German car.

Say it with me . . . "never again," "never again," "never again," . . . .

Alas, I have a Mercedes my wife won't let go of.

 

Right? Sadly, I absolutely love this car even though it's a bitch to work on. If Mazda would get their **** together and bring the Mazda 6 wagon skyactiv diesel with a 6 speed to the USA I'd buy one in a heart beat.

 

Dat HPDC Al casting doe...

 

IIRC, the ND sway bar is like that too.

--Ian

 

You haul engine to CSTG. You get built properly. I give you deal.

 

Curly...



I shall make the trip.

For those out of the loop, I was enjoying my car last night and after letting off after a pull in 4th gear at 20psi at 8k rpm, it starting chugging like it wanted to die. Managed to crawl slowly home(was close) I saw smoke pouring out of the catch can and a compression of 70 psi on cylinder #4. Guessing a piston ring gave up the ghost.

Good game me. If there was money on this happening I believe Hornetball won the pot on that several pages ago.

Hopefully if things don't look to bad, I can reuse the rods and pistons (not holding my breath on the latter), crank, and oil pump(billet). Also assuming no damage to the head.

That way I just need a used short block, pistons, rings, bearings, and someone(CSTG) who knows their way around a Miata.

 

Bummer.

 

I was semi joking, but if you really want to, I can squeeze in an engine build. If you get the car here too, we can get it dyno'd at KO Racing which is just next door too.

It'd be a bit of a crazy trip for an engine build, but if you wanna make it work, let's figure it out. Just wanna see you up and running again. Total bummer dude.

 

^Solid dude there.
Do it Jeff.
Take a break from the bakery and hang out in Portland for a while. I have some friends that would be happy to put you up for a few days if these guys have full houses.

 

I figured you were partially joking, but then I considered the fact that I would much rather go out of my way to have someone who knows what they are doing. Having someone I don't have to worry whether they following the proper specs is worth going out of my way for.

The dyno being next door is rather convenient as well!

I wouldn't put it on your schedule any time soon, as I need to see if I can afford to rebuild it anytime soon with the holidays coming up(lots of gifting supplies for the bakery).

It IS a good excuse to get drunk on very good IPA while sitting in the mountains having my mind blown at how green it is. I've lived in the desert too long. Everytime I go to the Pacific Northwest I can't believe it gets so green.

 

Hopefully by now, you've got a solid manager you can trust. Sometimes it's a bitch being a small business owner, but there is nothing more noble in my opinion.

 

Took a couple hours due to beer and Radiolab(great podcast) but its out. Time to tear into this thing and see what happened.

 

Got the oil pan off and was terrified I might see an explosion of glittery metal bits but all I saw were 4 small bits of metal that broke off something. I haven't removed the pistons/crank before and so I'm going to read up on it a bit before I attempt it but I'm guessing these are parts of the piston rings.





I couldn't get a fingernail or feel an edge on the cylinder walls so I'm hoping there isn't any other damage and will be able to retain the pistons. Too early to tell until I completely tear it apart.

 

That's not rings.

 

Correct. All rings are in place and fine.

Bryan and I are scratching our heads at figuring out what those pieces are.

Here are some pictures of the bearings. As I don't know much, I'll leave my opinion out of it. My gut tells me not good. The crank surface is not bad at all though.

From Left to Right 1/2/3/4

 

That's some serious galling, especially the bottom ones. Pics of the crank?

 

Surprisingly, really good. No galling or obvious marks.

Why do you think I lost so much compression in #4? Bearings don't cause that....

 

It looks familiar, but I can't quite think what it is. Looks like some sort of bearing cage. Are the black pieces metal? It appears to be some sort of plastic (ABS?) from the pics.

 

Damn, now that I have the picture in my head, I do believe you are correct. It isn't magnetic I know that. Not sure if plastic or not, haven't tested it for that.

See, this is why we need props back.

 

The pieces of metal are probably bearing material, they look horrible.

It almost looks like those three other pieces could fit together to create some trianglular shape with a beveled circle in it, maybe you'd recognize it if you put the pieces together. That's going to slowly kill me until I know what it is.