22Silver wrote:Engine is out of the car, getting new bearings, rings, pistons, seals.
Grinding the Journals, cam regrind, flywheel is out getting lightened today, various other things.
Didn't end up getting new pistons, they were perfect, mechanic gave them an acid bath or something to remove carbon.
Cams were too aggressive, were lifting the trailing edge of the shims off the buckets on the end of the lifters, causing a funny noise from 2-3000RPM
Pic 3
Now I'm searching locally for pic4, Shim under bucket (The shim can't be moved by the cam lobes) Otherwise Ill have to purchase the buckets from the US and get a guy locally to shim it for me when we measure the clearance.
Apparantly pic3 is really bad because at high RPM the shim can actually find a way out of the recess in the bucket and wreak all sorts of havoc.
The bottom end is fully reground, resealed, polished, balanced etc and functioning perfectly, the cams and lifters are the only things not running!
What supposedly happened is the car overheated when a heater hose blew, and let the rings go soft. They started burning oil (rather quickly) and the engine rooted one of the big end bearings.
Car is only 135,000km old, so very unfortunate. I'll be installing a proper oil pressure gauge, and also looking at a coolant level indicator with an in cabin buzzer, juuuust in case.
Currently have replaced Radiator, clutch, most engine parts, suspension, wheels, soft top, shift boots, half the interior, all filters, all heater and coolant hoses, thermostat and a relay, timing wheel and exhaust for fun
Once I get the engine running again, I have plans for some nicer 4-2-1 headers, to try and maximise low end torque.
Then I'm going to replace the discopartyLIGHTS head unit with something a little more OEM (and AUX cable+USB) and the seats with bucket seats (not Sparco Sprint Jr this time!)
Possibly thinking of going from 15x7 et40? to 15x9 et40 to fit a little more rubber on there and fill the arches a little, but I'm struggling with the notion that I won't be able to increase the width and decrease the weight. Unless anyone knows of a 15x8 / 8.5 / 9 that weighs less than 5.4kg?
