Smart man. I know something about wet roads and high-po Miatas.

 

The dyno operator took an hour long lunch break, and when he came back, Jeff had steamed cleaned the shop and perfectly restored every piece of equipment in the bay.

 

I laughed. Wish I could prop that.

 

I may have, if the garage itself wasn't surgically clean. Rare to see a shop so clean.

 

Anyone have an explanation for how/why the torque on my ARP studs suddenly went to ****?

So I'm not going to post the dyno graph because now I know why I am disappointed with it. We were getting the same power as before (360/300) but it was developing way later in the rpm range, and nothing timing wise/boost tuning was fixing it. So we just tuned it as it was and I was going to try to find out where the hell my power was going down low.

My timing was checked with a timing light using MS to lock it in at 10º. I checked literally everything else and I was stumped and pretty pissed off. Decided to do a compression check and what did I find? Low on all cylinders...****. So I pulled the valve cover and decided to check my studs to see if maybe they weren't tight enough and they were only torqued to 30 ft lbs!

I know I checked 5-6 times, going over every single stud to ensure they were torqued to 55 ft lbs, I went in stages from 20/30/40/55. What would cause them to lose their clamping force? All the studs were bottomed out(by hand) I used ARP Ultratorque thread lube...what happened here?

Gonna throw it back together tonight after doing the tightening sequence over again but just want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong.

 

I don't know about your head studs, but since all my cars have those ARPs, I'm pretty darn curious. All I've ever done is bottom the studs with an allen wrench and then torqued the nuts sequentially like you described.

That said, I would think 30 ft-lbs would still be enough for full compression on a compression check. Did you look for other possible issues? Valve lash perhaps (you're using a '99+ head, right)? Leakdown?

 

I feel a little silly asking, but did you torque the bolts down using the correct pattern? It's hard to imagine how much of a PITA that's gotta be.

 

I do 60ft/lbs, but what's 5ft/lbs.

 

Valve lash, at least told to me by the engine shop was set within spec for a 99 head.

The only reason I THOUGHT to check the studs was weeping around the head gasket after the dyno runs and when doing pulls on the dyno seeing a slight puff of coolant smoke out of the exhaust. Gave me a clue that something was going on there.

My only guess, is that when I torqued them down I used my old torque wrench, before I dropped it and broke it. Maybe it wasn't calibrated properly after 3 years of service.

Saying that, 25 ft lbs of disparity is a rather large calibration error when everything else is torqued down properly.

 

I think I may do just that.

 

I wasn't asking what the valve lash was when it left the machine shop. I was asking what is it now? But, as you know, I'm pretty scarred from my valve experiences on the Red car last year. It's been fine since I switched machine shops.

Yikes! Well, you can give them a retorque and hope for the best. Oftentimes though, once a HG has been breeched, it will need to be changed. You'll know soon enough.

 

Like always Hornet is right. Even torqued back down correctly I'm still having significant coolant loss/boiiling issues. It picked up a lot more low end so I think it is sealing better, just not enough to avoid a new gasket. OEM gasket on its way (instead of the Fel-Pro) from Flyin' Miata.

Damn these gaskets start to add up fast I'm yanking my exhaust/intake manifold still connected to the head, not spending another $50 on those. Thanks again for the stud removal trick Hornetball. Makes it easy to remove/slide in like buttah.

Question real quick on the thermostat. Does the jiggly little metal thingamabob need to be vertical I am thinking back and I may have installed my at at 45º. Does that affect much?

Hoping it gets here Thursday, my brother is getting married Saturday in Idaho and hasn't driven/seen the car yet and want to have some fun. Assuming this fixes the issue and it isn't my block that needs to be redecked.

I'm guessing the root cause was the torque wrench being **** and torquing the head at 30 ft lbs of tq. Held for a while then popped when I was getting tuned.

 

Yes, needs to be vertical. Doubly so if reroute.

That's the air bleed that allows air past the thermostat while its closed. I usually snap the brass jiggly thing in half and remove it so that the remaining hole acts like a tiny bypass. Then I add another tiny hole on the other side of the thermostat. It seems to smooth out the operation (read: temperature swings) in the motor as the thermostat opens and closes and I have no trouble with warmup. I should also point out that I have the M-Tuned reroute. In the past I have been criticized for doing this, but it seems to work fine for me. Caveat emptor and all that.

 

Damn, not sure how I missed reading up on that. I had a suspicion when I was putting it back on but lately I haven't been taking as many photos from when I tear something down. I used to take a photo of everything so that I would know its correct orientation/install procedure. Lately, with how little time I've had, I just tear into ****.

I can't wait for you to turbo that amazing engine you've built up G. This EFR man...it is just god damn amazing at 20 psi. 2nd and 3rd make me giggle and commit treasonous acts of ******* driving(IE flooring it at every damn stop light).

 

The block and head will likely need to be cleaned. I dunno about the aluminum, maybe a solvent? But the block is iron and can be sanded. A file with very light sand paper wrapped long ways works well.

 

I think its starting to dawn on me exactly how much of a monstrosity I've been building this whole time

 

Well at least this is easy to remove. Gotta love V-band, AN fittings, and quick disconnects. Also not having to remove the intake and exhaust manifold makes it nice. Took 30 minutes or so to yank it.

 

I see no dowel pins, make sure you have two of those.

 

This...concerns me. I can't recall there being two. Aren't they only in the block? What problems would that cause.

 

<p>Still in the block? That's where mine stayed.</p>