Head off, replace rings while exposed?

That hone job is scary enough for me. What grit did you use?

Alaskan89XJ said:

... One way to check is to get a can of WD-30...

Click to expand...

WD-30.. Whats that Ricky?

Heres hoping that it doesn't give you problems in the future. Real world...its probably going to burn extra oil in that cyl.

To close this one out, a couple years later. It ran well for a solid year after putting it all together but did have a rod knock, even after replacing the rod bearings. I ended up finding a decent deal on a complete motor and had it swapped then sold both this motor and the XJ. I never got to open it back up to see the condition of the cylinders or crank but I'm convinced it had years left.

I don't regret opening it up but in hindsight I should have been patient and waited for a complete motor to swap in with the $ I put into it. My guts is the crank should have been checked. But I did learn a good amount for our other XJ and my Audi project.

Glad there was a follow up. Some times you think back and wonder "whatever happened to......"

RCP Phx said:

Not properly, you should have the block completely checked over before proceeding on anything. The includes align bore, cylinder bores, and the deck surface. Same would apply the crank and rods, pistons you won't know about until they check the block!

Click to expand...

Ideally yes, but that's really a full rebuild. In an engine that is otherwise healthy it's perfectly reasonable to pull the pistons and rods, hone the bores, put in new rings and rod bearings, and drive on.

Along with a valve job that's refreshing an engine rather than a rebuild, and people have been doing it successfully for about as long as the IC engine has been around.