lugnut1009 Posted March 29, 2019 Report Share Posted March 29, 2019 Love my little ratty Nissan 720, it developed a knock and I had it set in my head it was a rod knock. Motor has about 200k, tore it down to find only a head gasket blown making liquid knock. This really ticked me off! Now I have to rebuild the entire engine, the good thing is every bearing and gasket looked good! Nothing was bad except for the head gasket between cylinder 3 and 4 with cylinder 4 looking like it had been steam cleaned. So my question is, if I do bite the bullet and rebuild the engine, how reliable will it be? All my life I've heard horror story's of people blowing money trying to rebuild a toyota or nissan motor and having terrible luck with them. Also, I was going to use the $200 rebuild kits off of ebay. That may not be a good idea but I only paid $500 for the truck in the first place. What are your thoughts and experience with them? If I had plenty of money I'd scrap the 4 banger and put in a V8 with a manual trans and a ford 9" rear end!! But I don't.... 1 Quote Link to comment
datzenmike Posted March 29, 2019 Report Share Posted March 29, 2019 If all you have off at this point is the head, just put a new gasket on it and go. I don't know why you think it HAS to be rebuilt now. Any one who simply hones the bore and replaces the rings bearings and gaskets can hardly call it a re-build. The cylinders are worn slightly oval or all the wear is at the tops and the cylinder is tapered. New rings will have a hard time sealing this. This kind of 'rebuild' is good for another 20k-50k with luck and can easily gloss over things like cheap parts that lead to quick failure later... hence the horror stories. To do it right the pistons should be replaced with an oversize and the cylinders bored to match them (at a machine shop) and new over size rings. Here chrome or molly rings can safely be used that seat a perfect bore and last longer otherwise cast iron rings are needed for quick break-in on an old bore and they are not as long lasting New bearings of course and the head gone over. If the head is 'good enough' it's not that critical as you can always remove it in the future and have it done then with the engine in the truck. Done right you have a new engine capable of 200k+ miles. 1 Quote Link to comment
banzai510(hainz) Posted March 29, 2019 Report Share Posted March 29, 2019 quality gaskets is the key. bad reliability after rebuild is owner put the motor together wrong. Usually means timming chain or distributor is off 1 Quote Link to comment
lugnut1009 Posted March 29, 2019 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2019 No unfortunately it is totally disassembled at this point because I just knew it was a rod knocking and tore down the bottom end first after removing the engine... 1 Quote Link to comment
datzenmike Posted March 29, 2019 Report Share Posted March 29, 2019 Well.... re-build or RE-BUILD it is. Quote Link to comment
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