Engine Gunk (H)

Tony

• My H

It's your money and time that you have put into the motor, so I don't want to tell you what to do. My machine shop charges around $60 to dip the block and it comes out nice and clean. This also insures that the block is not cracked anywhere or need decked. I've seen guys that didn't deck their blocks and could not get a head gasket to seal. Worst case would be all that gunk coming loose in the engine and destroying it. That gunk will easily clog up your oil passeges and burn up your entire motor. I think $60 would be a cheap insurance policy if it was my choice. You do want you want.

I've enclosed a picture of my F-20 block after it had been steam cleaned at the machine shop. The machine shop told me I needed to counterbore my block. I'm glad they found it and pointed it out to me to avoid future problems. It would have been a pain to strip the block down again to have the block counterbored. Anybody that has replaced a crank and main bearings in an F-20 or F-30 knows what I'm talking about. No worries now though.

I'm sure you'll catch some flak for not doing the rest of the block though as far as I'm concerned that is entirely up to you. Some thing I would do however is to drop the oil pan and get that sediment cleaned out and make sure that the oil pump pickup is clean. I'd also recommend getting a can of liquid wrench or some time of solvent spray and spray around up there and give the insides a once over with a tooth brush or something. You'll get 90% of all that stuff out of there for the cost of an oil pan gasket, a can of spray and an afternoon. You'll feel better about the whole thing and you'll never be kicking yourself for not doing it when the opportunity was ripe.