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Help me tear down and inspect my 440..

Canadian1968 said:
What's everyone favorite way to clean up the heads . Get a Tupperware tub and go to town with some degreasers ? Obviously a parts washer would be ideal but I don't have one of those!
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Small hand/detail wire brushes and various wire wheels chucked in a drill. You can buy those plummer hand held wire brushes for cleaning the ID of tubing and cut off the handle and chuck it up too. Works pretty good for getting into the ports. Mineral spirits. Final clean with lacquer thiner or carb cleaner.
 
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Thanks
BSB67 said:
Small hand/detail wire brushes and wire wheels chucked in a drill. Mineral spirits. Final clean with lacquer thiner or carb cleaner.
Click to expand...

Thanks I always appreciate your input .

Answer some of your questions

Yes MPH was 107 for the 12.6 run. PB is 109 mph..

Yes running pump gas , 91 octane. Never had any detonation that I can tell. I did not install the cam , I sent the motor off to shop for full rebuild I think 9 years ago now. Never did find out EXACT compression I hope to do that this time with motor pulled apart. But figure around 9.8 : 1

I'm thinking it was head gasket , there are no OBVIOUS signs yet that I can see. I do belive my head bolts to be a possible culprit . They are the originals and think they are probably stretched?

I want get the templates and see what they look like. I had done some general pocket porting when I had the motor rebuilt. But I only did the intake side . I want to do the exhaust and again check my intake with the templates. The valve seats were a definite point of conversation when I had them rebuilt. The way we did it was I did my porting then gave them back to the shop and they cut the valve seats and assembled the heads/ motor . I am interested to see what it looks like when I pull the valves out .

I plan on doing a quick leak test , just putting some alcohol down the ports to see if anything leaks past the valves.
 
Well...... pretty sure that's not supposed to leak.... and yes those are those are the 2 low reading cylinders !

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Canadian1968 said:
I had checked for exhaust leaks over the years never really found signs of one... the "ticking " on passage side was more dull, pretty sure It wasn't an exhaust leak
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How did you check for exhaust leaks? I agree with exhaust leaks causing a ticking sound. I usually take a piece of fuel line, hold one end to my ear and move the other end around where a leak might be. It'll be really obvious when you find it.
 
Did a quick clean up the heads with some carb cleaner , wire wheel , and scotch Brite wheels . I'm going to grab a valve spring compressor tomorrow and will pull the valves out and inspect the the two leaking cylinders and whatever else I can find!

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Moparfever65 said:
How did you check for exhaust leaks? I agree with exhaust leaks causing a ticking sound. I usually take a piece of fuel line, hold one end to my ear and move the other end around where a leak might be. It'll be really obvious when you find it.
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Yup that's what I did. The sound i was looking for seemed more from valve cover , valley pan area than an exhaust port. When I put everything back together will make sure to use some decent graphite exhaust gaskets.
 
Canadian1968 said:
When I was breaking the head bolts loose, they sure didn't feel like 70 ftlbs I was surprised at how easy they seemed to break loose .
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After you started up this engine for the very first time (9 Years ago) did you do a cylinder head re-torque?
 
Orig69 said:
After you started up this engine for the very first time (9 Years ago) did you do a cylinder head re-torque?
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I did not. Before I pulled the driver side I did check a few bolts they torqued correctly . I know only checking 4 is not really very thorough but better than nothing. Are soon as break the bolts loose they could be take out with my fingers .

I will be putting are bolts in when I put everything back together
 
I grabbed the direct connection templates from my buddy today. They are pretty old and just made of some very thin plastic. I got on it right away and 3D printed a more durable and strong set

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If you have a plunge cut made with a modern serdi or similar machine, that will remove pretty much what the porting templates are showing you. Then you just have to blend the transition.

IMG_20231202_103940221.jpg
 
Well got the valves out. The cylinder that had the lowest compression has alot of flakey carbon . The other cylinder beside it that also tested a bit low, shows a bit of pitting on the valve seat. I quick wipe with some scotch Brite showed that thr pitting does not seem to be that bad. I think it should clean up just fine with some lapping compound.

The intake valves have a decent amount of carbon build up on them as well. First will be to clean up all the valves . I was just going to put then in a drill and clean them up with scotch Brite pad and carb cleaner ?

Then lap all the seats / valves and see how things turn out. Probably reassemble the valves and springs and make sure thet are sealing well before doing the porting

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Orig69 said:
The size of the intake valve bowl looks like it's too big to fit a porting template.
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I had done some basic clean up already . I threw few templates in to see where I was at. Good at 4 , 6 and 8 o'clock positions. The templates show more material to be removed at 9 , 10 and 2, 3 o'clock positions .
 
Picked up some lapping compound today and went at the 2 cylinders that had the leaking valves. The pitting in the one came out very quickly.

I lapped them and then threw the valves back in to test for leaks again. I had to do the one cylinder that was leaking the most , twice. But looks like everything cleaned up nicely .

I will do all the valves but those were 2 that were showing problems. And wanted to make sure they would clean up before I went and did any porting.

Time to get out the grinder !

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