On my early Hemi in the hot rod coupe, I recently dropped out of Sick Week due to a sheared off oil pump drive shaft. It seems that I accidentally dropped a bolt into the crankcase when I had the timing cover off. And it probably landed on the windage screen and stirred up a few slivers of metal before it found its way down to the magnetic drain plug. One of those slivers found its way into the oil pump.
So it got ran just a little bit, but not under power, with no oil pressure.
Also before I left for the event my water cooled oil cooler failed and filled the oil pan with water, so it got ran with water in the oil. Again just for a little bit and not under power, but I know that water is very hard on bearings.
The engine is still in the car, and I have the pan off. The heads, intake, and everything else is still on it.
I don't see any visible carnage anywhere.
The leak down and compression test is not that great. A little bit of rust had developed in a couple of the cylinders while the thing sat around for a couple of years. I'm sure that was not easy on the rings.
So my big question now is, looking at these bearings and looking at this leak down test, can I get one more season out of this thing as is, which will give me time to decide if I'm going to switch over to a Gen 2 Hemi or not? Or should I freshen it up now? Thanks for any input.
The only reason I see not to, is I am so limited on available time right now. I might pull the engine out and take it all apart and not be ready in time to get sufficient testing done before drag week. If I slap it back together as is, I can have it running soon, and have plenty of time to get the car on the dyno, and for some good test and tune to get the chassis and the driver and the clutch more dialed in.

If those are as bad as any of the bearings look, and the crank looks good……..

New bearings and let it rip.

If I had the time I would rebuild it. If not new bearings and go another year.

Are you feelin LUCKY?

Are you feeling lucky?
Fix it properly now so you won't worry about if 1500 mile from home later

Rod bearings that look like that, and an oil pump that locked up from debris warrants and complete tear down and inspection.

Any time I ever had bearings that looked like that the crank needed polished at a minimum.

Polish the crank, hone the cylinders, new rings, new bearings, and let it rip. IF you don't drag your feet, it can be ready to run in no time. If you goof off like normal, we'll be loading the car, untested Friday night headed to Drag Week...

Right, it'll probably all 'buff-out' as it is now but it probably won't if you don't tear into it.

Joel If your limited on time you sure don't have time to chase problems from not rebuilding it.

Not to mention worrying the whole time afraid it's going to break.

Heck you're halfway there already.

Mike

Words from a freind years ago. If you don't have time to fix it right the first time. You'll always have enough the 2nd time.
Doug

^^^ this x 1000

x1000. You wouldn't even have to pull it from the car, just do a quick ball hone, new rings, and roll bearings in it. The leakdown might get better with use, but for the cost of a set of rings I'd be hard pressed not to do it if you're planning on entering Drag Week this year. If you have rings you could get that done in a weekend.

I decided I'll play it safe and yank the motor out of there, tear it down, make sure that everything is really clean inside including the oil galleries. Give it a quick hone and some new rings, for sure polishe the crank and do rod bearings. I'll take a look at the main bearings while I'm at it. This motor is a little bit more time-consuming than most. Because there is an adapter on the back of it for the block to bell housing interface and that is extra fiddling around when taking the motor out and in, then it has a main stud girdle which is always in the way when trying to get the rod bolts torqued with an angle gauge. And the copper head gaskets don't fit right so I have to file on them and do a bunch of fiddling around. I need to go over to Clark Copper head gaskets and have them fix their pattern. I hand ground extra radial clearance in the valve reliefs in the pistons with a Dremel tool. I suppose while it's a part, I should put the pistons in the mill and use a fly cutter to precisely equalize each piston valve relief. Time will fly by.

My son Cam and I are working on a land speed car for Bonneville, trying to make it to speed week this August. And we have a ton of work to do on that. I'll just have to manage my time in the shop really well.

Thanks for all the replies!

This is what I'd do.

We used to say never time to it right always time to do it twice

Good to hear you are going to pull it apart. Knowing that metal was loose inside the motor, a good cleaning is in order. I am currently cleaning up a mess in my 549 made by twenty or thirty seconds of zero oil pressure, and my bearings looked better than yours. But i found scratches on the crank, and i am sure there was more metal hiding in the block. I had to have missed some metal in cleanup after re clearancing the block for pushrod and lifter bar clearance. End result is, if i had kept on running it, it would have ruined a LOT of expensive parts!