if you leave the rings im place leave it be. If you change the rings there is a tool called a ridge reamer so the new top compression ring wont get damaged. If you see damage that looks like a piece of a piston ring broke off and got on top of the piston then it may rattle up and down in there and make marks. look around te circumference of that piston if you see any holes there near the edge above the top ring then I'd call the pistons done. you could see vertical scratches from where rings broke and scored the bore.
I think with the extent you are going , fitting oversized pistons and doing a rebore might be best beacuse it's dissapointing to spend money and see it burn oil.
I think you should talk to the mechanic. he may advise better on how far you can let thtings go . consider the cost of new oistons and the block removal and boring. but it's ultimately your decision how much to spend.
the cylinders dont wear evenly because of piston slap etc so you'll probably have more ridge where the wear is higher.
then you can choose to polish the crnk and put in new shells or to turn the crank and you can go on to replacing rod end bearings and such but that might not be necessary. if you still want ot spend more you can get the crank, pistons con rods and flywheel balanced and that will make it smoother especially if you are going to do performance mods.
my gut reaction is do it right and then youll be happy but its easy to just say go spend more money. I like the car it looks nice. you have to decide if you want this to be a "farmer rebuild" or basically a new engine and both make sense under certain conditions.
if you have the option to rebore then you may decide to jsut go the next size up or to go with larger pistons. some blocks have more meat. I increased the size of my volvo from 1800 to 2 liters by using larger pistons. others will know how big you can go with that ford without risking going intot he waterjacket. one school of though tis it probably made it this far and if you do rebuild it it may be good for the life of the car. If you wanted to keep the matching numbers and its somethign really special then you could opt to not remove more but it isnt; much more expensive to punch it out. if you can do that. It might be cheaper than other performance mods. that thing must have pretty good power with that engine. with my old volvo I wanted to end up with a bit more power to keep up in modern day traffic.. I did one wharre I just went from stock to the maximum stock oversize of .o30 and it did make a difference.
I guess if you were serious then you can have the block checked for cracks and things too. you might punch it out and find you want a different block ..
my choice would be to opt for the maximum oversize and then check the crank. If it's not bad I'd polish the crank myself and install new shells if it's bad then regrind the crank. I doubt youll blow up the bottom end but I thik chances are high that if you just do the top end it'll have more compression and burn oil because of the old rings and wear. you could ask the mechanic about the costs of balancing and his opinion. I feel that balancing is nice even if you aren't rodding it.. itll just run smoother at higher revs.
I had new bushings pressed intpo my rods and reamed them that's probably not necessary. when they did that they put the rods in a furnace to expand them before pressing in the new bushings. If you do want ot keep on doing performance mods than there is something to making the block really sound. If you just want it to drive and work than you dont need to go too crazy. It often becomes a personal challenge to do the best you can but then the cost can go up. my brother kept doing the top end on engines and it always seemed to work out a bit disappointing because then it would work a while then burn oil and he would loose interest in the vehicle and not want to open it all back up a second time.
percent. When its all together I would like to bring it to a performance shop and fine tune the whole setup to get the most out of it as I can. The Chattanooga area has some good performance shops and I'm only a 15 minute ride from Boyd's 1/8th mile track....not that I'm taking my Falcon there anytime soon....
