Water pump went out

[78 Chevyrado]

water pump went out and I already ballooned it into other stuff....

Water pump didn't do too bad, it was original.  32 years and 125k miles, I'm cool with that.

Figured while I'm there doing the water pump, I'll go ahead and swap out the timing chain set, so I'll feel better about long trips.

Figured while I'm there doing the timing chain with the oil pan off, I'll go ahead and put a High volume, std. PSI oil pump on it and see if that helps any with my relatively low oil PSI problem.

I'm gonna leave the rear main seal alone since it doesn't leak at all and I don't wanna risk replacing the good old seal with a leaky new seal (operator problem) 

Bought the 1 piece oil pan gasket and timing cover gasket set with balancer sleeve.  

I forgot the valve cover gaskets so I need to get those, figure if I'm sealing everything else up, might as well do tat too.  It's soaking in degreaser right now, im waiting to go out and rinse it all off.  

I may take a bearing cap off and see what everything looks like.  if it looks good instead of a new engine, I may get the heads done and slap a cam and edelbrock eps intake on it and paint it up if it looks good internally.  I'm gonna do a comp. check too.  

[VileZambonie]

Figured while I'm there doing the timing chain with the oil pan off, I'll go ahead and put a High volume, std. PSI oil pump on it and see if that helps any with my relatively low oil PSI problem.

Before you put in the HV oil pump make sure you have over .0025" clearance

[78 Chevyrado]

I just got that pump to hopefully band-aid my low oil psi until i could get a new engine... 

But..  I'm changing direction.  The compression test showed 160PSI  with only a 5psi variance between cylinders and with a squirt of oil the PSI only went up like 4 PSI per cylinder.   The gauge hit approx. 105PSI on the first compression hit.  We tested the gauge against 2 known good ones and its accurate to a few PSI.

I'm going to pull the pan and check out the mains and see how they look.  if they look pretty good, I'm pulling the engine and putting in new bearings and all seals, and then having the heads rebuilt and doing a cam swap, new intake, std. volume oil pump, and the new distributor.  Not to mention painting it all up finally.  I think the bottom end will look good inside there but if it doesn't I'm slapping the water pump and timing chain on it and driving it till it quits or i save for a new engine.

I hope the shortblock is in good shape, if it is I can finish it all up for less than $500 + whatever the heads are gonna be.  I do know the cam or a couple of lifters are bad, 2 of the valves only move half what the others do, and have since before I got the truck.

The heads are the only price variable...  I'm gonna see how much a rebuild is with bronze guides, and I may get roller tip rockers so the guides will last even longer and call it a day.   The cams still up in the air but I have an idea I may get a Comp XE256.  Wondering how the idle is, the next step up a XE262 has a pretty lumpy idle, too much for me.  Oh well we'lll see.

it's a 78 C20 350 4bbl TH400 (HD emissions)...    Do you think the heads are 76CC? 

[Dr_Snooz]

Wow. This project grows bigger with each post!

[beastie_3]

You should be able to find a engine idling with that cam on youtube.

[78 Chevyrado]

Found a video of an xe256

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_l27PwABKLQ

I've been looking at that one for a long time now and I think I'm gonna get that one.

I've also been reading about my current heads #462624  and from all the lovely thing people have to say about them, I'm going to get a set of new ones.

The heads I have are 76cc so I'm gonna get some 64cc vortecs.  should raise the compression around 1 point.   They'll very likely be RHS Pro Torkers #12410-01.  I've been looking at them as long as I been looking at the XE256 cam and I can't find anything else I like better.

Guess I'll be starting another thread for this.   I will be getting to my tires eventually, but I figure I'll go ahead and do this while it's still warm.  I can do the tires on a cold day, since I'll be in the warm little glass room just watching the tire guys put em on for me.  
Plus if all goes well I can shred some of the rubber off the old goodyears