| This is a followup to my Engine Disassembly post. The combination of the holidays and a two-week bout with the flu kept me from working on this, but I finally had a chance to clean up the coolant passage this weekend. Here's a shot of the coolant passage before I started working on it. Notice you can barely see any light at the end of the passage:
 and nearly finished with it. The lighting is the same as the previous picture and we easily see the light at the end of the tunnel!:
 Here's an overhead before (top) and after (bottom) comparison from each of the freeze plugs:
 and the tools (carbide cutting bits and sanding flappers) required to do it:
 I say "nearly done" above because that was how far I got with just the tapered bit. I then purchased the ball-end bit to clean it up a bit more and round off any sharp edges. I used the sanding flappers to polish the entrance to the passage and the area behind the pump. The entrance also opened up sharply at about 3/4" into the passage (where you see the first edge of flashing) so I also cleaned that up to a smooth transition. All of this work should reduce any cavitation and help feed some coolant to the rear to keep cylinders 5 & 6 cool. I used the suggestions from this forum (thanks Woody!) and the writeup on Project Z as a guide ( especially this photo). My photos don't portray how significant of an improvement this is. If you ever have the opportunity to do this to your motor, DO IT. I probably have a total of 3 hours tops into this and $60 for the materials (see Tools pic above). Now that the coolant passage is finally finished, the block and rotating assembly are off to the machine shop this week for some cleanup and balance work (heads go in next week). If all goes well, my next writeup will be the reassembly :)
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NA to TT, starting from the ground up... |
Coolant passage cleanup - 
