rusted engine blocks

[Tony Corley]

Originally Posted by Mike Taylor 3601

I hear people talking about seasoning blocks, by letting them rust or even burying them for a year or two, that comes from back in magazine engine build days they would say the engine builder would start with a well-seasoned block, that means a used block, ran thousands of miles, ran through heat cycles of everyday use and somehow people not knowing any better turned that into the same process as seasoning wood/lumber leaving them outside or burying them.
letting a block rust serves no purpose that improves anything, that comes from ignorance, not an insult, ignorance by its definition. When I read ND ads at about 7 years old and it listed a car with strange axles, I thought it meant some kind of strange axles, IDK it was a brand of axle...I was ignorant, now I'm just dumb LOL

To season an engine block, you run it 100K miles, the heating, cooling "seasons" the block stress relieves the metal and settles, shifts and then when it is machined after that it doesn't shift and move, settle as much or you do some method of vibratory or cryogenic stress relief.
If you plan on using rusted up block, take it and have it thermal cleaned at machine shop,baked,blasted and tumbled then magnafluxed. the correct shot(.020 or smaller) will not damage anything

Was just simply stating what I used to hear, decades ago. It never made any sense to me, and I also never tried it. But there were some well known names that did it. And after reading Dwight's post, maybe there was something too it.....

[Alan Roehrich]

Dan Dvorak used to "loan out" engines to commercial use.


Kubota once allowed their castings to sit for a year before machining.


I can tell you that the ovens people use to clean parts will make cast iron as soft as the day it was cast, and it will "move" significantly.


For some people, a new block is no option at all, and for others it is at best an extremely expensive option.


Y'all take the free advice and information for what it is worth.

[BTR69]

Thanks again for the info y'all. I'm much more optimistic that they're useable now. Hopefully I'll get to spend some time with these soon. I'll try to take the time to document everything.