On Sat, 02 May 2015 15:04:50 -0400, Fred wrote:

micky wrote:
On Fri, 1 May 2015 09:32:17 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub Cap\" McKinney"
wrote:

What's a good way to find a reputable shop to R/R & rebuild an engine? Planning to do the head but if not that much more will do the whole thing.
Regular minor repair mechanic doesn't know anyone.

BTW, when I lived in Brooklyn, in every Sunday paper there was a 2" ad
for an engine rebuilding place, just over the border of Queens into
Nassau county. My engine was running rough so I finally went there.

An enormous place, half a block long, with loads of bays iirc. And it
turned out they did everrything, not just engines. That sort of
disappointed me, but I guess they had a reason for advertising only this
one thing where I saw it.

A mechanic looked at the car and he disconnected one spark plug wire at
a time, until he found the one that made no difference. That was the
bad cylinder. They wanted a lot of money to take it apart and give me
an estimate, (which of course would have been even more than the charge
for the estimate) and I'm not saying it wasn't fair but I was in no
rush to do it.

Anhow I took off the valve cover for that cylinder and found one of the
push rods was missing! Where did it go? IIRC, half of it had slid
into the hole with the other half. IIRC I was able to pull out the
top part of the push rod with my fingers iirc, and I bought a magnet
shaped like a short pencil, on a metal stick, and could pull out the
bottom half (without turning the engine upside down and shaking it.)

I bought a new push rod at the dealer, put the valve cover back on and
after a while I realized it ran no better!! Boy was I stuck. After a
few days I went back to the dealer and he checked and said, "Oh yeah,
there are two possible pushrods for that engine. " I didnt' ask him to
refund what I'd paid for the first one, and he didn't offer. (It was
only a couple dollars.) The second one was shorter. So I take off the
valve cover and the first one is there, Z-shaped. compressed by the cam
and in the hole so tightly it was hard to get out. But once I did, I
put in the shorter one and the car ran fine. Total cost, 4 dollars. (I
ddn't bother replacing the valve cover gasket.)

I had to look up what "IIRC" means!

I accidentally used it twice in one clause. ;-(