Plan on dropping the motor out of my car to change out the transmission and to do the usual "while your in there" maintenance items. One thing I want to do is to do a head rebuild. I will be sending the heads off to Steve Weiner for the rebuild.

I am wondering how long it should take me to remove and replace the heads once I have the powertrain out of the car? Can anyone provide information on that?

And, lastly, when re-installing the reworked heads, are there any "tricks" involved in setting up the valve timing? Or, can I simply follow the procedure set out in the shop manual? Years ago I did a rebuild of a 2.2, but did not attempt the valve timing since there were some tricks that I was told the pros only knew how to do. So, I carted the motor down to a builder and had him set the timing. Now that I am older and hopefully wiser, it would be nice to be able to do it myself.

Any comments, or direction to writeups on this topic would be appreciated.

 

Hi Ernie,

Unless you do this for a living, it will take you several hours to remove everything to get the heads off,.... It doesn't matter how long,....just take your time and keep careful track of all the parts and fasteners.

We'll discuss cam timing tricks so you won't need the (very expensive) factory cam timing fixtures. You'll simply need some dial indicators, holding fixtures, and the cam tools. I'll send you two 964 rockers to use for this procedure.

 

Hi Ernie,

I just got through doing this for the first time. I'm a novice wrench, and it took me about two days (12-16 hrs) to get from having the engine out to having the heads off. I went slow, bagged and labeled everything, took pictures, and tried my best to not get too impatient.

cheers,
Don

 

Hi Ernie,

You will get lots of help here on the list. As Steve said, you can manually time your camshafts, in your case you have a 98 so I do not have the indexed cam sprockets. you can backdate to those if you want, it allows for a positive lock between the cams and the sprockets. It will likely involved machining the camshafts to put in a keyway.

cheers,

Mike

 

Thanks Don. I'll be doing the baggie exercise. I just can't keep track of things on these cars anymore. It's a long ways off from when I worked on Chevy engines which were very simple by comparison.

Curious, did you re-tube all your vacuum lines when you had the motor apart? I'm thinking that at 14 years old, that I've got to have vacuum fittings that are brittle and cracked.

Ernie

 

Indeed, the rubber manifold sleeves, plastic stub manifolds and any other rubber intake parts should all be replaced to prevent running issues when you are done.

Its SOP on every 3.6 we do.

 

I think DIY and a professional shop are in two different situations. I did not replace any vacuum or plastic parts when I rebuilt my engine - I inspected them, they looked good, and it worked out fine. In a professional shop, returns or fault diagnosis costs money since its usually under some sort of warranty claim - and thus the cost comes out of any profits. However, the customer also bears the cost of the additional parts to replace them all, even if they may not be required.

I would inspect all the parts and it's usually pretty obvious if there are issues. If you want to be paranoid, then by all means replace them all - if it's cheap enough then it could be cheap insurance. I agree with the hoses/tubes, but the intake stacks are more money. And how far do you go? Should you replace the temperature sensor while in there? - they are easy to get to. How about the varioram controllers? Misfire sensors? Oil pressure sensor? You can go nuts and next thing you know, you have dropped a lot of cash for no gain.

Have fun, a few decisions to be made! Luckily, this is all external to the engine, so its easier to fix/replace later.

Cheers,

Mike