1983 hydraulic engine

Just my opinions/way of doing things: YMMV----

I don't bother too much with head bolt removal sequence for plain jane stuff. If I do, I do the reverse of the tightening sequence so would start at the ends; not sure it makes any diff; I have removed AL racing haeds and not worried with no consequent issues.....

I havae reused hed bolts on all older engines forever with no issues. The newer engines have botls that are a lot thinner and are torque-to-yeild but I have even re-used them sometimes with no issues. The slant's bolts are the old heavy, thick ones.

Right - clean all the bolt holes in the head to remove oils and maybe a THIN coat of anti-sieze but not much. I have a used some ARP studs where you are supposed to use specific greases to get good high, consistent torques but I have never used that on a stock engine.

I torque the head bolts to 1/2 full torque on the 1st pass, to 3/4 on the 2nd, to full torque on the 3rd and them make a 4th pass to make sure they are right; all passes are in the proper sequence.

If it is a head gasket with a rubberry-plastic coating on both sides, I would not coat it at all. I have only used CopperKoat on metal gaskets.


Yes don't mix the valves and rockers and pushrods and I would keep even the springs and retainers in oder. An egg carton does a good job for sorting springs and retainers. I cut a large piece of cardboard and put small holes in it for the rods and valves and slots for the rockers.

Lapping valves is easy and you can do it with or without the blueing; the blueing is done as a check step to see how even and wide the seating contact is, not for the actual lapping. The actual lapping is done with a lapping paste on the valve face that finely grinds down the valve face and seat. Lapping does work! With your older engine and with the possible rust that may be on the valve face and seat, it would be worthwhile to do IMO IF the rust is very fine and very light. If any flakes of rust or heavy rust or pits are present on either, it is time for a real valve job.

I would not clean the valves with a power wire wheel...too rough. I have done it once but thought better of it later. Fine emery cloth or wet-or-dry is better IMO. A bit of crud on the valve ends into the cylinders is not a bid deal in a low CR engine anyway.

Loose guides will be pretty obvious as the valves will wobble around easily. The running issue will be erractic/rough idle and low throttle performance. If you can live with that, it'll run but be rough 'til the valves are fixed.

Broken rings? Yeah, you'll probably find some scoring/scraping in the cylinder. (But not all scrapes are from broken rings...a momentary piston seizure will scuff the cylinder wall, and crap in the cylinder can lightly score it.) If it is the top ring broken, it'll never seal well; the 2nd ring just helps to clean up some pressure and the 3rd is for oil and holds no pressure to speak of.

A liquid 'leak down' does not seem meaningful with oil, maybe just with a thin liquid like kerosene, and even then will be unpredictable depending how the 3 ring gaps are lined up on each cylinder. Air is the standard test 'liquid'.

Inspect the cylinder at the top of the ring travel for a 'step' at the top; this is called the 'ring ridge'. It is a sign of how much the bores have worn.

When you run the leak-down test with high pressure air with a cylinder at TDC, make sure you have a large breaker bar and socket on the crank snout bolt and hold onto it for dear life; these have been known to move suddenly and very fast and with a lot of force and have seriously injured people.

I'd be looking at the cylinders for how bad any rust might be. Beyond the pressure test, there is not much to do without the pistons out; you could have worn ring grooves or broken ring lands. Stuck rings are possible; I would use some kerosene down the rings to try to loosen them up for an engine like this where you don't care too much and and then clean as below. But if there is a lot of crap in the ring grooves, you won't get it out with any cleaner.

And a scuffed piston that has seized for a moment for lack of oil will be hard to tell without removal usless it is really bad. But it'll sure rattle bad when you run it and the cylinder will ususally be useless.

If the rust and other problems do not appear too bad, and you want to just see what it does, I would rub the cylinder walls with 220 grit wet-or-dry to clean them up )no more than needed), and them use ATF on paprer towels to clean them over and over 'til the paper towel comes out clean, moving the pistons up and down several times to try to push the crud and stuff to the top so you can wipe it out, and get things clean as far down as you can. Finally, oil them well with a light motor oil.