How to Build a 5.3L LS LM7 V8 - Part 4: Clean, Camshaft, Crankshaft and More!

hey everyone welcome to two car pros my name is ryan and today we will be continuing our how to build an ls series we are building an lm7 5.3 liter v8 from general motors where i left you last is we were sending our engine to the machine shop we finally got that back the only piece of advice i have for you is get a quote in advance before the work is completed that way you don't have a surprise at the end of a large bill you weren't expecting it should cost right around fifteen hundred dollars to get the thing machined the way you want and the way we did it was uh 30 over they cleaned up our crankshaft um and they also hot tanked a bunch of our parts so it should be right around 1500 bucks and that's going to be less or more depending where you are we actually took it to a pretty high-end race shop so ours was a little bit on the more side but that's okay because the work was absolutely excellent if you're anywhere near placentia california check out superior automotive they're the ones that did our machine work for us and before we go any further i want to mention that this build is sponsored by summit racing they aren't sending me any money but they are sending me a absolute ton of really really cool parts please go check out summitracing.com and buy all your speed parts from them they are excellent the customer service is fantastic and their parts are premium today we're going to be focusing on the three c's of engine building cleanliness crankshaft camshaft so what we're going to do is disassemble the engine clean it to an inch of its life you can't be too clean i say that later on in the video as well and then we're going to dry it off hose it down some wd-40 and then get to work putting the camshaft and crank it so let's jump into it so we're finally back here from our machine shop this is the way you're going to receive it we already put it on a stand which i showed you how to do earlier in this build exact same process except it's a little easier because it's quite a bit lighter so we can go ahead and remove our plastic and we're going to go ahead and inspect the machine work and what i mean by that is look inside the bores and all the machine surfaces to make sure that there's no big gouges or anything like that you want to make sure ever all the machine work is nice and smooth and you're not going to have any kind of problem when you're assembling it the next thing we're going to worry about is cleanliness so machine shops are pretty good about cleaning things but it's your engine and you want to make sure that there's no microscopic metal filing somewhere in there that you can't see that might affect your engine in the future it could end up actually destroying it so cleanliness is job one here so we're going to take some regular just tied detergent put in a bucket fill with some water and get to washing but first we're going to remove our five main journal caps on the bottom of the engine now we're going to do is remove all our main caps and this is basically how you're going to get it back from the machine shop and what they do is they put these main caps on and bolt them down torque them to spec and then send a line home through to make sure everything is nice and circular and concentric so what we can do is the first thing we're going to do is remove the skirt bolts using an 11 millimeter socket here mine happen to be 12 point because they are made by arp and are considered high performance so that's something to think about now we remove both skirt bolts from both sides now we can grab our breaker bar with a 16 millimeter 12 point and again these are made by arp and uh they're so they're 12 point and traditionally they're six point so something to think about all right so when you really when you're loosening these you want to go outside and then inside there we go we can remove our arp nuts here so because we have studs instead of bolts like we did previously you could kind of use those as leverage like we showed uh in episode one or two when we were taking it apart they have studs so it inhibits you know lateral movement here so we're gonna do is take a slide hammer with some washers on the end of it very carefully place it in the webbing of the main here give it a little couple taps on one side and the other and it comes right off so now that we've got the first main cap off we can do that to the rest of the main caps and now we're ready to clean it and make sure you keep them in order ours are labeled if yours aren't labeled go ahead and label them they have to go back in exactly the way you took them out now we're just going to hose off a little bit get nice and wet and then we're going to grab our terry towel loaded with some just regular tie detergent you could use any uh detergent you wanted to you could even use something like valvoline ultra clean but i really like laundry detergent because i know there's no abrasive in it and it's a nice gentle degreaser so make sure you get nice and in the bores and you can't be too cleanly don't worry about going over cleanly the only thing you want to avoid is letting it dry because you don't want it to flash rust so go through all of the surfaces you can [Music] with your soap and water so now that we've washed and rinsed our engine nice and clean no soap studs remaining we're going to grab some compressed air i really like this attachment because it has a nice rubber tip make sure you don't gouge any of the surfaces out with your air sprayer here then we're going to blow dry it so now that we're nice and clean we're just going to go ahead and give the entire engine a nice coat of wd-40 get that everywhere you can all the nooks and crannies and what that's going to do is prevent the engine from flash rusting while we're assembling it there we go our block is nice and wd-40 done now that we're clean and wd-40 up i like to go around at this point make sure that your studs for the mains are nice and tight look around at all the threads for every single hole in your block to make sure that those are nice and cleaned and tapped correctly especially on your oil pan or any kind of oil mating surface and then you want to go around and make sure especially on the front timing cover here see we have a little bit of stuff we need to scrape off there a little bit of gasket material so uh you want to scrape that off while the engine's still apart and you can catch it instead of it going down inside of it while you are assembling it and then this part's pretty crucial too you want to look inside of your cam bearings to make sure that see that hole right there that it actually goes into an oil gallery there and this one does if this is off at all like if those two holes don't match up then needs to go back to the machine shop and they need to redo your cam bearings don't worry too much about this other hole that doesn't go to anything because we have one that does go to an oil supply this particular bearing manufacturer this must go on a couple different engines so that holes probably for something else so it comes here the really exciting part we're putting new stuff on our machine engine and i have to point out that we are sponsored by summit racing and they were super super cool and sent us a bunch of parts i will be going over but our first one is going to be our timing set there's our part number there i've left that down below in the description for you and we can take that out and examine it which is really cool because it's it's a budget friendly option but it's still made right here in the united states which is awesome it's our oil drive gear there set that aside and then we have our timing set itself check that out oh that's nice and look at how many different positions you can put the timing at and as a nice bearing on the back so this is a really nice high quality unit i'm very excited to put this on our engine and the reason i'm going over the timing set now is because this actually has to go on and it's going to help us hold the camshaft into the engine and i'll explain that as we go on and again sponsored by summit racing we have our performance camshaft now what you're looking for in a camshaft is basically located on the summit racing center card if you want to pause it and take a look at all the technical specs in detail but that's a whole science all by itself on cam separation lift and duration and all that what i like to do is just go on summit site type in what engine i have look for the application and this was a performance street application which is what we're building so that's good enough for me and these are extremely high quality they're billet and they're for the roller lifters and i am very excited to put this on our engine so before we put our camshaft in what i like to do is grab some permatex ultra slick this is the stuff i love using lots of guys been using this for years and years it is good stuff and i've left the link down below in the description just for you for it and what i'm going to do is just put a decent amount on the end of my fingers and just plot apply it to the bearing surface here just like that and go ahead and do that for all of the cam bearings now we can move on to grabbing our permatex ultra slick again and we're going to go ahead and just sauce it up do not be afraid to get it nice and covered in this assembly lube you can't use too much so make sure it's all over the nice uh bearing wear surfaces especially at this point because we're not putting lifters in just yet i make sure that the journals here are nice and lubed up oh yeah look at that that looks excellent and we are ready to put in the engine and before we go do that i want to mention that you can tell that this is the front of the cam because it has that locating pin so that is going to go in the front of our timing set so now we can do is carefully insert our camshaft like this and if it binds at all try to reorientate yourself it only really goes in one way once the surfaces are parallel like this so we can feed that in and then what i like to do is get two bearings in like this and then switch hands so now you're at this stage what you're gonna do is use your other hand your left hand to guide it along and you want to be very gentle you don't want to gall any of those surfaces and if it's not going don't wrench it don't force it be gentle i'm being very gentle like i'm handling a baby bird and as we approach what's cool about ls is you can actually reach through the back of the engine on my big block you couldn't do that make sure everything's nice and parallel and it'll just slip right in just like that the only thing you want to make sure because the engine stands a little angled it's angled this way down that way you don't want the camshaft to just kind of flop backward because it can actually fall out the back and you don't want that damaging any kind of bearing so make sure it's going to sit in its home like this so now that our camshaft is installed we can talk about our thrust plate here nls uses a camshaft rest plate also has an oil transfer passage through here and it's kept in place via this gasket here's our stock one as you can see our gasket is totally missing so that probably fell apart when i was taking it apart i couldn't really find any kits that just have this gasket by itself but our friends over at summit were more than happy to send me this really cool piece there's our part number the link is down below in the description and what's really cool about this is when i took uh the stock one off i went back and reviewed the footage and it actually uses standard regular hex 10 millimeter bolts that are a normal bolt height this is cool because it actually comes with flush countersunk bolts check that out so maybe that gives a little more thrust clearance for the camshaft gear and then we have some arp bolts also sent over by summit racing thanks a bunch guys there's our part number link is down below in description these will hold our camshaft timing sprocket on so we can go ahead and place our thrust plate on the front of our engine here install one of our bolts and this is a t40 torx head and lightly put that in like that and we'll grab the other ones there we go install just like that now we can do is grab our torque wrench set it to 18 foot pounds and tighten these up we're going to go as evenly as possible so notice i didn't get a click out of my torque wrench yet so i'm just going to go as even as i can just kind of feeling it out snugging those up now i'm getting a click there we go [Music] there we go our cam shaft thrust plate is totally installed now we can install our camshaft timing gear here i'm going to put my left hand on the back of the camshaft because now it can slide backwards and out of place but it can't actually slide any forward because of the thrust plate so i'm going to hold that with my left hand while i put this sprocket on with my right just like that and that'll stay in place for now but keep an eye on it grab one of our 10 millimeter arp bolts we got out of that kit and install it like this now what we're going to do here is we are going to just leave these finger tight because we're not installing the timing set just yet we are just putting this gear on here to prevent the camshaft from falling out of the back of the engine this is just for assembly purposes we're not torquing these down just yet we only have that chain on so we're gonna leave that just like that for now so what you can do too at this point is grab the front cram sprocket that we installed and turn your cam shaft over that looks amazing and if this camshaft doesn't turn real nice like this like if it's really hard builds up and then let's go or it like cogwheels it all or just plain hard to turn you should be able to turn this very very easily that means either your camshaft is wrong or your cam bearings are wrong and you need to remeasure everything and recheck but ours is absolutely perfect and i know some of you might be asking why we put the cam in first i like putting the cam in first because you can support it as you're putting it in some people like putting the cam crank in first and then the camshaft second i find that a little more tricky personally so this is the way i like to do it the next thing we're going to worry about is putting in our crankshaft bearings on the block side so what we're going to do is we've already cleaned this very very thoroughly when we were washing everything and we also hit it again with some carburetor spray and some paper towels what i want you to do is take your thumb i like using fresh gloves so that way you can see very vividly is you want to take your thumb and just do this inside of that channel there and make sure that there's not any particulates and then wipe and then off camera over here i'm wiping it on a nice fresh white terry towel so then i can do it again for two there nothing very nice three pretty clean four we're just making sure we're getting all that little dust and little particulates out of there stuff you can't even see and five and my glove came back clean every time you can even do it again you can do it two swipes or two passes if you want you can't be clean enough so now we can move on to our crankshaft bearings sponsored by summit racing once again they are super cool and sent this to us now i want to talk about that this is a standard size for our crankshaft we didn't have our crankshaft machined uh sometimes you machine it 10-under because you have to but ours was in good enough shape it just could be resurfaced and you just use the stock bearing size and that's what these are so these go on one two four and five and this is for number three you can tell because it has the thrust surface be careful when you're opening these up you don't want to scratch any of the bearing surface there just be very careful and use nice clean hands and they come clean from the factory so you won't have to clean them again so we can go ahead and start installing these so we can grab our block side piece of the bearing you can tell it's the block side because it has these nice holes in there and that tang is on the correct orientation to line up make sure this is nice and clean but they come pretty clean from the factory and then we can just drop this in just like that so i have a pretty tight shot here of the bearing in the block and what i want to point out is that this surface here of the bearing is directly even with this surface here of the block on both sides if it isn't kind of massage and push it down or just take it out and put it back in again until both of these surfaces on both sides are perfectly even so now i showed you how to do one do that exact same thing for numbers one two four and five just like that now we're ready for number three so i noticed on uh number three here which is what we're focusing on that our bearing doesn't actually have a tang on it like our other bearings do and it has that kick out here for a stock application but don't worry too much about that if this bearing is exactly the same front to back it doesn't matter how which way it goes on as long as you put the bearing with the holes on the block side newer engines don't even have those tanks so that's something to consider as well i also want to go over that number three is special because it's a thrust main bearing this actually controls forward and half movement of your crankshaft and make sure it doesn't walk too far forward or too far rearward in the engine so it helps center it in the center of the block there we go it's always a gratifying sound so here is our crankshaft this is actually our stock crankshaft and what i've done is cleaned it up using some carburetor spray and some compressed air making sure that our bearing surfaces are very very clean what i also want to do is talk about what type of crankshaft you're going to use this is our stock crankshaft that came out of the truck with 260 000 miles on it i don't know if this is the original uh crank or engine for that truck but i'm willing to guess it because of the condition the engine was in when we took it apart and we took this to our machine shop and they said that the bearing surface was in very very good shape and all it needed was uh to be resurfaced very very lightly which means we can use stock sized main bearings so what that also means is if you have a crankshaft that can't be re-surfaced on this surfaces here you're going to have to get those re-machined and unfortunately that means you're also going to have to have it re-heat treated which is an additional 300 or so and the machine work plus that heat treating puts you right into just buying a new crankshaft territory so that's something to think about when you're dealing with these older crankshafts so these right here are your oil journals that go inside of your crankshaft and you want to get some compressed air and blow through these as well to make sure they're nice and clean now we can install so the next thing we're going to do is lube up our bearing surfaces now we're going to go ahead and grab our permatex ultra slick yet again our best friend here we're going to apply a little bit of our loot assembly loop here and we're going to put on the bearing but you want to stop about a quarter inch short of the top of the bearing and the reason you're going to do that is that way it doesn't get to the top of the bearing and seep in between the bearing and block surface because if that happens you have a chance of spinning the bearing which will ruin the engine and do that for all five of your journal bearings so i stopped on number three here to point out that you're gonna treat this one the same as the others except for the thrust surfaces on the front here and the rear and again you're gonna stop before you get to the top there and make sure you do on the front thrust surface and the rear like that and there we go so now we're ready to carefully drop our crankshaft in and you need to drop it in completely parallel to the engine you can't put one side in and then the other it needs to go in perfectly even just like that so at this stage do not turn your crankshaft you're gonna be really tempted to do it i'm tempted to do it right now but don't do it because what can happen is that lube can get spun up on top of the bearing which is what we're trying to avoid which can make the bearing spin when you eventually start it destroying your engine before we go any further i want to mention that we mic'd out our crankshaft journal here and we had about a thousandth and a half clearance which is just perfect most of the time you can pretty much trust your machine shop on that one if you don't have a mic or you're not sure how to use it or whatever you can also use a plastic gauge which is like basically play-doh that you put here between the bearing surface and the journal and then you bolt it down torque it to spec take it back off and measure the squoosh you cut it in half a little section and then measure the squish on that we don't really do plastic gauge here we haven't done it in 20 years since i've been alive building engines and it's always been fine basically either the crankshaft is going to turn it's not going to turn or it's going to be loose and those two last situations it's going to have to go to the machine shop anyway there's nothing you can do so now we can talk about our main caps here there's five of them just like we removed earlier and i also want to go over we are using an arp stud kit sponsored by summit racing they sent this out to us there is our part number link down below description to this exact kit we're using always use arp they are my absolute favorite fastener company so they have supplied our skirt bolts that are 12 point and studs instead of bolts because our studs aren't torque to yield like the bolts are so you can keep using them over and over and over and what's really cool about arp is they figured out to use the same nut size for both inner and outer fasteners unlike gm that used a bigger size for the inner and a smaller size for the outer so we're going to do to clean our main caps because cleanliness is the most important part of engine building is grab some carburetor spray give that a nice hose down and then grab some compressed air and blow that dry so this is really very clean we can do is to double check that is grab a nice clean thumb and wipe just like that even do another finger if you like another pass and we are ready to install our bearings so i'm going to show you how to put the bearings in number one and this applies to all of the main caps here so what's interesting about these is it actually has tang positions on both sides so it's a little bit confusing but if you remember it's going to sit in the engine like this because this is the way we have our engine orientated so our engine tank is over here on this side now when i took it apart the tanks opposed each other so that means that this bearing goes in just like this so we can flip that back over line that up go ahead and put our tang side in first and push in our bearing the rest of the way now there we go now just like on our engine we want to make sure that these bearing surfaces between the bearing and the cap are exactly flat on both sides like this one is so we're ready for installation so now we can grab some of our super lube here and apply it on our bearing surface and again you only want to go up to about a quarter inch or so because you don't want to spin a bearing just like that now we're ready to put this in it's now ready to put our first main cap in making sure it's nice and parallel upon its installation just like that i also wanted to mention that we double checked to make sure these studs are nice and snug but they were snug from the machine shop so on the end of my finger here i have some arp assembly lube you should put that right on the bottom a little bit on the bottom of the nut here and we're just going to put these on finger tight for right this moment so the reason we're putting fastener lube on is that way we get an accurate torque figure now we're going to take our 16 millimeter 12 point and a very small ratchet and we're just going to evenly tighten down our inners here we're just gonna go as evenly as possible and i have this really small ratchet so i can't go too crazy on it what this is gonna do is sinker main cap here down onto our crankshaft but we're not going to torque it to spec yet we're just we're just snugging things up a little bit there we go spin these outer ones on just like that give those a little love just a little bit and now we can install the rest of our caps so now that all our main caps are in these two on the left and the right they're on uh these they're tight they're like wrist tight with that little ratchet i showed earlier but number three here are just finger tight i can actually wiggle the nuts with my fingers here now what we need to do is take a plastic hammer and hit the left side of the crankshaft the right side of the crankshaft one time each to set our thrust bearing and there we go now we can tighten these up using our little ratchet of course we're going to tighten our inners and then our outers now we can put our skirt bolts in we're going to do next is take some of our old friend silicone rubber and apply some to our fingertip here for our skirt bolts and what we're going to do is apply it just underneath the head of the bolt there just like that it's going to prevent oil from leaking out you can install that bad boy in and then grab our little ratchet and just go a little wrist tight on that and then just do that for all ten of them alright so now comes the exciting part where we're going to torque everything down before i go any further i want to mention i printed out our instructions from arp and you can see that it has a tightening sequence as well as torque recommendations now it just says go straight to 60 but i'm not gonna do that i'm gonna go uh 31st for our first pass and 60 for our second so i'm going to break it down where our first pass for the inner studs is going to be 30 and then the first pass for outer studs is going to be 25 and then i'm going to step it up to the 60 and 50 figure so on the skirt bolts we're just going to do right to 20 because the difference between 10 and 20 isn't that big a deal but for the inner and outer studs we're going to go ahead and go in sequence and two steps so 30 then 60 and then 25 and then 50. so let's get to work and i wanted to also mention that if you had a stock configuration with bolts you're going to need to go to 15 pounds i believe and then you have to degree go 85 degrees or something like that i'll leave a link down below in the description for the stock way to do it but if you're going this far you're building an engine i recommend just spending the money getting the arp stuff they're stronger they're better they're reusable and it's what race motors have so something to think about definitely worth the money also if using the stock way with the bolts you can't reuse your old bolts throw those away they are torqued to yield so again another reason to use a nice arp stud kit like this one so we're here at 30 foot pounds and we're just gonna follow along here this is our first guy and then number three is this one number four number five number six seven eight nine ten now we're moving to our outers so we're gonna change our torque wrench down to twenty five so do eleven twelve 13 [Music] 14 15 16 17 18 19 20. all right so now we've stepped our torque wrench up to 60 foot-pounds so we can go ahead and tighten them the rest of the way in our sequence [Applause] [Applause] there's nine [Applause] there's 10. so now we've done our 60 we can knock our torque wrench back down to 50 to do our outers we're starting on number 11 there what's this one and 12 13 14 15. 16 17 18 19. 20 and a very good arm workout so now we can move on to our skirt bolts grabbing our 10 millimeter 12 point and setting our torque wrench down to 20 foot pounds we can start here on number 21 and then go across for number 22 go across again for 23. cross again for 24. so you're always crossing the engine which ensures even tightness for this is 25 yes got 25 here 26. 27's way over here 28 across from that third 29 is over here on the front and our final one number 30 is right here and we're done so this is the really exciting part this basically dictates whether or not you're going to be able to use this engine or if you have to send it back for re-machining basically you want it to turn with very little effort if it doesn't turn or it's very difficult to turn send it back something's not concentric something's wrong do not proceed forward or if you can grab it and jiggle it you know it goes then something is too big and something's wrong but for us oh yeah look how easy that turns i can do one hand just like this if yours doesn't turn like this send it back so our final step for today and anytime you're building an engine it does not matter if it is not together and complete go ahead and get a trash bag or i have this nice engine bag the machine shop gave me and protect your investment with some nice plastic so that is how to clean your engine when it gets back to the machine shop dry it off hose it down wd-40 put the cam and crank in this video was a little bit on the long side but i wanted to make sure i got everything into one big video instead of trying to break it up so future episodes probably won't be as long as this one but i'm glad we got everything done today that we needed to do huge thank you to summit racing for sponsoring this build it has been an absolute blast to work with them and their parts have been nothing short of impressive thank you so much for watching make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future build videos coming very soon thanks again for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: 2CarPros

Views: 41,778

Rating: 4.914793 out of 5

Keywords: Car, Repair, Tutorial, How, To, diy, 2carpros.com, Do, It, Yourself

Id: QOr3m815pIQ

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020