travis' brain dump

well… this has been a pretty exciting last few days. (can you feel the sarcasm there?)

A little history…

Ever since my trip in May my car has had an odd idle/sound to it. I took it lightly as I had no other symptoms and the car seemed to be running fine, despite sounding like a subaru, lol. The major issue that arose I thought I was past. I had to replace my turbo a week after I returned due to blown oil seals. (it had 86,000 miles on it. i’d say it had a good life) A few weeks into May I noticed I had a little steam or what appeared to be steam coming from the PCV system on the valve cover. (fresh air side) It was puzzling, but again no major symptoms. A week or so later, I noticed I was burning oil still. Not major, but just a little hear and there. Again, no major issues. So this continued and I noticed the “steam” was getting a little more and more as time was passing. While a concern for me I wasn’t freaking out quite yet. A couple weeks ago, Mike was following me and said I was smoking pretty decently. It smelled a lot like fuel but showed up during a decel and when I got on it. We marked it up to be a possible problem with my drain line from the turbo. It was something we had considered changing anyway, so last week I did so on Friday. Well, Saturday morning I get up to head over to the store to pick some stuff up and as I’m driving I start blowing smoke out from under my hood, tailpipe and anywhere else that had an opening into the engine. Panic struck. When I got to the store I popped the hood and there was oil ALL OVER. Now, at this point I’m about to just give up. Anyone who has been following events the last few months knows this pretty much was the bitter icing on the worst cake ever made.

I got the car back home (after shopping, lol) and started tearing the engine down. I figured it must be a blown head gasket or something. I honestly thought worse, but I was trying to be optimistic and keep my head up about things. I got the cylinder head removed that afternoon and wouldn’t ya know it… blown compression ring. My “steam” was blow-by from the crank case being pressurized. o.O So, this was quite possibly the worst case scenario at this point for me. I might as well have thrown a rod or cracked a piston or something. The only positive in all of this? I keep a supply of motors in my garage. LOL I called around and got an engine crane from a buddy of mine. Andy and I headed over to pick it up so I could start the project. Luckily Andy was off.

So I got the whole thing started and had the motors swapped by 10/11 Sunday night. After a job interview and some errand running, we finished up the rest of the connections in about four hours last night. Total project time. ~14 hours. Not too bad for a complete swap of motors and such. I did have a panic moment at one point when we couldn’t get the car to shift into first. Turns out it was just a misalignment of the shift linkage on the transmission… *whew* So, now the car is running well again. No smoke, no “steam”… I’m running a stock clutch right now and dropped the boost down to 8psi while I debate my next move as to what I’m going to do with the car. We shall see.

Well, things to do. So… later. 🙂