Ranger's Dec09 motor rebuild thread (lol)

#261

kishg wrote:

Lol, you’re doing a fine job keeping track. I’ve a position open for crew chief. Pay isn’t so good but there’s the free beer.

#262

I’m rooting for you, too Ranger. If you are at CMP, your neighbor is almost guaranteed a good night’s sleep on Friday and Saturday. :laugh:

Billy Gropp has signed up, so the field continues to grow!!

#263

free beer and cute chicks? :slight_smile:

#264

kishg wrote:

Well, I’m dependent upon Greg Moberg for the chicks. He brought 3, count them…3, to Lemons. I foresee myself paddocking up right next to him for the foreseable future.

BillZ is often good for bringing chicks, but this whole “last girlfriend, current girlfriend, and this is future girlfriend” is hard to navigate. A person can’t tell when they might be c**kblocking or doing him a favor.

Then there’s Alex “UkrainianChick.com” Rez. But so far all he’s got is his website.

You can be sure I’ll be near them somewhere.

I know this will come as a shock to you, but chicks are just one more area where I bring more enthusiasm then skill.

#265

Plan A: Find a good running car on craigslist with wrecked body and/or shot interior, do a compression, leakdown and oil pressure test on the motor.

Plan B: Shop around for a motor that was a known good runner…harder to test but that is how I found mine for $250…

Plan C: Have someone build a motor from your spare.

I can help. There are good runners out there for $800-1200.

Al

#266

The motor lasted 4 laps and then started losing power and smoking. Is tragic, albeit a little comically tragic. I’m going to pull the motor and ship it to Chuck Baader.

I’m dying to know what the problem is tho. If I screwed up, what did I do wrong? Compression tests in cyl 1-5 were awful. I didn’t bother to test 6. Cam and rockers look fine. Tbelt looks fine, oil and water quality look fine.

Only thing I saw of interest is that there seems to be a little oil in the rubber intake elbow.

#267

Assuming your head is good (no pun intended), wouldn’t you just be better off junking that bottom end and using your spare? odds are the block is cracked by now (if it wasn’t earlier).

#268

kishg wrote:

You’re saying I likely cracked my block Friday? Why would you say that?

Water and oil quality is fine. The block can’t be cracked. Maybe removing pistons and then replacing pistons without doing a ring/hone is a big mistake for some reason that I don’t understand.

I’m mystified on this one. I can’t come up with a cause that would result in 25psi compression in all cylinders.

The motor is now pulled. I’d never pulled a motor and manual transmission as a single unit before. I’d only done an auto. No matter how you do it, pulling a motor by yourself is going to be no picnic and a stupid thing or two is going to rear it’s head and waste an hour of your time.

The piston on my Harbor Freight engine hoist failed. So I disassembled it and was about to load it up in the truck to take back to HF and see if they’d replace it under warranty when I tried the piston’s pump one more time. And it worked. So I put the engine hoist back together and drove on.

Then I had a downtube want to separate from it’s exhaust manifold until I put the engine back in place, and an engine that flat-ass didn’t want to go back in place.

I think that separating motor and tranny, and then pulling only the motor is easier then pulling both as a unit if you have a helper. If you don’t have a helper then it might not be possible to separate motor from tranny and therefore you have to pull them as a unit.

#269

The motor is now stripped and sitting on a pallet, with the spare block, in the back of my truck. Tomorrow it goes to a a shop in town that will help me “band” the engine and block to the pallet.

In the photo I’ve moved the race car back out of the garage and I’m now taking the engine out to the street to put it into the back of the truck.

Without serious air tools the flywheel bolts and the front crank bolt would be a real pita.

I took my spare head today to my local machine shop. A couple weeks to do a valve job on it, and then I’ll decide whether or not to install the spare motor.

I noted an interesting thing in this effort. Almost none of the fasteners were on as tight as I’d tightened them down. I mean almost every damned fastener everywhere. Some of them were kinda spooky loose. I think that from now on I’m going to clean every bolt and use locktite on it.

#270

You should be able to get the engine on the pallet and in the truck w/o removing the shell. Position the pallet on the tail gate and lay the engine on its side for the lift. If you chain the engine tight to the hoist arm you won’t hit the shell. Once the engine is on the pallet, slide it forward into the truck bed.

#271

wouldn’t bad rings explain the low compression?

Al

#272

FARTBREF wrote:

[quote]wouldn’t bad rings explain the low compression?
Al[/quote]

Yes, but all cylinders tested fine in compression and leakdown tests. Then I removed all pistons and inspected the rings and cylinders. Then I put all the pistons back in. The motor probably had an hour of more time on it, then 4 laps and died. And now compression in all cylinders is awful.

How can the rings in all cylinders suddenly go bad? Maybe they were damaged by the Dec overheat in some way that allowed them to pass the tests and run hard for 4 laps? I dunno. It’s a mystery.

#273

this pic would have been much more effective if you were behind the camera and that cute neighbor that you piss off was with the block

Ranger wrote:

#274

Engine and spare block getting loaded into a truck headed for Chuck.

#275

That’s 2 pics and we haven’t seen the cute neighbor yet. I say pics of cute neighbor or BAN.

#276

King Tut wrote:

I say you go cause problems in your own neighborhood. Everytime I piss the neighbor off I get a ton of grief from the wife. You want pics of cuties, go hang out at Reznikov’s UkrainianGirls.com

#277

I say we find out who the cute neighbor is and direct her to this thread:laugh: Chuck

#278

Ranger wrote:

Does having the homeowners association send me a letter about my E30 on jackstands in my driveway for a couple weeks and then having a heated 10 e-mail conversation with the administrator of the association count? Not sure if she is hawt, but I could e-mail her and ask since I just put the E30 back up on jackstands again yesterday.

#279

Ranger wrote:

Is that not the norm? Anyone?

#280

worn rings also explain the oil in intake boot…

Al