I put it back together with a '93 Northstar that we had in shed. It had been in a fire, but did not appear to be damaged. It wasn't seized, so we had snagged it. It was the most likely engine in the shed to run, so got it on a stand, poured a couple of teaspoons of ATF into each cylinder to wet the rings, used an electric pump to push all 7 quarts of oil into the pan through the filter adapter--thus priming the engine, whipped up a stand fire harness to simulate a Fiero chassis and fired it. After coughing to life it seemed to run pretty well. Unfortunately, I did not do compression or leakdown tests.
The Mule's engine bay was kinda run down, so I removed all the little BS fittings and accessories from it and painted it with POR-15 followed by Chassis Coat. Chassis Coat is UV indifferent, so the combo should last for years. Like Restamotive's propaganda says "We know what permanent means".
I put the powertrain together with the same cast iron flywheel I've been using (resurfaced after the CF slipped like a SOB). I got a SPEC Stage III and have been liking it so far. I think it's about broken in, as it's gotten pretty smooth and predictable (or maybe I've just gotten used to driving it). The trans is a hybrid with early Q4 gears (3.50/2.19/1.38/1.03/0.72/3.61) in a V6 case modified for the Northstar. It has a Gr8Grip. I'm using Amsoil's synthetic transmission fluid which they claim is a pour in swap for GM's friction modified synchromesh (calls it out specifically by part number).
I've also got Rodney Dickman's short shift linkage.
I drove it from my parents' house to drill and then back to my house... covering about 500 miles. It didn't really act up until I got about half an hour from my house and it overheated. I let it cool, found that it was low on coolant. I figured that what was missing had just boiled out the overflow tank, so I refilled it and got on my way without further incident.
Thereafter it would overheat and overflow the bottle every time I put my foot in it and ran a gear out.
Suspecting a head gasket, I drove it very gently back to my parents' house and left it there last weekend. I didn't have time to work on it until this weekend. I ran a compression check and a pseudo leak check on each cylinder. All cylinders except #2 were over 200 psi compression pressure with an open throttle. #2 was 195. That certainly didn't arouse suspicion, but when I pressurized each cylinder, I got bubbles out the coolant fill from #'s 2 and 4. Dammit.
So now I've got to pull the engine again and I have bit of a dilemma.
Do I pull the heads from this engine, timesert the block and put it back together with new gaskets? Maybe even MLS gaskets that will give me a little tighter quench? This engine has some miles on it and I've seen it blow a couple puffs of oil smoke on tip in after high RPM coast down, so it will probably only be a few thousand more miles before it starts blowing oil smoke on coast down all the time. Unless I do a pretty extreme carbon removal regimen to it... If I pull the heads, I'll be able to soak the rings in carb cleaner...
Or do I change engines? We have another engine in the shed that was supposedly a dyno mule. We've been told that it ran perfectly, but had holes poked in the lower crank case and one of the cam covers when it was taken off the dyno. There's apparently some stoopid-ass EPA regulation that says that such engines must be rendered unusable in production cars. We can, however, replace the cam cover and patch the lower crank case and the engine *should* run just fine. The lower crank case hole is in a relatively non-structural part of the casting, so we should just have to make an oil tight patch for it...
My billy badass engine hasn't made much progress, but my machinist moved his shop and I've had a busy fall, so I haven't really had time to pursue it. Now that the semester's over (and I'm not working full time AND taking two graduate engineering courses), I should be able to follow up on the things that the nice engine needs.