Me personally. Would tear apart, vigorously clean, and feel cylinder walls for anything not smooth. If I had the money. I'd get new pistons, rings, and get the cylinders honed

And yes shooting for 400 whp matters. Lol

At some point, I'm going to drop in a built motor and trans. But I think the plan for this winter is to restore everything from the firewall to the front bumper. I'll most likely run the stock bottom end and stock transmission until they let go, and then replace with build units.

But if this motor looks like it's near the end of its life right now, I might go ahead and build the motor. I would rather not, since I want to focus on restoring the engine bay this winter, and building a motor would take funds/time away from that.

Well....I guess you could keep it together and again. Vigorously clean the walls and tops of the pistons. Then put 1 and 4 at the bottom to clean cylinders 2 and 3. As long as the walls feel smooth after cleaning. That should last you provided you don't race around.

Honestly. I'm not at all the most experienced here. I'm only commenting to help, and hopefully get someone who knows better what to do in this situation. I was told to use a specific cleaning solution, but I can't remember. Lol. My pistons were covered in oil and soot.

Well honestly not to be rude, but can't tell much by just pictures of the tops of the pistons.

There could be damage to some of the bearings, maybe even cracked or broken ring lands there's just no telling until you go in and see.

To really get a idea about the condition of the engine you need to do a compression test and a leakdown test. How many miles does it have? Does it burn any oil or coolant? Oil pressure high or on the low side?

You also have look at your realistic goals for the car. Yeah you can get some good power out of these cars, but it won't be cheap to do it safely, and reliably. You'll need to tackle a turbo upgrade, fuel system, and a tuning solution. You'll have to take a look at the drivetrain, clutch condition, and cover all of your maintenance.

And in my opinion too, are you ready for a total over haul? I don't think completely blowing it to the moon should be a option. Throwing a rod through the block would be a major failure, and could caus a engine fire and total loss of your dsm ( worst case scenario). Not to mention doubling the cost of a rebuild. Do you have a plan for your rebuild? Possible machine shop lined up, or time frame for when you want it done?

I just say this because so many people are in a hurry to tear a car down, with no plan or idea of what their goals would be, or how they are going to have things done. Then they either end up being parted out , or sold to a salvage yard.

did you pull the head because of a problem or just to do an inspect and change the gasket? from your pics i can still see a cross hatch in the cylinder walls which is good. and pistons look to have normal carbon build up. no signs of pre-detonation or ping marks that i can tell. if it was running good before hand i personally just make sure head is flat since you have it off. and would just throw in a new oem composite head gasket. some arp studs and call it good until you can budget out your build. everybody has a different opinion but theres mine.

that engine needs to be rebuilt. Youre so close, why not? The front to back smoothing on the cylinder says it has a ton of miles on it.

i noticed that too. after i posted, the black streaks down the sides caught my eye . i wouldn't push that motor above stock power levels until you can afford to rebuild it.

I completely forgot to post the mileage, sorry!

As far as I know, the motor has 145k on it.

I'm now looking into Strictly's $2,000 short block build, since that's not much more than it would cost me to do it myself using the same parts. Thanks for the input!

Bringing this thread back up with another question about this block.

I've decided not to build it right now. I'm going to put all new gaskets in it, including a new headgasket and ARPs.

However, I'm concerned I may have screwed up. I originally thought I was going to build the motor, so when I pulled the head I began scraping all the old head gasket material off without much thought. I'm concerned that I've dumped a bunch of the material into the oil and coolant passages. Is this a valid concern? Or will I be alright if I flush everything out with some sort of aerosol cleaner and a blow gun?

1. Drop the pan

Pan is off. I just worry without a proper hot tanking that the little pieces of head gasket material will end up in my oil or coolant.

Bringing this back again, basically the same question. I've attached some more pictures of the block deck surface, although they aren't very good. The only prep for the composite headgasket that I've done is scrape the whole thing with razor blades. I'm still concerned that I got some debris in the coolant/oil passages though.

Another question: If I take the rotating assembly out to clean the block really well, can I just slap some new ACL bearings in and put it back together? Or do I need to take it to the machine shop and have them measure everything? I'd prefer not to remove the rotating assembly at all right now. I just want the motor to hold together until Fall of this year, and I'll only be running a TD05 20g.

Just run the engine. If you don't have glitter in your oil and the engine wasn't acting up before then odds are it'll last 6 months. My compression is for crap but she runs well and burns nothing, so I'll keep on going until it acts poorly or burns oil.

I agree with Oren and Mauispyder. Without measurements and total disassembly of the engine, you don't really know what the true condition is. If it was running good with no smoking or driveability issues, just perform regular maintenance, do a stocky head gasket and take an air gun to the passages while the pan is off. Then run it. If there was a pre-existing problem, then I would pause and think hard about building it up now, but that requires numbers. You may find out that the crank is too scored and can't be turned or that the cylinder taper is way out of spec. Or you can just save up for that short block, but make sure the head is straight, your teardrop is modded, and if you have to shave it that you don't do it past the bullseyes or the head is junk. You also have valves, guides and seats to inspect and the rest of the valvetrain to worry about. Just remember, half an engine is just that. Half an engine. I've built motors that had more money tied up in the head than the short block by almost twice as much. Whatever you do, just don't act on impulse or what anyone on here says alone. Take all of our opinions into consideration and form one of your own. It's your car, so do it the way you want. But just to be clear, IMHO, the motor you have should be fine to put back together to run while you save up for the built one assuming no issues before hand. I would also put the stock T25 or at the most a 14b on it. That 20G is a little large for a motor without supporting fuel and tuning mods, and too much boost is no bueno with that mileage. You'd be asking for it. Hope we helped you, and remember to hit any of us up if there's more questions. Good luck!

I appreciate the input! I should have mentioned from the start that I have all the supporting mods and tuning capabilities for the 20g. I've been running it at 20ish psi on a stock tune for almost a year.

In reality, I probably shouldn't have separated the head from the block at all since the motor was running perfectly fine. But I ordered the oem engine overhaul kit with all new gasket and hardware so I figured I should go ahead and do the head gasket while the motor is out.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it really doesn't matter what happens to the motor since this isn't my daily. I know I'll be building it eventually, and I'm much more worried about my transmission letting go and not having parts available to rebuild it. I imagine there will be aftermarket support for the 4g63 for a long time.

Again, I really appreciate the input. Thanks!