Douglas Quebbeman wrote (re Vegas): You're close! In fact the Chilton book for the Vega discussed the process for doing so in the field after honing the cylinders. In essence you took a chunk of Teflon (available under a GM part number), chucked it into a drill and used it to polish the cylinder walls. The Vega (1970 -- or was it 71? Motor Trend "Car of the Year") was supposed to have Detroit's first rotary engine. When they couldn't figure out the apex seal problem they tossed that 2.3L thing into the car. I've always asserted that the Vega engine looked like a project done by a bunch of new grads -- it had all sorts of nifty textbook ideas that don't work terribly well in the field assembled in one place: - A sleeveless aluminum block. Great idea on engines designed to run for one race, awful for a street car. - "Bathtub" block cooling rather than lots of cooling passages. Rather than a big hunk of metal with water jackets around the cylinders, the Vega block is essentially a rectangular tub. Cylinders one and four are attached to the front and back ends of the block, while two and three are siamesed together and rise out of the bottom of the block like the Hawaiian islands from the Pacific. Coolant fills the rest of the void. The notion here was that you eliminate metal (hence weight) and simplify the casting process. The problem is that with limited cooling between two and three those two cylinders tended to "sink" back towards the bottom of the block. Again, great for a race car, awful for a street car. - A cast iron head. I'm not sure who thought that the combination of a cast iron head and an aluminum block was a good idea, but between the difference in thermal expansion rates and the tendency for cylinders two and three to "sink", Vegas blew a lot of head gaskets. Enough so that a special replacement gasket appeared on the aftermarket that was thicker around numbers two and three. - An overhead cam that directly drove onto cam followers that didn't need shims. Great idea; no longer do you have to remove the camshaft in order to set the valve lash. Stick a hex wrench in a hole on the side of the follower and turn, just don't turn too far because we forgot to put a stop on it and you can send the adjuster out the other side of the follower, where it will jam the follower in the "down" position the first time the cam hits it. - A rubber timing belt that was tensioned by the water pump. The precursor of the serpentine belt that plagues -er- more contemporary vehicles. - The "vacuum leak center". The Vega appeared at the beginning of the 70's, a period wherein, rather than addressing the underlying issue of meeting emissions by making engines run right, Detroit applied a series of kludges, almost always in the form of assorted and sundry vacuum delay valves and vacuum motors. The result was a generation of induction systems that could do parlor tricks with exhaust gas but didn't have a clue when it came to a cup of high-test, and as implemented on the Vega came in the form of a collection of valves and hoses that invariably leaked under transient and difficult to reproduce conditions. All in all, it really was a _terrible_ piece of engineering. -- Chris Kennedy chris(a)mainecoon.com http://www.mainecoon.com PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97