I've read all of EB's posts about getting the most HP out of these 22RE's. I am in the middle of a 22RE buildup myself. I bought a reman. short block and plan on taking all of the EFI stuff from my donor 85 4Runner to build my 84 4Runner (long story). Here's what I've done so far, cleaned up the head and stock valves, 3 angle valve job, and shaved the head 20 thousandths. I also bought an adjustable cam gear to set the timing correctly.

All 4 pistons are down, quench-wise. The one piston that is closest to being level with the top of the block is 12 thousandths low. The other 3 pistons are even worse than that. Would it worth my time to deck the block 12 thousandths just to get the quench somewhat up to that magic number 0?

I don't really have the time or the resources to take the block apart and get all 4 pistons level. Is this going to hurt my performance enough to worry about it or just run it the way it's setup.

Any suggestions or advice would be great!
Thanks

First, a disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on quench. But, this being the internet, I am nonetheless glad to share my .02 cents. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

It would be helpful to know the values for each of the cylinders. It doesn't really matter which one is the best, what matters is how bad the worst one is. Also, keep in mind that the pistons sit on the end of the rods, and every link in the chain from rod journal to wrist pin can play a role in piston-to-deck height.

Next, I would be concerned about a situation where you were running both a shaved head and decked block. That's a 32 thou difference you're talking about to bring the *best* cylinder to a zero deck height, and even with an adjustable cam gear that total seems like a lot of material to remove. Unfortunately, I don't know enough or have enough experience to know what a safe number would be, so perhaps someone more learned than me can speak up here??

Now, as to the question of whether this would be worthwhile: maybe yes, maybe no. It's true that performance is a game where many tiny changes can combine to yield cumulative results, either positive or negative, however, with something like quench, it is much more important to correct the worst performing cylinder than ensure that the best works optimally. Stated another way: if piston #1 has a hole in it, it doesn't matter how good the other three are. So depending on the true extent of the problem, you might be better off buying a new set of pistons, etc., than trying to fix what you have (assuming the pistons are the item at fault).

Anyway, that's my take on this...

-Jeff

Thanks for the reply Mosk! I totally understand what you mean about getting the worse up to spec. On the other hand, I figured it couldn't hurt to at least get the best (if you can call it that <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />) to spec. Also, I was curious to see if it would be fine if I left it the way it is now, if I'm going to be running into any problems in the future and or lack in the performance dept.

Thanks again for the honest reply. EB, what you think <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

bump, anybody else????

The quench isn't the distance from the top of the piston to the top of the block, it's the distance from the top of the piston to the bottom of the head. How far down the piston should be from the top of the block depends on your headgasket, and the configuration of the head, ie shaved or no. What you need to do is bolt up the head w/ gasket, and put some soft solder through each plug hole, bent in an L shape with the end touching the wall of the cylinder. Turn the engine over manually to squash the solder (one cylinder at a time using an unsquashed piece for each bore), then use some calipers or a micrometer to measure the squish. It should be in the range of 0.050, less than 0.040" and your pistons are going to be banging into the head at high rpm, a bad thing.

The piston that has less squish will have a higher compression ratio than the others, so if you were to have detonation, this would be the culprit.

Ideally you'd have the head bored on that one cylinder to match the quench with the others, and keep head cc's consistant.

thanks for clearing up the defn. of quench. That makes more sense. Is using soft solder a common practice?

>>>*The way we do it is TDC the engine, measure the distance down the bore of the flat part (outer ring) of the piston.

Zero is good, down the bore becomes bad for performance very quickly. .010" will run just fine, varations of more then a few thousandths begin to stack up effect.

We always must tune to the weakest cylinder of course.

We see a LOT of remanned engines with varations and once in awhile run into one that has wild variations of .030" and more.

The cause is always the same, regrinding a shaft without indexing, at .010" it isn't bad, at .020" it gets worse, and at .030" we can see big differences in deck hieght.

Then add in resizing the rods? Yes, big differences.

For an engine that just needs to run, not a real big problem. When you are looking for that extra 10-12 ponies, it matters...But of course to deck the block you need to take it back apart. If you do, the cut should be to zero for the piston that is highest up the bore....*EB