I'm about to put my oil pan back on but I'd like to make sure the bearings and such are in good shape as far as wear goes before seal it down. I'm a relatively inexperienced mechanic and the Haynes manual doesn't seem to help me too much here. Can I use a feeler gauge? I have one of those, if so, what are the specs? It's a 86 2.8 engine.

I had some guys advise me to do the max job and get the plastic goop to clamp in and measure, but I didn't need to go that far.
BTW if you are going to check, you need a pretty accurate caliper. The best are the electronic type.

If you get your con rod out, you can remove the bearing. Be sure to put the two pieces back in the same place when you re-assemble. You tighten up the con rod bolts again without the bearings and measure the inside diameter in at least 2 directions. You'll be looking to see if the lengthwise measurement is longer than the width. This will tell you if your conrod is stretched and needs to have the hole re-shaped. You can find the tolerances in Haynes if I recall correctly.

You can read the size of your bearings on the back of the bearing. Check the bearing for thickness against its size and the specs.

Generally speaking if these two measurements check out and you have no scoring, you can button it up again and forget about it. If you have scoring, you will want to look careful at your crank journal to see if it is damaged. If it is, you'll need a machine shop to turn the crank and supply you with undersized bearings.

Basically, if the measurements are within tolerances, you don't need to invest more. If they are outside tolerances, given machine shop costs, you are probably best off getting another block.

I hope this gets you started. Maybe a couple of experts will wade in and assist.

Arn

If you feel the need to check you can use *plasti gauge.
Get the green one and use the scale on the package.
The surfaces must be clean and dry (not oily) to use.
Remove caps clean the crank and bearing surfaces with a cleaner that will not leave a residue, brake cleaner will work fine.
Use a small strip of gauge material that is about half the length of the narrow part of bearing and place it in the bearing cap if engine is still installed. Torque to specifications then remove the cap. DO NOT ROTATE with this stuff in the caps as yiou should clean it off after measurement is taken! Measure the width of the gauge material with the enclosed scale.
Oil clearance for the V-6 is 0.0014 to 0.0037 inch for the rods with a side clearance of 0.006 to 0.017 (use a feeler gauge for this area) and the main bearing clearance is 0.0016 to 0.0032. The thrust bearing play is 0.0021 to 0.0033, again use a feeler gauge here as well.
The 4 cylinder rod clearance is 0.0005 to 0.0026 side clearance is 0.006 to 0.022 Main bearing oil 0.0005 to 0.0022 and end play is 0.0035 to 0.0085.

Do each cap one at a time so you do not get anything mixed up.
Also the bearing material is LEFT IN PLACE. DO NOT REMOVE IT FROM CAPS!

[This message has been edited by Indiana_resto_guy (edited 05-13-2006).]