons you have in that block? I've never seen a piston with a darker circle in the center of the head, new or after cleanup.

No clue. I'll some research. They should be stock. This engine is from a 1 owner car.

This post has been edited by Steve91T: Oct 18 2016, 09:41 PM

I thought flat top pistons were 4.8 pistons.

No i know the LS1 came with flat tops.

So, what's the latest? What did you do with the engine? Is it back together yet?

Life has gotten in the way once again!!! I've been out of town a ton, way more than usual. I'm actually going to try to get the cam swapped tonight once I get home. And I should be getting my heads back soon.

Oh I think I forgot to mention that. So my buddy is a spotter for one of the NASCAR cup drivers and obviously knows a bunch of people in the sport. Well one of his good friends used to build NASCAR engines for one of the teams and has a little side business building engines. He has my heads and is going to clean them under for me.

So hopefully soon I'll have this thing back in the car! Soon as in less than like 4 months. Lol

Excellent! I'm anxious to see how it does. (I'm about to pull the transmission out of mine due to dead hydraulics...I'm 3 weeks behind on getting my own junk apart...lol).

Off to a fantastic start...



(IMG:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v199/Steve91T/Camaro/AF41861E-4F50-4A3C-AE21-F30CACE6156B.jpg)

Dang! I don't think that will polish out.

I'm just going to JB weld it. Jk

I called fluidamper and they were super nice. They said now that it's a paperweight, put the puller on it again, pour the heat to it and beat it with a hammer. It's still not budging.

Any ideas? This sucks.

Well I've now broken it in 3 different places. I've changed to a regular hammer thinking it'll have more shock than the rubber dead blow. I've been putting pressure on it, heating around the hub, and then hitting the back side with the hammer while turning it. I'd do a few passes then put a little more tension on it, then more heat and another pass with the hammer.

She's not budging.

It's ok though. My wife just came home with beer.

Ok I'm giving up on the 3 jaw puller. I'm going to work on removing the 3 bolts and using a pulled that threads into those bolts. The bolts are 10mm but slightly rounded from someone. So my socket slips before they budge. Any recommendations on what tool to use to get those out?

Don't you have to remove the center bolt before pulling it off?

Yes you do. It's loosened and backed out a good 1/2". It's there to push against so the puller doesn't bugger the crank shaft.

Holy defeated. Man I don't know what to do. So I went to lowes and got a rounded bolt exteafor set (needed one anyway) and easily got the 3 bolts out. Then I got my puller that screws into the three holes. I thought for sure this wood work. Well the good news is it never failed. The bad news, it didn't budge. That balanced was actually laughing at me. I had one hand holding a screwdriver in the flywheel, and the other on a 2 ft. breaker bar. I had so much tension on it I was actually afraid the whole thing might explode.

I really don't know why I tell people that I actually enjoy working on cars.

You could pull the rod and main caps loose, remove the crank and have it pressed off on a hydraulic press. Or if you have a pretty serious balancer puller, you could lean on it with an impact gun and then smack the balancer with a hammer (or try heating it, or both).

Hmm, that's a tiny detail that I missed. I think you're right.

Buy a flywheel holding tool. Seriously, it's worth the money. You don't have to worry about holding the flywheel in place and you can actually get some torque on that thing.

Also, get a bigger breaker bar and hang off the end of that f-er. LS1 balancers get pressed so hard onto the crank from the 200+ ft-lbs of torque originally applied on that ARP bolt. Oh, and heat the shit out of it. Make sure it's a real torch, need something stronger than propane.

Is there no danger of effing up the crank? I can't help but to think that I'm pulling/heating/beating on pretty much the heart of the engine.

The thrust bearing will be what sees most of the pounding. And you're replacing the bearings....right? I wouldn't go nuts on it with a sledgehammer, but a few whacks from a 3 lb hammer or similar shouldn't be a huge deal.

Also, I use one of these:

http://www.jegs.com/p/JEGS-Performance-Pro...756875/10002/-1

My first one was from Tavia (the manufacturer) but I loaned it to a friend (not sure who) and never got it back. So I have the Jegs version now (likely made by Tavia). It lets you pull crank bolt and use it to save the crank. They have Ford and Chevy SB versions. Not sure if it fits an LSx.