I cleaned my Pistons with a bronze dremel tool and scrapped the carbon out of the rings with a piece of old sharpened ring. Runs like a top. No shame with a backyard rebuild in my book. It's how you learn! Just measure with feelers/micrometers to make sure you are at or above spec in the manual.

JB

 

What do your cylinders look like? Is there a ridge at the top where the rings stop? If you drop a piston down into it's cylinder and check at a few spots around it with a feeler gauge is it out of round? Any scoring?

 

Thanks Pete..I did just that. In fact I took a week off to visit my son in LA & took a short trip up to San Francisco. I live in South Florida. I found plenty of time to think away from my truck and I've decided to reuse as much of my existing parts that I can. My truck ran pretty good except for temp issues before I burned up the wiring harness and ventured off into a full renovation. (was planning on doing one day anyway). I'll keep looking for a shop in my area to check out my engine block and have them measure my pistons and cylinders to see if more than honing the cylinders is necessary.
From there I'll determine if I need new pistons. If not I'll clean the engine block, heads etc. best I can and replace the valves with adjustable lifters replace the piston rings which I already took off. I'll also keep all the bearings unless I see significant wear or damage. I'll replace packing and engine gaskets and get to work beginning to put everything back together. After that..one day at a time.
BTW..rode by quite a few of these old trucks sitting along the road or out in some field..what a thrill.

 

We buy from Cleggs Machine in Utah Nice people to deal with roughly little over $800 buys everything all US major mfg. Myself it would be set of pistons main & rod and
defiantly cam bearings & oil pump. Any make flathead is forgiving.....

 

You can't just re-use rod and main bearings UNLESS you keep them in their original locations. Same for lifters and valves. Did you keep track of where everything was?