Re: building syty engine advise?
Sounds like you got a solid set up, make sure you can tune for the vortec heads but to answer your questions:
1. You want tight tolerances, especially in the cylinders. The factory set them up pretty tight to begin with. I don't know the exact numbers but I told my machine shop to get everything as tight as could be done.
2. Any good machine shop will be able to take care of the block, clean it, bore it and so on.
3. Make sure the crank is cleaned up and checked, I lucked out and just polished up the journals and was good.
4. .060 over is pretty much the run out for a 350 and these are of the same technology so I personally would avoid that area. But that is solely my opinion and based on wrenching on other GM garbage. I would recommend .030 if you have to bore it. If it is a really fresh block you may be able to hone it and go. Anything past .040, I would get another block. They are run of the mill Romulus blocks, just make sure to use your mains as they are nodular.
5. As far as a good balancer goes it depends on how much money you want to spend. I got a nice OEM one from O'Reilly's for $50ish if I remember correctly or you can spend bookoo bucks on high performance geared stuff.
6. As far as pictures go you can set up an account with a photo hosting site (photobucket) and then embed the link for those pics in the posts.
Advice that I picked up while doing my rebuild and install:
Come to terms with the fact that the tranny and transfer case will have to come out. I have seen some guys leave them in but I haven't had a whole lot of luck with that and I torched a front pump on a tranny back in the day because I didn't seat the TC right and blah blah so now I am kinda OCD about mating the tranny and engine on the ground. With that said, if you go that route you will have to drop the front dif to clear the oil pan. It is like 5 bolts and a bit of a pain but while the tranny and transfer case are out you can do new seals, filter, gasket and fluid.
Be careful of the HVAC airbox when putting the engine back in. I was a jackass and cracked one side of mine cause I was trying to manhandle the engine/trans in the truck. That was my $25/4 hours wasted boo boo.
Take lots of pictures! Don't rely on memory or you will have a lot of stuff go wrong. Label all of the pigtails, vac lines, hoses, wires and bolts. A Sharpie, masking tape and zip loc bags will be your friend.
Do the remote oil filter delete while the engine is out. It cleans up the engine bay and gets rid of the junkie oil lines.
Find all the wiring that needs to be redone or rerouted or fixed and do it with the engine out. 20 years isn't friendly to wiring, at least not in my POS.
Replace every wear item you can think of. Heater hoses, Rad hoses, sensors, Water pump, Thermostat, Motor mounts (best time to do these because they are a nightmare to do with the engine in the truck from what I have read), I did a silicone vac line kit from Sportmachines and it is nice. You may want to consider that or at the minimum, redo the vac lines as they are probably old and brittle.
Clean, degrease, pressure wash, steam clean, whatever you have to do but get rid of the 20 years of dirt and grime and throw some paint on. Semi gloss black engine paint does wonders.
Any upgrades you have wanted to do that involve you being under the hood, this is the time to do them. New CAC pump, replacing the IC hard lines, Aux coolers, so on and so forth.
Oh yeah, take the front clip off. It will take 6 hours-ish if you are doing it by yourself but to have all of that room is really worth it. Best way to do engine in my opinion.
Please don't take any of this as an insult if it is knowledge you already have. I just learned a lot of lessons while doing mine but this was my first unsupervised/solo engine rebuild and install. Best of luck, let us know if we can help.
