This is gonna get good

That lifter tool would have come in real handy when we did replaced the lifters in the replacement motor for Jinx By the way, how did they look? Did any of them fail? If they did, now would be a good time to take pics of what a failed lifter looks like, both outside and in

Very good thread.
That is one dirty ol 3800

The look of the contaminated oil inside the oil pump is nasty.

those number punches look fun

They come in quite handy, as we are about to see...

Here'* the victim upside-down for removing everything up through the crank. First item to remove is the oil level sender (Tan-looking Hex Nut in the side of the oilpan. Be gentle, it'* just plastic and it isn't threaded very tight.) You need to take it off because it sticks through the pan and into the baffle inside.



Now time to take off the oil pan. Remove the twenty bolts that hold it on. Don't worry about mixing these up, they are all identical in size and length. Just dump them in a plastic bag to be cleaned later.



Pan is off...more of that Dex-Cool and Oil "milkshake" showing. Note, the oilpan gasket also doubles as the windage tray/baffles for the oilpan itself. Take it off and discard it.



Next remove the oil pump pickup (two 8mm head bolts) and just pop it off the gasket on the block oilpan rail.

Time to start taking out the pistons. Again, I am punching numbers into the rod caps and the rods themselves to keep the pairs together. There'* a machined flat on the rod side where you can punch the numbers. Keep the bearing shells with the rods for later reference (just because they are worn, you should still measure them for replacements...just in case one of the mains was previously machined undersized.)



Here'* the #1 crank journal with the rod removed. The spooge is all the way down into the bearing surface and the cross-drilled oiling feeds inside the crank. Also, you can better see the reference numbers stamped into the rods (on #2 cylinder)



When removing the pistons, be carefull not to scratch the crank journal. When I'm doing them. I use a drift punch in one of rod holes to carefully guide the rod away from the crank and down the piston bore. Remove the caps while the piston is at BDC, then rotate the crank 180 degrees to shove the piston to TDC, then guide it the rest of the way out of the bore (get you hand under the piston to catch it. The bores in this motor were not worn and the tops didn't need to be ridge-reamed to get the pistons out...they just slid right out.



Ok, here'* the six pistons. Initial inspection shows they are all in usable condition. After they are cleaned up, we'll be checking them closer to see that this is true.



I'll pause the narrative here. When we pick up a little later, we'll be taking the timing cover off and removing the crankshaft main caps.

Curt...being that you brought it up..please explain the ridge reeming and why it would need to be done. (carbon buildup)

Sure,

As the engine wears, a ridge forms at both the top and bottom of the cylinder walls. The ridges are where the rings stop moving as the slide up and down with the pistons in the bore.

If the engine has a lot of wear, the ridge will be pretty deep and will bind the piston rings together as you try to remove it (worst case being breaking the rings and damaging the piston. )

An inexpensive tool, called a "Ridge Reamer" fits into the top of the cylinder and scrapes off the carbon as well as the iron bore to remove the ridge. It'* kinda like an apple-peeler inside-out..the blade presses against the inside of the cylinder wall and removes the raised metal of the ridge. The carbon isn't usually a problem, but an iron lip at the top of the cylinder is going to be a problem the ridge reamer will take care of. In the case of this motor, with 100K on it (according to the original owner) the ridge is practically non-existant, so no special work needed to be done before removing the pistons from the bores.

The ridge reamer, piston ring compressor, valve spring compressor, and harmonic balancer puller are the only specialty tools needed on this motor. Everything else can be accomplished with common hand tools.

There'* a few additional items, but they are block prep items that any machine shop will have and use to get things like the cam bearings installed. As with any project, there are limits to what most people can do...then there are some things that the home user should NOT do. For example, unless you have a few thousand in spare cash laying around, you will not have the machine tools to over bore blocks, surface grind decks, weld/grind cranks, etc. These are tools that machine shops already own along with the experience to use them correctly. So at some point in this project (like Tommorrow!) the block will get carted off to the machine shop to be hot-tank cleaned and new cam bearings installed. The shop fees are usually quite reasonable and there'* a strategy to dealing with them I'll get into a little later.

Picking up where I left off... Timing chain cover comes off next.

Before removing it, I want to take a measurement of the crank position sensor for future reference. With one photo, I have all me measurements for comparison purposes later.



Now, for the timing cover and oil-pump assembly. Take off the crank position sensor and all of the exposed bolts (Six total)



With a few taps of a rubber mallet, the timing cover and oil pup will come off the face of the block.

Now, we need to loosen the cam retainer bolts to remove the timing chain and tensioner. This is another really tight bolt, so just like removing the balancer bolt, I'm locking the crank in place using the flexplate at the other end.



With the timing chain off, the oil-pump drive and other bits can come out. The tensioner is another discard item. The shoe of it wears down in contact with the timing chain and should be replaced if it has a visible track worn into it. The timing chain itself is a maybe item, it needs to be inspected and measured along with the drive gears to see if they warrant replacement. Note, I am not removing the camshaft at this time...it will be a lot easier to remove in a few minutes.



Ok, front cover is done, time to attack the rear cover. Remove the 10mm head bolts and pry the cover off (it'* glued on with a paper gasket and some adhesive in addition to the bolts.)



Now, with front and rear covers removed, time to remove the girdle bolts for the main caps. There are six of them in pockets machined in the oil pan rail. (three per side) with 10mm heads and they are all the same size.



With the girdle bolts out, you can loosen the main journal bolts in preparation for removing the main caps. Word of caution, they are torqued pretty tight. Use a long breaker bar as well as position your hands to pull on the wrench while pushing on the block. If you are not carefull, you can easily pull the whole motor and engine stand over and have it land on top of you. (not fun, it still weights about 100lbs at this point.)



Now, Here'* all the main caps loose and ready for the next step. There'* a special tool for removing the main caps on the 3800 motor. It'* a special jig that fits into the main cap bolt holes, grips them, and pushes on the oil pan rails to extract the caps out of the block. I don't have one, but a James pointed out, there'* an alternative way. With the cap bolts loose, but still threaded into the block, turn the block rightside up and tap on the crank with a block of wood and a mallet. Gravity will do the rest. Don't be in a hurry, tap a little on the crank nose, then the flexplate end, then slip the block into the cylinder bores and tap on the counter-weights inside the block. Resist the temptation of slipping a screwdriver into the gap between the block and caps..you'll screw up the machined surfaces. When you have the caps most of the way out, turn the motor on the engine stand back to upside-down and finish removing the bolts, caps, bearing shells, and crank.



Crank is out. Looking at the underside of the motor, we can see the camshaft. Now is the time to remove it. Turn the motor back over and stick a hand up inside to support the part of the cam inside the block while pulling it out with the other hand. Don't be in a hurry, you have to work the cam lobes past three camshaft bearings. I know the cam bearings are trash, but if they were to be reused, the last thing you would want is a nice big scratch in them from a cam lobe.



While I didn't photograph it, the balancer shaft comes out easily. Take out the two bolts and steel retainer on the timing cover end of the motor. Then, using a deep socket, drive the balancer out of the block from the bell-housing end towards the front of the motor. Couple of taps will unseat the ball bearings and their race out of the pocket in the front of the motor, then the balacer can be slid out of the block.

That brings us all the way down to a bare block and a big pile of parts.

Here'* the main caps and their bearings. They actually don't look too bad. A little material is impacted into the surface of a few of them, but otherwise thay would be considered servicable as-is. Note, I didn't stamp numbers into them like the rods. Normally you would do this, but GM did the work for you. Each cap is marked with the number of the journal it was fitted to, along with an arrow to indicate which way it goes in during reassembly.



With all this done, the next phase is cleaning all the parts up. The block will need a lot of attention, so it is going straight to the machine shop to be hot-tanked and new cam bearings installed (The caustic cleaning process dissolves the bearings, so it is normal procedure to put new ones in and the shop will do it for me.)

That also brings up dealing with a machine shop.

1.) Never be in a hurry and Never put a time constraint on them. You don't want sloppy work and if you are clear that you are in no hurry, they will usually do a better job. You also get little freebies...like they might leave your block in the cleaning tank over the weekend for that really "squeeky-clean" block.

2.) Ask their advice and listen closely when they give it. Nothing pisses a machinist off more than being told their trade. I usually give them a general idea what I'm planning and ask them to check the block over to see if it is possible as well as hear their advice. On this block, I'm going to ask him to take a really good look at #2 cylinder. If it needs an overbore, it'* going to get an overbore and the other cylinders will get one too.

3.) Bring cash. Yep, most prefer the currency of the realm and hate deadbeats as much as the rest of us.

Will the shop knock-out and install new block plugs as well?

yes they can but you can usually save yourself some $ by at least removing the core plugs (most call them freeze plugs but they don’t necessarily work out that way...if the coolant freezes it wont always push the plug out to save the block and the block can crack anyways- Core plugs or freeze plugs are viable terms that any machine shop will know what you are referring to but the core plugs are there since the openings are where the sand from the casting process is removed from the water jacket voids)

to remove the core plugs is easy take a drift punch (I use an old 10bolt rearend differential pin I ground down years ago) and punch it in towards the block at one edge once it'* inside the water jacket (a magnet can be helpful if they aren’t brass core plugs) work it into the opening where you are staring at the edge, grab the edge with a pair of visegrips and leverage it out (they usually come out easy unless it'* a "tall" core plug which is a little more elbow grease)

Even if you don’t have a core plug installer you can save yourself a few $ by removing them before dropping it off at the machine shop...

and since we are on the subject of plugs and hot tanking your block make sure you (a good machinist will do this anyways) remove the two front main oil/lifter galley plugs as well as the NPT plug located right behind where the Power steering pump mounts to the block...shown here at the left edge of the picture:

you may want to have the machinist remove this plug since i needed to heat up the block a little (propane torch) and use a high strength snapon 1/4 inch square socket....

even after a block is hot tanked i still scrub it down with hot soapy water and rifle brush the main oil passages that may have accumulated any debris from the cleaning/machining process...so i leave these out till the block is scrubbed clean, painted and oil fogged (to prevent surface rusting) and ready to be bagged/assembled

I’m not saying that hot tanking cant get a block clean...but with engine assembly cleanliness is important and I’m anal about protecting my investments...all it takes is an errant piece of grit to score a crank journal and bearing...


clm2112 do yourself a favor and shine a penlight down your main bearing oiling passages and look at how much the cam bearing shells intrude and restrict the passage...it'* a good idea to go ahead and drill em out to 3/8ths inch for peace of mind...the main webs are plenty thick as you can see from the links in my prev post...
while the #1 (7/16ths) and 4 (5/16ths/8mm) mains only have to feed one main bearing and one rod bearing each the # 2 and 3 (~7mm) mains have to supply the main bearing and two rod bearings each and the passage is restricted to ~4.5mm dia where it passes by the cam bearings... which is fine for a stock output engine but defiantly marginal for a reliable performance buildup