I cleaned my cam (above) with scotch brite pad.  Some light oil helps too.

 

Those spring retainers are titanium or aluminum.

 

 

BTW.....Blue, I hope you can make ZCON this Fall......Atlanta will be a great destination......hope everyone can make it.....Steve will do a great job I'm sure!

I'm guessing aluminum from where the color was scratched away .

it is an odd ball. Maybe racing some class that only allowed stock cam . Tried a slick one with major over bore on e30 block

Springs just allowed for more revs without stressing valve train ? 

On 7/30/2017 at 10:07 PM, madkaw said:

I'd say it safe to say that this engine hasn't ran in a long while . Interesting retainers !!

The retainer color looks like Racer Brown p/n LSA-312 to me but do not seem to be the same shape.

 

I'll take a better pic of the retainers now that I have cleaned up everything 

More GOOD and bad from the disassembly 

I didn’t take the front struts out to see if they were also Bilsteins . The springs on the back are ST ‘s , but front - not sure . They aren’t progressive so maybe a matching set to the back? The front shocks look like they have some kind of adjustment on the top- don’t know if that’s typical of Bilsteins. 

The car is just a shell now with only suspension to keep it rolling 

Though I called the short block assembly “toast “ , the pistons are off to the machinist for evaluation . A good set of mics and a much more experienced set of eyes to look them over. Got a cheap ball hone to run and up and down in the holes to see if they clean up enough to measure accurately . The crank should polish up!

The head is getting ready for heat and straightening ( fingers crossed ). Don’t have any experience in this but it’s time to try. I know it’s been done before - so here we go . Resurrected the dead here -maybe

No advice, just curious, but how bent is the head?  The head on my 76 engine was bowed up in the middle about .008".  I set it back on with no gasket and found that I could pull the bow down really easily with a single head bolt and a ratchet handle.   Seems to me that having a bent head machined with a torque plate then bolting it to the engine to run it straight makes more sense than shaving material to get the surface flat but the valve guides off axis.  Just a thought.  I wonder if the requirement of straightening is really required.

I never re-used the head so have no evidence either way.

Not much left if the block - it’s now going to be a test jig for straightening warped heads . The pistons faired out better - my machinist checked them out and said they were good to go as far as still being round!

One of the pistons is stiff on the pin- but he showed me with just some warm water running over the pin it loosened up . Now the question is to use the pistons on what?

These are 86mm pistons so do I punch out another p30 block or .... ? Sures sounds fun but not sure I want to go that route . I have another p30 block sitting in front of me now and it’s tempting . 

Crankshaft is getting checked but I think it’s okay after a polish. 

Did some serious bodywork today removing bad bodywork-lol. I got lucky that this guys fiberglass didn’t stick to anything much . I just tapped the marker area with a hammer and popped out the filler. It was a bad idea , badly executed, thank goodness ?

That's great. Glad it worked out so well. If only all PO repairs were this easy to set right!