Honing question
 

Hey guys, I recently bought a 1990 Miata that came with a supercharger. I removed the supercharger and sold it. Now I am debating wether to remove the engine to tap the oil pan or just drill it and flush the pan with kerosene/oil. I think I want to remove the engine and change the rings while I am at it. Everything else should be ok as it was recently rebuilt with Mazda parts 15000 miles ago and ran 8psi on the supercharger.
Now, I am on a budget, is it possible to hone the cylinder walls with the head still on the engine? Would you guys also change the rods while I am at it with SCAT or m-tuned rods? I am looking at 200whp with an artech manifold, megasquirt, intercooler and sr20T25.

Suggestions are welcomed, and no I am not swapping a 1.8. I want to build a 1.8 and have it on stand by for when the 1.6L blows up.

It's a fresh engine. Why mess with it? Rings are pretty much the last thing you touch on teardown and the first thing you install on rebuild . . . no easy way to replace them. Cannot be done with head on.

Drilling/tapping in place isn't too bad. I did it in place on the 1.6 in my silver car.

Why do you want to do rings? In my opinion, if they are sealing correctly, don't touch them. If you have excessive blowby, low compression and/or leakdown numbers, THEN tear that prick down and address the issues.

If you tear down the motor, at the very least drop some forged rods in there.

You can not re-ring a motor, or hone the motor, with the head on.

ALSO, you should swap in a 1.8 :wink:


IMO, this is what you should do. Drill/tap the plan with the engine in place, boost the 1.6, run it for now. On the side pick up a 1.8, rebuild it properly with new rings, forged rods, etc. Then you can swap in a fresh "built" 1.8 down the road. With the right turbo setup, you will only need to get a different manifold for the 1.8 and you can reuse everything else.

Drill/tap with the oil in the motor, then change the oil and go. I wouldn't mess with pulling the motor, especially if you're planning to build another one anyway.

Sounds good, I think I will leave the engine in it. It is leaking a little oil from the oil pan somehow but not enough that I would pull it out. I will boost it, blow it up, learn from my mistakes and build a 1.8 in the process.

Sounds like a good plan, duder. Although you may find it's actually pretty hard to "blow up" and old 1.6, at least I could never get mine to let loose feeding as much boost as possible to it on a mediocre tune.

Unless you go with a decent sized turbo that is, then it's probably pretty easy to blow up.