So Pablo blew his head gasket. I want him back on the road ASAP, and I've got a spare engine, and I don't trust his original engine. I know the spare engine ran well for the test drive before I parked it and dismantled that truck because of scary bad frame rust.

Now I've got the engine dangling from the chain hoist. I took off the oil pan and had a look, and found some plastic chips in the sump. I looked at the driver's side timing chain guide and it's broken at the top.

The good news is that I have some parts collected and that includes a replacement timing chain set. The bad news is that despite the ebay ad saying steel backed, there is no steel in this guide. It's all plastic and says OSK Japan on it.

I seem to have all the parts I'd need to pop the timing cover off, replace that guide, and pop it back together. I don't like using that guide, but I don't like waiting for more questionable parts either. If I could expect, say, 80,000 miles out of this guide, I'd use it. What I'd like to do is pull Pablo's original engine, replace the head and head gasket, and take my time making sure it's good to go with no time pressure, then swap at some convenient time in the future, as though that time exists.

Any opinions? Slap it together and go? Or don't trust it at all?

 

If you want pablo back on the road, slap the guide in there and go!

You can always take your time rebuilding when your truck is running, lol.

I don't know how long the guide will last.... I have a rebuilt longblock in my truck and never checked on the quality of the guides, but its been 25k miles, so I'm sure an all plastic guide would last at least that long?

 

This is slightly more of a learning experience than I wanted.

While getting the new sprockets and chain on, I felt the cam move clockwise a small amount. I think I have things on right, but I want to be sure before I close it up. I count 19 links in the chain (two rivets per link) between here (red arrow):



and here (red arrow):



Is that right? Even though it all moved slightly, I should be able to re-establish that things are at TDC before putting the distributor back in.

 

Looks about right.. When crank mark is dead center on top the cam mark is just barely to the left of center on top..