Decided to do a complete rebuild. 07 5.3l Suburban. Older cars and younger days ago. I preferred to pill xmsn with the engine. How is that now on these vehicles?. Looking for tips and tricks and advice. I haven't decided yet. I just pulled the intake and disconnected everything on the engine.
Engine Rebuild dod
- Thread starter Gilla
- Start date
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swathdiver
Full Access Member
What are your goals? Going to delete AFM or keep it? Want more power? If so, how much more? What's wrong with it now and how many miles?
I think it's easier to pull the engine separately from the transmission on these.
Glad you decided to do the whole thing - I think you'll be happy.
Funniest thing..... I realized ive had it for 7 years and only put 40K on it. It has 183K now. Well taken care of (previous owner and me). We have a truck as well plus my ST1300 which is my daily driver. I dont need to rebuild it to get 300K out of it. Before the lifter issue we have never had any major problems. I feel confident that putting a better cam, springs, pushrods, valve stem seals and a trunnion upgrade it will last. Also getting it tuned properly. Deleting AFM, power from new cam setup. so looks like i will be keeping the bottom end in place . While on the subject. the towers for the AFM lifters under the VLOM. Do we plug them or leave them alone ? what do ya do with them?
You have a few options:
1/ TSP sells a plug kit that you hammer into the towers. I bought it but chickened out. They are a snug fit and I didn't want to trigger a crack.
2/ Do it the way GM did it for the L92: The non-DoD valley cover has o-rings that seat at the top of the towers and seal them off.
3/ Summit sells what is essentially a giant rivet tool that seats a rivet in the top of each tower. You can only do this with the engine out of the vehicle.
4/ @iamdub rolled his own solution that he may have a link for.
Leaving the bottom end alone is fine as they're stout, but at that point there's no need to pull the engine to do the work. If you pull the engine, might as well get a new hone, rings, bearings, etc.
iamdub
Full Access Member
I don't think it's worth the hassle to remove them together. I'm pretty sure you'd have to disassemble the whole core support as I don't believe there's enough length to tilt it in or out. I R/R'ed my engine with the mounts bolted to it and radiator in place. Just slipped out the electric fans and rotated the engine sideways. The only real snag with the trans is the top four bellhousing bolts. But, with the intake manifold outta the way, you can reach them with a wrench. I was tearing everything down for mine so I pulled the heads to make reaching those bolts a piece of cake. When I reinstalled the engine, I bolted up the trans then installed the heads in the bay.
With a mild cam, the stock rockers are perfectly fine. Trunnion kit is more of a "just cuz" thing at this level. My opinion is to not introduce other potential failure points with aftermarket setups. I recently replaced my 215K-mile original rockers with a full set of new-in-their-original-packaging GM OE rockers off eBay for $9.99/each. Other than the oil staining, I couldn't tell the difference between my originals and my the ones. Put that trunnion money towards a CircleD torque converter.
I pulled my engine entirely to make working on it easier and I wanted to thoroughly inspect it and replace all the seals. I didn't go any deeper into the bottom end other than to replace the cam. Didn't even replace any bearings. If I were to go that far, then it would've been a total rebuild- hone (or bore to 5.7), new bearings, rings, etc.
I've heard of those built-in factory O-rings of the VLOM leaking, although it's likely on aged engines or built ones running higher oil pressures. Even though I had an LS3 VLOM, I wanted to be 100% sure leaking would never be a possibility. I accomplished this with about $5 in materials: https://www.tahoeyukonforum.com/threads/growing-up-doesnt-have-to-suck.93510/post-1426713
I also replaced the AFM pressure release valve in the oil pan with a plug: https://www.tahoeyukonforum.com/threads/growing-up-doesnt-have-to-suck.93510/post-1427085
My whole AFM delete/upgrade project starts here: https://www.tahoeyukonforum.com/threads/growing-up-doesnt-have-to-suck.93510/post-1423842
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