Has anyone tried a rering without removing the block from the car? Seems you could remove the head and oilpan and take it from there. Any input?

Yeah you can, I know someone who rebuilt his Civic doing that, but it was a real pain...and he had a car lift in his garage, no telling hard hard it would be with jacks and stands..lol. He only removed the rods and pistons though.....something about how it would be hard to realign the crank being installed upside down. It's still running and he races it every weekend.

Why would you want to rebuild your motor and not have the block at least honed? Boring it out would give more displacement and honing it will clean up the cylinder walls from the many thousands (or in my case, hundreds of thousands) of miles it has on it. If you get down to bare block with the motor in the engine bay, your are about 3 minutes and an engine hoist away from pulling that bad boy. With it out, you can then replace front and rear main seals and each and every gasket there is. That way, you do it once and you do it right.

But thats just my opinion. And what im currently doing!

My question is how would get the crank out with the motor still in the car?

Hey I never said it was a good thing to do. He just "refreshed" it with new rod bearings and piston rings and a new timing belt/chain(Whichever is on a 1.6 honda motor). Maybe it won't last long, but he did it. The motor burned oil bad before he did it, and since he bought the car, and did all his performance mods for less than 1500 bucks, and runs low 13's, that's not all that bad. It's just his weekend warrior..nothing more. He cares very little if he blows that engine up.

If he dropped the transmission, he could get the crank out with the engine still in the car, but at that point it would be just the engine mounts holding it in place. But to replace the rings and rod bearings you would need the crank out, just tap the pistons out the top from below.

Well I'm going to go ahead and pull the engine. I was hoping it would be quicker and save the cost of a hoist. It looks like it will probably be easier to just pull it. I'm waiting for the hoist to arrive now.

You could rent a hoist at a local rental place. We have an American Rent All in town and it cost me $35 to use it (after a heafty deposit of $75, i got that back) and the thing broke down to individual peices that fit in the back of my 944. Use it to pull the engine, return it, then re-rent it when it comes time to put it back in. Better than spending upwards of $200 on owning a hoist.

BTW i miss-typed; i meant you WOULDNT need the crank out to pull the pistons if you were just changing rings and bearings.

And sts76, nice Porsche you got there. I loove the oldies. My all time favorite car (besides an 84 Ferrari 308GTSi) is a 1976 Porsche 930 Whale Tail. Beautiful peices of machinery if ever there was one!