Reviving an L26 - My 1st Engine Rebuild Ever.

[Nite_Grind]

paused for a brief moment to inspect cylinders before I continued disassembly.

bearings cast away like my dreams

fancy crank pose

replaced the mains. I Plan to send the block out to get hot tanked, and prep mentally, physically, financially for a rebuild.

Edited September 12, 2014 by Nite_Grind

[Captain Obvious]

Nice work on the engine. Any idea what happened to cause the valve to piston collision?

Also, is everything else in your shop a Honda product? They let you play in their reindeer games? :laugh:

[Nite_Grind]

Nice work on the engine. Any idea what happened to cause the valve to piston collision?

Also, is everything else in your shop a Honda product? They let you play in their reindeer games? :laugh:

I'm guessing a timing event. Only 1 & 6 seemed to have any sort of contact marks. I'll be having the head checked for bent valves.

Pretty much honda/acura that's our speciality. I am co-owner of this lil mom & pop shop, it's owned by myself and 3 of my best friends, so it's approved .

[rcb280z]

Hey Joel, where abouts in so-cal are you located? I'm in Oxnard. Not too many Z's this way or they just don't see the road.

[JR Ohio]

Keep posting your progress and pictures!

[Nite_Grind]

Hey Joel, where abouts in so-cal are you located? I'm in Oxnard. Not too many Z's this way or they just don't see the road.

Hey RC, I live a few hours south, in fontana/pomona. There's a few Z's that have popped up and disappeared around here, can't wait to get mine on the road. This will be my daily driver.

Keep posting your progress and pictures!

Will do JR thanks for checking it out.

[rcb280z]

Maybe we can meet up some day and talk Z's. Mine is driven almost daily.

[Nite_Grind]

Sounds good to me!

[Nite_Grind]

The building never ends. The more I stare at this machine the more extravagant I wish to be. A quick reality check, and back to earth, I press-on with the fundamentals. While the block is out for cleaning I decided I'd be sending the flywheel to be lightened and resurfaced, some before pics. Not into researching a performance clutch kit right now. Just stay within the realm of wholesome is what I'm after.

letting my boys in on some L6 lovin - poppin freeze plugs

sometimes when a man is lonely he gets a lil bit hone-y! 1st pass I ended up doing10fwd 10rev passes.

Fly being sent out for resurface & lightening

adding these to the parts to be cleaned pile; w/ the others seen above

[rossiz]

nice progress - looking forward to seeing things when they're all cleaned up.

i warped a head due to a clog in the water passages and wound up popping out all the freeze plugs with the head off and using a pressure washer to clean out all the sludge and rust and crud in there - i assume you're gonna hot tank the block, do whatever you can to get the coolant passages clean. the rust scale and crap that came out of mine was unfathomable in both size and qty.

also, i'm sure you've read lots of posts about how a good chunk of the performance on these motors comes from the head work - lots of really smart folks have spent the past 30+ years sorting out the best ways to extract ponies with careful flow work, valve matching, rocker setup, cam grind, etc. since you're in it up to your knees, might be a good time to look at some machine time up there...

oh, and there's a guy by the name of larry hassler that makes a really nice, very simple oil spray bar cut from a bar of aluminum. inexpensive, very stout (won't fall apart like the oem) and provides great coverage to keep those cam lobes happy. larry's a good guy - lots of datsun race engine experience and knowledge, check him out.

[Nite_Grind]

Thanks! I will definitely be hot tanking this block, head, oil pan, valve cover on top of getting the internals cleaned, crank polished etc.

as for the headwork, I will be cleaning casting flaws / smoothening passages. Not going for an all out powerhouse, just a revised and refreshed L26. I know it's vital but for what I'm doing it'll suffice. I want to know what it meant to own an L26 260Z, understand it's essence, hence the reason I did not go for an L28 or overbore. All the fancy headwork will come later when I build a stroker using the L28 that was included with purchase of the car.

as for Larry, I've tracked him down months ago hahaha. I started hunting for spray bars when I realized mine was in pcs. I actually tracked him down by searching this forum, got my spray bar ordered up already.

[rossiz]

cool - sounds like you're on the right track.

a nice advantage of doing the engines in stages is that you'll love the L26, then after driving it for a while you'll be even more impressed with your performance build - like christmas x2