Dug into the car today. Couple more hours some day soon and I'll have the heads off.
Here's what I'm looking to do at this point:
Heads machined, refurbished
Lt4 Beehive springs, lightweight retainers, 1.6 aluminum roller rockers
Clean up my Motor bay (lol it blocked it)
New engine wiring harness (mine is screwed in so many places)
Polish or paint my upper intake manifold
Replace my ac compressor (whines)
And then get it all put back together. Not gonna mess with the bottom end, unless I run into an unwelcome surprise when I pull the heads off.

Pics or it didn't happen:



That is indeed a hockey puck in the intake elbow. Fills the hole where a silencer would normally be on lt1 impalas.



This post was edited by OEM on Nov 16 2012 06:51pm

Havent anyone learned After Redoing a Motor / anypart that needs oil

Never put ur old oil back in

Always go fresh

Decent motor

This post was edited by kathmundu2 on Nov 16 2012 08:05pm

Pulled the driver side head today and cylinder number 7 (closest to the firewall) had coolant in it. The steam pipe on the back of that head was clogged with old rust colored dexcrap (gm coolant). It wouldn't surprise me if the steam line clogging was what blew the head gasket.

It blows holes in piston ringlands on LS1's when they are blocked off. It wouldnt surprise me either.

The woes of reverse cooling I guess. I didn't know that about LS1's. That's crazy.

Some people remove the pipe and plug the heads.. I don't know how they get away with it.

Should toss a decent cam in it while you are at it since you are putting decent valve springs in.

That's when the issue occurs. Even now it is considered normal to plug the rear vents. Most heads and cam setups with safe tunes will never have a problem. Anyone spraying or adding boost is prone to issues. #7 is always the first one to go. People used to think the intake didn't distribute airflow correctly. Kurt urban did dyno testing with 8 egt probes and reversed the intake. #7 was still hottest. What he found is blocking the rear steam vents causes hot spots in the head which causes detonation.

Coolant absolutely destroys the bearings in these motors for some reason. I don't wanna risk throwing money away on a cam if the bottom end is gonna die on me.

Not exactly clean.

5.3 u wont regret it