OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

Mine has been run hard with 500hp for the last 3 years. 1.5 years was without a dry sump. it's time for a refresh. If you don't hear any knocking the crank should be fine. I got 10 bucks on a cam bearing.

Scaxx

No knocking so that's a plus, if it's a cam bearing I'd be pumped. Then I'll have to buy a cam, oh darn haha

My sister's boyfriend is a big lawyer over in NY and she's really good at writing **** so I'm having them look over my claim letter. Gonna probably send it out on wednesday since I think he wasn't going to be able to look at it until tuesday. I'll be pulling the engine this weekend probably because I'm not expecting Chevy to do anything but I have to try.

Scaxx

Realized I never posted any of these, despite the fact the engine is in **** condition I'm still very happy with how the car turned out, there's still more work to be done but I think once the engine situation is sorted it's going to be pretty solid.

Scaxx

Well I started dissasembling stuff, pictures aren't too exciting, but I took a couple. Started with the wiring and disconeected the whole harness from the engine. Then I moved to the driveline and radiator. Still have to disconect the clutch line but other than that the engine is ready to drop out. Now that I'm having to disassemble everything I'm very glad that I took into account maintenance when I built the car, it's made it very easy to work on. That said, progress is slow because it's very hard to get motivation to actually get something done. I have a hard time focusing on any single task and I've just been trying to knock out little chunks at a time. The plan is to take the engine to my machine shop buddy's buddy who's going to dissaesble the engine with us and figure out exactly what went wrong, what needs to be fixed, and what doesn't. I guess I should know by this weekend how much money I'm going to have to come up with.

On a better note, there were some things that I still needed to finish that I'm noticing as I take things apart, ie a new heatshield for the new starter, paint the throttle cable bracket I made, little ****, but stuff that matters. I may also add some flex pipes to the 3" area of my exhaust to help with vibrations and ****. But I need to finish the engine first

Downmented

iTrader: (1)

Random question, but are those cinder blocks on little roller carts? How well does that seem to work for you? During my build ive had the entire front end torn apart, so rolling it around has required some new wheels, so I initially purchased some casters from HF that turned out to be crap. Then i got some super heavy duty ones from amazon and welded my own cart together which seems to work a bit better. Just figured id ask, sorry to derail lol

Scaxx

Despite the somewhat sketchy appearance they've worked really well. Pretty sure they're just the HF ones but then we screw some plywood across the empty space in the middle to make it easier to put things on them and add a little rigidity. Although they're kinda a pain in the *** to move the car around on since they don't roll that well, it's still better than nothing and they add a nice bit of height. They really come in handy, we have a ton laying around the garage since my dad is really into making beer/wine/moonshine and he sets carboys on them all the time.

They also come in handy for dropping the engine/trans out as a whole with the subframe since you can just use two under the subframe and one under the trans so it's easy to roll the drivetrain around. This isn't as much of a problem with the stock miata engine/trans but the damn t56 is so heavy I like to just leave it all connected together

Scaxx

This tuesday I went and picked up a nice racing beat header for 120, probably gonna flip it, especially since the blue car came with one as well. Nice guy, silver na that he put a vvt engine in and is turboing, I guess a tree fell on his last miata. Poor guy. Not sure why he sold the header for so little since I sold that shitty ebay header with the flange cut off that I picked up a while back for super cheap for 80. I also went and picked up a blue hardtop for the blue car since my mom wanted a hartop, had a defroster and headliner so that's nice. Looks funny as **** on brad but it looks really nice on the other car. I'm happy we got it.

I tore the engine down yesterday with my buddy to figure out what happened. First thing we did was check the cam, none of the bearings looked that roughed up, cam looks to be reusable. There was some slight damage to the bearings but that's most likely from the really fine metal in the oil scratching them. My buddy was thinking that it might be the bore because of the fact that the metal was magnetic and so fine and sure enough a couple of the bores had some very slight scoring. We then pulled on of the caps to check the crank and the crank looks fine which was the big relief. Since he's only been working at the shop for a year and some change he doesn't really do a whole lot of diagnosis and so one of his buddies is going to come by on monday and give a second opinion on the engine and he can advise me where to go from there. Best case scenario is a hone, rings, polish on the crank and all new bearings. Worst at this point is probably new .005 over pistons, a bore and the other stuff. If I do need to get new pistons I'll get some nice Wiseco domed ones with bigger valve reliefs for a nice cam. Otherwise I may flycut the pistons at home so I can still run a bigger cam.

All in all, it could have turned out much worse, I'm glad we quit running the car when we did otherwise there could have been a lot more damage. Now I need to come up with the money to fix all this.

Pictures are of random things I took pictures of while tearing down, mostly just notes for myself.

OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

If you're going to do pistons now would be a good time to upgrade the Rod bolts to ARP. The stock ones aren't fantastic.

Scaxx

I forgot about those, I hear the stock ones like to do some stretching lol, I'll add those to the list as well. Anything else you can think of that would be a good idea while I'm in there?

OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

you could literally change everything haha. everything costs 200-300 bucks. add it all up and that's how people build $20,000 engines. you might want to do a meling Oil pump. but that's not too hard to change afterwards.

4strings

iTrader: (1)

Hi Scaxx, I've found, "while I'm in there" to be a very expensive set of words and it's a running joke among my friends. The nice thing is that one you take care of the "while I'm in there" stuff, you have greater confidence in your setup. Keep at it and you'll get there.

Scaxx

Hahaha well, of course I could change everything but just recommended things. I'll probably get a new oil pump either way since the oil was pretty metal-y. If I do have to get new pistons I'm probably not gonna get a cam for a little bit just cause of my money situation. May cut out the middle of my rad support so that I can swap the cam with the engine in the car if I don't put it in with the engine out. Not like it really adds that much rigidity anyway.

Also, the thing that I've been most impressed with is the added rigidity from the seam welding. Whereas the car used to twist if you jacked it up anywhere, it now basically lifts one whole side wherever you lift it.

farpolemiddle

I still think you have a claim with the company that sold you the engine.

Scaxx

I did send in a warranty form, claim letter, and pictures of the damage but haven't heard anything back, they probably just laughed at it. I should find out if I need pistons today since my buddy's friend is coming over to check out the scoring. Crossing my fingers for no new pistons.

Picked out a couple options for a cam, if I don't flycut the pistons then I'll probably go with the tsp cam which is a 231/236 .641"/.615" with 111 lsa

If I flycut the pistons then my top choice is the Lg G6x3 which is known to be a pretty gnarly cam but the ptv is shitty without flycutting, also looking at tick's cam or one of tsp's other cams. Those are:

235/244 .647"/.612" 111 LSA for the lg
233/248 .627”/.612” 113+5 LSA for the Tick cam
235/239 .627"/.624" 112 LSA for the TSP

The g6x3 is my top choice if I don't go with a custom grind, it's known for making real good power, the only drawback is I don't think I'll be able to use 6th gear anymore since I hear there's some bucking until about 1800rpm on the freeway, it's also more expensive than the other two cams which is slightly annoying. All in all though they should all be within about 10whp of each other so at the end of the day it'll make way more power than I need.

OGRacing

iTrader: (1)

when getting a cam just call up comp.
tell them what you want and what you have. the off the shelf cams for corvettes and Camaro's have a tendency to not be so linear with the power delivery. that is something you're going to want with the tiny tires we have. the custom grind cams are still 300 bucks, just like the off the shelf ones.

i told them i have a race car and i want the idle to be as choppy as it possibly can be. power for me comes on at 3k and pulls all the way to red line, perfect for road racing, a bit much for autocross and street duty.

Scaxx

NEW PISTONS AREN'T NEEDED!!!!

Scaxx

Went to the machine shop today and they won't do my engine unless I build it. Well **** them I guess. I feel like I've had nothing but let downs since this god damn summer, ******* tired of this ****.

ryansmoneypit

iTrader: (6)

Join the club dude. I did a no expenses spared build on my bp. It blew up on sunday. I got like 10 hrs of actual fun driving for about 10 grand.

Scaxx

It's funny how that works, some of my buddies throw together the most half-assed rough-edged cars and they never have a problem with them, I put together a car with all new parts and it's dead sooner than I can say "well ****". In fact one of my buddies has been running a 302 that he bought in out of some dudes wheelbarrow for $50 for almost a year, it's only run on seven cylinders for most of that time, dumps oil at a stupid rate and has multiple rod knocks, but it never dies. And they say fords are unreliable haha

I guess I'm just frustrated with the way things have been going and not having much of an income anymore makes it worse, hopefully one day everything will get back together.

ryansmoneypit

iTrader: (6)

Ha! I think we are living parallel lives. I recently quit my job of 12 years, where I had shitloads of disposable income . I'm getting my own thing up and running , at which point I haz zero income right now and for the foreseeable future. I don't even want to fix it , but if I don't, it will just rot and die in the yard. can't let that happen.