My rebuild and the fight my car gave.

[ScoobyGT15]

So I recently did a rebuild on my motor and decided just to make a little thread about it for whatever reason.

 

I decided to do a top end rebuild of the motor because around October I developed an oil leak that was getting progressively worse and was coming from the Valve Covers.

 

December came and the tear down of the motor started.

Decided to replace:

-Every gasket on the motor.

-Head studs

-Water pump and various tensioners

-timing belt

You name it.

 

Tear down of the motor was fairly simple except for the timing gear bolts. We didn't have the correct tools to do it but luckily because of this forum we found a way of clamping the timing belt as hard as we could so it wouldn't spin over the gears.

After we had the heads off the motor we saw a little bit of corrosion but nothing serious enough to need to send the heads out to be cut. But then we decided to start pulling apart the valves to do the seals. The last two valve guides were completely shot and that led to us having to send the heads out to a machine shop to have the guides pressed out and replaced, valve seals done, and the heads to be cut.

 

Added a little time and money but the motor could not be put back together like that or else everything we had done would be worthless.

After getting the heads back from the shop we put the entire motor bak together. All the replacement parts and gaskets were OEM but we replaced the head studs with ARP head studs.

 

Got everything back together in no time at all once we had everything we needed and motor was fairly simple to get back into the car and hooked up.

 

While I was doing this work though I decided to upgrade my car to stage two. I installed carless invidia down pipes and up pipes. Tuned it to a stage two tune with my access port and called it a day.

 

First drive out the car ran strong but all the power I was expecting wasn't there but obviously because the motor was just put back into the car. Gave it some time and finally had all of the power coming from the car that I wanted. But then ran into an issue.

 

At wide open throttle I was making 21 pounds of boost and hitting the safety thats programmed into the car to cut the fuel when the much boost is being produced. Simple fix just put it on a dyne and tune it and dial down the turbo to 18 or 19 pounds. So figured I would wait a few weeks when I could get in and get a tune at either EFI or another tuner.

 

Then another problem rised. I got maybe 400 miles on the car and all of a sudden got this extremely weird noise and it felt like the entire motor just died. Only did this when the car was going uphill and making enough boost to accelerate the car up the hill. Got it to work and just let it be for the day. After work I got maybe five miles and I had the CEL light come on and I was making absolutely no boost what so ever. When I would let off the throttle you could hear this clinging noise like a wire in the down pipe just spinning around or something like that.

 

Got it back to the shop and pulled the down pipe off the car. Grabbed the plenum and you could move it in and out of the turbo about an inch. Same thing with the other side. The plenums didn't explode and make a mess but the veins came into contact with the housing and tiny small fragments came off. So now again my car is down and I am waiting for all of my parts to come in.

 

I have decided to replace/uprgrade the turn that BNR has. I went with the 16g because this is my daily driver and I just want a little more power but not make it ridiculous to drive. I am also replacing the oil control valves because those are known for malfunctioning and the CEL I got is related to that issue. I am also upgrading my oil lines to the ones offered by Infamous Performance to get a better oil flow to the turbo. Also upgrading my intercooler. When I look into the stock intercooler there are tiny pieces of metal in there from the plenum but those intercoolers are so tight I'm hoping nothing else got through there and into the motor. I am also going to do an open source tune to give the car a little more power and to make sure everything is dialed in correctly. I would love to dyne it but the tranny has 127k on it and I am worried about that grenading next and I really don't want to have to replace that after all of the money I just spent on this motor.

 

But now its just a waiting game on all of the parts to be delivered to the shop.

 

Figured I would let everyone know that I had a perfect running car that gave me absolutely no issues for the 40k miles that I have owned it and it has been an extremely reliable car. Now its just being a pain in the ass but hopefully after the turbo upgrade knock on wood everything will be good.

[MrTris]

So . . . Sounds like your rebuild went fine, and other than needing a new turbo shortly thereafter, everything is all good?

[ScoobyGT15]

No. Having to send the heads out to the machine shop was quite a bump in the road. And added quite a bit to the rebuild

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Code]

It's not uncommon for metal shavings to make it into the motor during turbine housing/compressor wheel meet'n'greets. You may want to do some more investigation before installing new components on a contaminated block.

[Max Capacity]

Do you have any metal chips in the oil ?

[Markbo]

When mine blew up recently I went with the BNR 16G. I am very happy with it BTW. Besides all the advised steps recommended here like dropping the oil pan, replacing the oil cooler and ACVSs, I also did 3 quick oil changes. Like 10-20 miles quick. Just enough to get the oil hot and vaporize any water that could be in the system. I did have a gold sheen in the oil pan from the bronze turbo bearings, but no visible size pieces. The oil changes were just insurance. Never saw anything during oil changes at all. Just got it tuned Monday. So far so good.

 

I don't know what you're shooting for but I got 237WHP and 287Wtque. Tuner said the turbo has more to give but he won't do it until I get my fuel system upgraded. In my book, that's a pretty substantial increase over stock which is around 170 & 190... ish.

[Strizzy]

You call that a pain in the ass?

lol.

 

 

(check the thread in my sig, if you want a real headache)

[.Catalyst.]

SO just trying to put together a short timeline of that wall of text you posted... you were over boosting at WOT around 21PSI on a stage 2 (Cobb OTS?) tune before you hit 400 miles on rebuilt motor? Where was the break-in map during this?