1970 Camaro RS Operation Budget LSx

[1970camaroRS]

If you havn't guessed, all the above posts are copy and pastes from another forum. I've been at this since late summer. A few weekends ago I organzied my garage (this was brought on by a generous gift of a new craftsman compressor by my father....funny things happen when you ask to borrow the old man's tools, sometimes he just gives me a new one so his doesn't go permanently missing). While I was at it, I wrapped the 454 in plastic and put it in the corner. No one seems to want it, even for $500!

Got the LQ4 on the engine stand and started taking it apart starting with all of the EFI intake junk, the coil packs (to be reused), and valve covers. Here's a pick I like of the rockers after I got the cover removed. Not sure how much I like the gold tint to everything.



Here is a passenger side head after removal (for sale!)

Looks like the rear cylinder wasn't too happy!

Driver's side head (for sale!)

Everything looks peachy.

Passenger's side cylinders

Oh, the carbon! This will be fun to clean.

Driver's side cylinders

Second verse, same as the first.

After much tinkering and thinkering, I came up with a plan. Carb cleaner. I rotated the engine so that one set of cylinders we perpendicular to the ground and filled each cylinder with about 2" of carb cleaner. This server two functions, one to loosen up the carbon and two, to check ring seal(already did a leak-down test and everything looked good). Came back four hours later, still had a considerable ammount of cleaner in the cylinders. Grabbed some shop towels and wiped off the cylinders. Viola...something even a wire brush couldnt remove just wiped right off! I then cleaned the gasket surface with scotchbrite, brake cleaned everything, then oiled down the cylinders and wiped them out a few times while I turned to engine over to complete the cleaning process.

Looks pretty:


Ready for heads now...but only after I finish taking to oil pan off (throwing away for a CTS-V pan) and installing the ARP rod bolts and new camshaft. Probably throw on a new ported oil pump while I'm at it.

Here's the mess as it stands now and all of the brave blue shop towels that gave their lives so that this LQ4 may live.


-Nathan