Yeah, the smell thing was weird. I smelled something scorched as soon as I lifed the driver's side head off. But looking at the heads and pistons, nothing looked obviously damaged. There was a little bit of wear along the bottom side of the cylinders, but nothing looked gouged or anything. In fact, I'd say the cylinders could use a simple honing and be good as new, but what do I know about motor internals.

Also, the pistons looked okay, and the valved seemed alright. The only thing noticeable was a gouge around a non-critical part of the right intake cam... probably from the previous owner attempting to put a wrench on it to take off the cam sprocket. :roll:

I think we'll have to split the block to inspect the bearings and journals. Since there's all sorts of copper looking debris in the oil pan, I've got to think we'll find some busted rod bearings (are they copper?). The other possibility may be that the motor ingested a penny.. that would explain the turbo damage and the bits in the oil. :lol:

What I'm hoping now is that the problem can be fixed w/o a new short block, and all I'll need are some new piston rings, a hone on the cylinders, and some bearings. Adding in the cost of gaskets, I'm probably out the door for $500. But knowing my luck, the ring lands are shot, and the crank is trashed, and I'll have to sleeve the block or toss it out. :roll:

On a side note, does anyone have an idea on what hoses and line can be ditched off the motor? I know I don't need the water jacket for the throttle-body, or the heater core lines. Can I just remove those bits and plug the holes, or do I have to route them back into themselves?

At least you didn't crack it open and find a piston had literally disappeared from its cylinder, like we did on the yellow car after one of its blowups. :lol:

There is a lot that you can strip depending on what stuff you still plan on using in the car, give me a call and I can go over it with you.

Mike

You'll want to have the crank polished, rods sized and then the replace the rings and bearings if it's just bearing damage. Everything that has oil pass through it will need to be cleaned or hot tanked or else you'll be doing exactly the same process again 1-2 track sessions in.

Mike

I don't think I'll be doing the final assembly. I'll probably have to find a shop to put it together for me, just to make sure I don't miss something important. As it is, I'm already out of my comfort zone with trying to figure out what's broken. I was expecting to see scoring and gouging on the #1 cylinder wall, but it doesn't really look at all bad.

I think I need to get someone experienced to figure out what needs replacing, then have 'em do the work. Unless of course it's just cheaper to get a new shortblock, I think I could assemble it if I'm just putting the heads back on the block.

I got a guy.

Jeremy came over last night, and we were talking a bit about your motor Scott. After telling him what we found, he informed me that the piston pins in the turbo 2.5l are offset by about 2mm, which causes the piston to actually rock side to side in the cylinder when traveling up and down. All pistons do this to a degree, but the STi setup causes it to be more pronounced. Perfectly normal. In fact, it seems that if you were to pull a head and NOT see that top and bottom scoring that we found, you've likely got a frozen piston pin. So if nothing else, it seems that there's no worry with those cylinder marks. Good news I suppose.

Well, you free Wed night to help me split the block so we can see what's really going on?

I'll give you a call!

hey I wouldn't mind coming by to check it out maybe even offer another set of hands if needed.

me too..... maybe

I'll bring milkshakes... :cool:

beer?

It looks like I'll be at work 'till 6pm, if not later... perhaps tonight's not a great night to get together for this.

pm me about those lateral links. If you have time I would like to get those tonight.

Just lemme know what night would be good for you Scott. Long as I don't have something else pressing planned, you know I'm down!

FUCKING SNAP RINGS. :mad:

I've been trying to remove the snap ring that holds the wrist pin in my #2 piston for two weeks now. I've bought 12 pairs of snap ring pliers to try to get it out. I've come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a useful pair of snap ring pliers. They're all either so cheap they can't even bend the ring enough to release it, or they're too wide to fit through the access hole in the block to take it out.

At this point, I'll pay the $100 for a snap-on set of pliers if I could be guaranteed it would work. Anyone have access to a tool truck this weekend?

I agree completely on snap ring pliers. They all suck. The one thst are even worse ar teh ones that only have a 45 degree angle cut into the end of the ring and no holes to grab onto. Those require 7 screwdrivers and 9 small children with good eyesight and precise little fingers to remove.

Cory's tool box is probably easier and costs less. Call him.

Probably only cost you a 4 piece and a beer to borrow a good pair. :)

He already tried me, the only ones I have are short, high leverage ones. No reach whatsoever.

I've got one tool guy I can get ahold of on the weekends, and he's out of town for labor day, but I can see if Jeremy has a pair that'll reach in there. Seeing that he used to work on Subarus, it's probably a good chance...

qksubi happened to drop by my place yesterday and had a pair I borrowed. As of this morning, the #2 cylinder is free!

Now I just need to return the $30 in snap ring pliers I bought for no reason.

Dean, check these out. I haven't personally used a pair, but they look promising ;)

http://www.knipex.com/index.php?id=7...&ukat=sicher01

So, this is what a ruined rod bearing looks like.

Now I need someone with some experience to take a look at everything else so I know what else needs to be replaced. To my inexperienced eye, the pistons and cylinders look fine. Hopefully that's the case, meaning I can just have the crank cleaned up, get some new rods and bearings, and get this thing back together.

But even if that's all that needs to be done, I still need to have everything hot-tanked and assembled properly... which I don't think I can do myself. Then there's the whole pile of work getting the motor back in the car with all the rest of the stuff that needs to be done for cooling. I don't think I'm making the Sept time trials.

Wow that dosn't look pretty. Good luck with all that scott.
ryan

Ouch.

Well, that is better than pistons or top end I guess.

The other rods and bearings may be fine. If they look good and have the right tolerance (clevite them) I think you should be able to reuse them assuming you can buy just one rod??? I have no clue what one, or a set of rods is worth.

You may not be able to save the crank depending on how deep it is cut.

Going by Cobb's prices:

New rod: $175 (so $700 for all 4)
New crank: $1500 (the lightweight one is only $3200 :roll: )
Rod Bearings: $100
Main Bearings: $250

With prices like that, just buying an assembled short block for $2700 is cheaper, and there's no assembly required.

I'm hoping all I need is a new OEM rod, some cleanup on the crank, and new bearings. But I don't have the expertise to know.

I have some spare rods kicking around here you can have, what you'll need to do is have everything tanked and cleaned, the crank will need to be inspected and polished if good. The remaining rods will need to be sized to make sure they are all ok.

Let me know if I can help.

Mike

I'm pretty sure I'll need a replacement rod. The other three seem to spin effortlessly. And I need to find a machine shop that's not 6 months backlogged to tank the motor (and the heads too?) and inspect the crank. If you can hook me up with a free rod, that would rock!

Hey Mike, a question about heads: are the buckets specific to the valves? I didn't realize they would just slide out if I turned the head over with the cams removed, and the buckets got all mixed up... that's when I noticed they're individually numbered. :oops: Do I need to do some measuring or something to figure out which ones go where? And should I have them cleaned/inspected after a rod bearing failure, or should they be alright? I didn't see any debris in them from the bearing like I saw in the bottom end.

You'll want anything that passes oil through it to be cleaned and cleaned well.

You'll need to work with the buckets to get the valve lash set, you'll need a feeler gauge to do this.

Mike

Anything that's exposed to the oil needs to be cleaned out before cranking the engine again.

I was kinda figuring... sounds like the best thing to do is to drop off the heads, block halves, crank, rods, and pistons at a shop and have them clean and assemble the long block.

If Cory will let me steal some time over at Nissan to use the parts washer, I can clean up the oil pan and related parts, and the oil cooler is getting replaced with something larger, so that won't need cleaning.

Speaking of oil cooling, there are two ports on the oil pump that are capped off... is that for a factory oil cooler? Can I ditch the relocation adapter and just run AN or pipe fittings off those ports?

And at some point I need to figure out which ancillary water pipes I can remove from the motor. I figure I don't need the de-icing coolant that flows around the butterfly, or the pipes that route water to the heater core, right? Can I just remove that stuff and cap it at the block, or do I need to just jumper the pipes together to bypass the flow and leave the pipes there?

I'd much rather ditch anything on the motor that's unnecessary.

And while I'm rambling and replying to myself...

I need a new turbo. Since I'm giving up on autocross, I think the 8cm TD06-20G would be the best thing to go with without having to change any of my intake stuff. Would I see a big benefit going with something larger? Perhaps a Green and a Perrin 3" inlet hose? Or bigger yet with a rotated kit (though the cost seems pretty astronomical especially since I'll have to replace my exhaust)?

I was pretty happy with the power output of the previous turbo, but I'd like to shift the band towards the top-end since I'm not running autocross competitively anymore. And a bigger turbo running less boost should be more efficient at this altitude, meaning less heat in the intake, at the same power levels.

If you are truly ditching autox, go with a rotated GT-30.

mmmm green

Hmm, i was under the impression that the TD-06 20G and the FP green were very similar in size and output, although there are more options for the green since you can choose inlet diameter size and such. With the rotated kit you wont have to lose your current cat back....i have the perrin kit and i am still running the borla hush. But the kit(up pipe, downpipe, wastegate, install etc....) plus new turbo will get pretty pricey. At least with the Hydra you wont have any idle issues and tuning should be pretty straight forward. I went with the GT3076 and .63a/r hotside (against mike's wishes) for the better response but reduced top end. I still managed to eek out 340whp with full spool about 3800rpm's. If you're giving up on auto-x this may be an option....just depends how much more money and work you want to put into it. In my opinion at least you have all the supporting mods to run any turbo you want.

ryan

You can come over here and use the solvent tank any time you like man, but the actual "parts washer" cabinet is busted. We've just got that tank that sits on the wall by my tool box.

Yeah, the only reason I was thinking Green vs. the TD06-20G was because of the option to run the larger inlet... I'm currently 3" all the way to the inlet hose where it pinches down to stock diameter for the TD05-20G that's on there that needs to be replaced.

The cost of the rotated turbo kit is pretty high. I've got an Nvidia turbo-back, so I'm not sure if the cat-back section would bolt to the Perrin down-pipe that comes with the rotated kit. The best move would probably be to sell all my intake and exhaust bits to help cover the cost of the Perrin GT30R rotated kit, then just weld a straight pipe cat-back w/ a SuperTrap for Laguna Seca noise control... or just do what MikeW did on the GST shop car, and have the exhaust exit under the car w/ a down-turn (and never go off into the shrubs to avoid starting a fire). :lol:

And Cory, all I'd need is the solvent tank... that should be plenty to get the bits of bearings out of the oil pan.

Cool! You can bring some stuff by when you get a chance!

I thought you had an ATI turbo back

Invidia... whatever. (Actually "GeForce" would be a better name for a line of exhausts than it is for a graphics card.)

im pretty sure you could make the catback fit by just changing the flanges but even with that said they may match up unless the perrins a v band or a 3 bolt flange or something like that.

i agree with the 3076. maybe a littl bigger ar though such as an .82

I totally agree, .82 hotside for sure on a 2.5L.

Mike

Scott, trust me on this you are way better off without the "special tool" (it's special alright)... it's the biigest POS tool I have ever used in my life!!!! If you need help with that motor just give me a call.. I have no life and am willing to help..... P.S. I've done that crap several time before.. it's not that hard, plus I have the tools you will need... Like the piston clip pliers, the wrist pin puller and the cam locking tools.

Well, everything is apart now, and I don't know that I want to try to put it all back together in my garage. Like I said earlier, I'll probably just get it into a shop. Having done all the tear-down myself, and since I'll be doing all the re-installation work, I think I can justify the cost of getting the motor professionally built... though I wouldn't mind helping in order to learn.

Wern't the last 5 motors "professionally" built????? What happened to them ???

oo sick burn!

Elevation and engine management that doesn't adapt to it. At least that's my theory for this one.

I would have to agree with you cody.... It's gotta be a mix between people that build engines that don't give a shit and a mis-tune... Hey wait.... sounds like an engine in a yellow race car that I own.