vanster

At long last we will learn what is really wrong with he red car
It's on it's way to Greg Brown's and it will be going under the knife this week.

Speedtoys

Good, it can share stories with my car, it's in for trans work.

vanster

Could be a big knife and a lot of drugs. Could be a rod...will know more tomorrow
Argh!

dr bob

Positive attitude. Stiff upper lip and all. It will be wonderful after the surgeon has done his magic.

jcorenman

Yep, we patted both of them today. The good news is that we are out of Greg's hair, our GT is back on the road. Thread to follow.

Speedtoys

Good..cant wait to hear what my issue is. Never seen Greg's face so...well, so like that.

vanster

Good news..not a rod
whooo hooo

Bertrand Daoust

Chalkboss

Good news Van. Keep us posted!

EMan 928

If the GT has that sweet engine I saw a couple of weeks ago, please post sooner than later

jcorenman

Yep, that one. But we're getting off-topic...

So Van, if not rod bearings then what???

vanster

I think it's a broken valve spring for one. Also in the back of my mind since I have all the receipts for the car from day one, I show that the water pump was replaced by Devek in 1999 with a rebuilt unit. I am wondering if the pump is making all the racket and the valve spring is the reason for the reported puff of smoke every 30 seconds or so. ( I have never seen the puff personally ).
I'm sure I will hear in a few days what it is. Just pleased that hopefully it's not a rod.
I am perplexed why it went thru a great deal of oil in only 200 miles unless it's being burned off by a valve not opening properly.

vanster

Well ... it's a big knife. At first we thought it was a rod, nope. Greg kept looking and discovered that the oil had a grey tint to it. He ran a camera into a cylinder to only see scarred walls. When I did a top end refresh I had the intake powder coated. When I was re assembling i cleaned the heck out of the inside of everything but not clean enough. I guess there was a pocket of sand that found it's way into everything that moves. Greg happens to have another similar engine that he can swap out and hang as many bits from my engine. So the motor comes out, new motor goes in. I think the upside of this is that now we can look at the steering rack, a/c, motor mounts, clutch etc. At the end of the day I will have a good with good mechanicals ie: ( Greg Brown motor)
Now for that coffee table or rather cocktail table.

Cosmo Kramer

Glad to see you found what happened. I imagine the sand came from blasting the old coating off. A good technique for cleaning is filling your laundry tub with water, submerging and flushing the parts excessively.

Car is in good hands, you will be up and running before you know it!

zekgb

The S3 plenums have a ridiculous number of nooks and crannies to hide blast media. I spent something like 5 hours getting that stuff out of my driver's side plenum with at least a couple of dozen rinse, dry, repeat cycles after each of which a bit more would appear. I finally had to snake my hand inside to find the last few spots where it was hiding and get a brass brush on the stuff or I might have had the same outcome with mine as there was more than enough to kill the engine if I hadn't gotten it. Unfortunately I managed to burn a valve instead, but that at least wasn't directly caused by me.