"The Beast": Can't get any worse :)

[mrmel2you]

Well, Papa Mel finally pulled the head off The Beast.  It was like I expected, #3 exhaust valve was broken and burnt a little (pic #1).

If I am correct, it has the "403" head on it (pic #2).

Under the valve cover, I wasn't expecting to see the top of the valvestems to be so clean, rest of the head was gunked up pretty good (pic #3).

Inside, the head looks pretty clean also (pic #4).

#3 cylinder looks good also, no knicks or grooves in it. All cylinders have a thin ring at the top, can barely feel it with my finger nail, think it will be good to go for a while. (pic #5)

 

 

 

 

[benjy_26]

If the short block looks good, I'd be tempted to just gwt the head re-done and roll it as-is.

[mrmel2you]

Surprisingly, the motor had no knocking or smoking while running on only 3 cylinders :)  So I'm thinking of stuffing in another valve, new stem seals and lap the valves and put it back together.  Had a ton of gunk built up on the outside of the block, valve cover gasket was leaking like crazy (previous owner didn't have it tightened down, finger tight on all but one bolt).  The head was a different story, took a 3/4" drive ratchet with a 28" long handle and a lot of grunt to break the bolts loose (compressor is down, so no power tools).  Hope to have The Beast up and running within the next day or two.  Next project will be tackling the cancer on the floorboards, will be posting pics on that as well.

[Megadan]

I wish my head was that simple to fix.  I had 4 burned exhaust valves, a crack, and some previous owner had tried to drill the front exhaust stud out and instead went through the head bolt and put a tiny hole in the water jacket.  That little hole turned out to be my mystery coolant loss that I couldn't track down.  I ended up having to get a rebuilt head, but the price was right and it's made a world of difference in power.