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Where's the fun in that? Thats like giving up

You can never expect it to all go right doing it the "wrong" way.

my mech suggests I give it 10k and just see what happens.

The motor sure as hell doesn't feel like 170. I have traction issues in 1st and 2nd gear with any amount of cornering. I get torque steer shifting into 4th while passing, and the acceleration upto 200kph is linear from 100 or so in 5th.


So its either $70 bucks and my time on a rering job (and the opportunity to examine the bottom end again)

Or $1500 no Wiseco 11.5:1's and overbore and rings and rebalance...


OR just drive the bugger. Its fast enough for me. I'm yet to see if it will take my buddies new A4 S line, but I have a feeling it will.

Do an oil change and use a quart Rislone. Rislone will help re-seat the rings if that's your issue. It's a real good break in oil.

There's a chance your cylinders are out of round. That's why I always recommend a full blueprint before rebuilding an engine.

I'd recommend you, first, do what your mechanic said. Maybe the engine isn't broken in yet. Then, if after a few thousand miles nothing changes, open it up, and check all your measurements. You need to find your problem first, and then decide how to fix it.

I suspect out of round as well, after a day of thinking on it.

Its strange though, PCV plugged, finger on rear vent, almost 0 blowby.

Which leads me to suspect valves... but they were clean. Contact patches were a little thin, but not alarming. Leakdown also only yelided a 5 PSI increase... maybe its time for SLA heads

Inodoro is right though, I need to tear it apart this winter before I can come to any real diagnosis.

On another note, got my oil temp gauge installed and it rises to about 240 at cruise, is this abnormally high? 115C ish.

drops to about 180-210 at lower engine speeds in the city.

Also developed a louder-than-usual tick around cly 3. Just sounds like a dead HLA. Poor thing couldn't handle the colts I suppose.

did 210 on the speedo today (really probably 196). I don't know why the compression reads so low, it still pulls hard up there.

Cup half full answer: Your compression gauge in knackered LOL

New idea: Did you check the alignment of the timing belt?

Alright.

I've decided that the only reasonable explanation for the compression is the cams. So I can quit worrying about that.

I changed the oil for the first time since the race day, and I've gained 5-10 PSI across the board when hot. So you CAN kill oil...

I've started some reasearch for tapping the pan to draw from it. The pickup sits maybe 1/4" off the bottom... I never knew, but then again I never thought of it.



The full line on the stick is still below the lip of the pan by about 1/4". You could put probably 2L of oil in the motor and it would idle fine, sitting still, at 1000 RPM or less, with hot oil. That means you could let it fall off the dipstick about 2L too.

If I weld my bungs on as high as possible I'd still leave at least 3L of oil in the pan, which is enough for me. I check my oil like a maniac anyway.



I was replacing temp sensors the other day and I accidentally dropped the dash sender down into my timing belt. I figured I would have to either tear it down to find it, or tear it down to reset the timing if it jumped... so I just went and cranked it over. If bounced around in there and then jammed in a bit of the covers. A little plastic O shot out and almost hit the GF, but it ran like its usual self, and the timing is still dead on.

So today I was under the hood and noticed this:



I guess it went through an idler. Oh well, it will blow when it will blow. Motor is coming out in a month or two anyway when the winter motor goes in. Then I can hunt down some oil leaks (wtf front VCG) and clean it up a bit again, replace the cork oil pan gasket, see how my magnet in there is doing, replace the pan with the tapped one, etc...

Here's one of the many reasons I love having a motor like this:



The inside of my engine is cleaner than the outside...

The custom indicator lights on the interior are killing me.

The VRIS are powered from harness, switched ground in the ECM

The neutral switch is powered from the ECM, switched ground via the switch.

I want an on/off switch to control all of them, but with those two facts I can't do it with a SPST switch. I need to rack my brain some more, but I'm pretty sure its impossible. I might need a DPST switch.

I've decided I'm pulling the motor in early October to check it out, and put in a winter K8.

This is the valvetrain out of my winter K8.



But I put in the good train from my old K8, with FGS's and quiet HLA's.

I drained 4 gallons of fuild out of the winter motor, 3 of them were water. It had sat in the rain with no front valvecover. There were also leaves in there. The crank spins easily by hand, and it builds good compression. I'm not worried at all. Apparently it was a 120k km motor, and it looks like it inside minus the nature.

Ryan wrote:dumb a-- car, I'm sick of this KL BS. the K8 was seamless.

Got to love it, I truly do think the K8's a hell of an engine. Maybe not as powerful as the KL, but I've yet to see one example of a catastrophic failure from a K8. Not one... I'd supercharge one in a daily, for sure. Either that, or some head porting, truly custom designed exhaust, and aggressive cams. Hell, the rod/stroke ratio combined with the smaller pistons(lighter!!), you could build a 200 HP K8 and have some real bragging rights.

Now that the KL runs right, it beats the s--- out of the K8

Took it upto 7.2 or 7.5 at the track yesterday, didn't skip a beat. Only thing limiting me now is the engine management.

The K8 is missing something... oh yeah, torque.

So I hop in my car this morning, its a little below freezing, start her up. Idle settles down, and while I'm scraping the windsheild there's a weird "whum whum whum" sound, that matches the speed I happen to know the timing belt runs at.

Pop the hood, and watch the belt walk 1/8" off the top idler pulley to the tempo of the noise. Oh boy.

I guess the stress of a cold start did the damage in.



So I'm skipping Univeristy and doing this instead. Already went out and bought the new belt.

Shame the POS couldn't have lasted another week, I'm pulling the motor in the first or second weekend in October.

But is that normal?In every start up in cold days there will be a risk of damaging?
How much km did this belt had?

It's absolutely normal, when you run your engine without a timing belt cover.
Any little pebble gets between the belt and either pulley, and the belt is history.

Not a pebble, a temp sender.

But I can do my timing belt now without unplugging a single connector, or draining any coolant. 2-3h if I don't dawdle.

It looked like this yesterday



I realize the issue with running cover-less. You also can't run it in winter, because ice will form in the teeth around the crank gear.

I also rebuilt my calipers, as well as replaced pads and rotors while I was down there.



The calipers are a very poor design compared to other vehicles I've worked on The pins are sketchy, seize easy, and the caliper slides also seize easily. The moment caused by one rotating pin and one absorbing pin is all forced through a rubber sleeve around the absorbing pin. Its kinda hack. Not sure why Mazda gave us such shitty brakes. Who are we kidding, its actually a cheaply built car... same idea as our shitty stab links.