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Hi everybody,
I have been pretty busy and have not spent much time on the list for a while. Well many of you know that I supercharged my Chevy Avalanche a couple years ago. It had right at 100k when I added the Edelbrock E-force supercharger and it now has 144k miles on it.
Well, the blue smoke coming from the exhaust and the smell of burning oil tells me something bad has happened inside the block. It still runs strong but it's burning oil pretty bad. My initial guess would be a bad valve guide (very bad) or a broken piston ring. Either way the solution is the same, rebuild or replace.
I like my truck, with the supercharger it runs well and I am keeping it. I figure I can drop $3-5k into a rebuild and I will be good to go. That said, this also opens up a window of possibilities, I need to make some decisions and I need some help so I make them correctly.
The obvious thing that comes to mind is to upgrade the 5.3L to a 6.0L block while I am performing the major surgery. Nothing like a bigger stronger heart! However I will be retaining the supercharger and that manifold mates up to the less desirable cathedral port heads. I am probably limited to motors that utilize this type of head. I am not sure if any of the 6.0 motors had cathedral port heads. I am also unsure if I want to swap out to an iron block motor adding weight to the front end of the truck. I doubt this will make much difference so I would give it some consideration.
The easiest thing would be for me to buy a 50k mile junkyard 5.3L just like the motor coming out of the truck, swap the supercharger over to the newer motor, and stuff it back into the truck. No new tune required, no new injectors, no fuel system upgrades, no suspension, etc. This is probably what I will do unless folks with additional knowledge of these motors nudge me to do more.
Cam swap???
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