Projects This amount of carbon typical?

I am tearing down the 292 Y-block from my '62 Mercury. It is stuck - and so I am trying to get to where I can turn it - assess the cylinders + rings - then make some decisions about what to do as I put it back together.

Does this amount of carbon look "normal" for a car that last ran in 1984 and has 50K ~ 150K miles? (I shop vac'd the pistons before I took the pic, but not the heads - sorry)

Any other observations?

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I've seen worse than that for an engine of that era. Oil ring and valve stem seal technology as well as crankcase ventilation wasn't what it is today. Proceed

 

looks pretty clean, to me.

 

Heck, I've eaten chewed gum found under a bus seat that was dirtier than that

 

Sheesh. I'd be happy to have one that good to start with.

 

Looks pretty normal. Your going through the heads before you put them back on right?

 

Yes - I may take it a lot further apart before it goes back together.

 

On the first head picture, it looks like you have one "wet" exhaust valve. I'd definitely have a good valve job done. Other than that, it looks pretty normal.

 

If I tore a Y block down in 1984, that's what I'd expect to find.

 

this is one I tore down five years ago. It had been sitting long enough to not have any compression. The heads had been redone not many miles before.

 

Thanks -

I see you have that same gunk in the water passages. I thought maybe mine was uniquely fouled in that way (like someone used radiator stop-leak), but I guess that is just part of the scene. The car came without a radiator and so I was surprised by the half gallon of "water" I got when I pulled the heads.

 

Globs of rusty crap in the cooling system is normal for neglected old cars.

This 292 was a good one, apparently not too many miles (around 60k), it was in an Edsel, they got abandoned when they were still pretty young. I ran a hone through the bores, put new standard size rings in, new cam bearings, cleaned up the heads, and put it back together with the rest of the old parts, and new gaskets. Ran fine, got 3000 miles on a quart of oil.