worth rebuilding?

[Polar Bear]

well I had some fun today.
I hauled the 3A spare engine in to my carage, and took the head off. It was pretty simple, and i imagine I even could put it back together somehow...
However, I don't know if this engine is worth rebuilding. Very carbon fouled yes, and some oily/watery goo all over inside the engine. I might take the oil pan off, and the pistons, to see what they look like. But since I haven't rebuilt an engine before, I don't know how to decide if this one is worth it... no visible scratches inside the cylinders, no "notches?", and the pistons don't wiggle at all if you try to shake them from the top-> piston rings might be okay?

I know it is VERY difficult to say just by looking at crappy mobile phone pics, but at least if you have any good tips how to check if it's worth it, please chime in
I have the FSM, and of course i can use the specs from there, but before I tear this engine totally apart, any comments are welcome


some crappy pics for your viewing pleasure:

[Petros]

looks like it is worth rebuilding to me, this is pretty normal gunk you find in an old engine. if it was not all greasy it would be all rustly, the grease and grime are good things to preserve the engine.

to make life easy on you, make an engine stand out of some lumber, like a low sturdy table about 30 inches off the floor. clean off the grease, pull the oil pan and pull out the pistons from the cylinders (if the rod bearings are good you can reuse them). Make sure you mark each of the connecting rod caps so you can get them back on exactly the same way they came off (each cap is matched to the rod, and they must go back on in the same driection too). clean the bores and the pistons off with solvent or carb cleaner, carefully remove the top ring and use it to measure the gap per the FSM. If the rings are worn replace them, if they are within spec they can be reused.

If all the parts are good you can reuse them, and just replace the head gasket, the pan gasket and the front and rear seals. Most of the gaskets, like the intake/exhaust gasket, if you can get them off without damaging them you can reuse them.

You can hand resurface the top of the block and the face of the head and save yourself some money, go read up on it in my thread on replacing the head gasket in the repair guilds sections. Follow it and you will have a head instillation better than factory new.

[Polar Bear]

Petros,
thank you! I've read your head gasket thread many times before, and I'm going to use that as my guide in the future rebuild too.
I think I'll just use some good solvent and pressure washer to clean the engine block, and then change the necessary parts, resurface the head, clean the valves and change them if needed, and I have a gasket kit allready, and i think I have a piston ring set laying around somewhere.. it came with the parts of the spare car/engine.
whattaheck, I've got nothing to loose, since this is a spare engine. If I could find a decent used weber dgv, that would be like icing on the cake