B16CRXT

Ok, well some of you may remember me ranting about having lower compression in cylinder 1 a while back. I thought my rings or ring lands had gone. Well finally, today I had teh time and desire to pull the head to check it all out. Pistons all looked fine. Every cylinder was smooth as glass. There were no unusual sounds when I cranked it over by hand. All valves looked normal besides teh years up built up crap on them...

My hyposthesis is that, when I installed my ARP headstuds, I messed up and over torqued a couple of them, causing the leak of pressure in cylinder 1. I recall hearing the torque wrench click, and me keep on going for some reason...maybe I was dazing out or something, I dunno....

But the rear main seal is still blown. I will have to change that, and add a catch can setup to prevent it from happening again. In teh process, I am changing the water pump, headgasket, timing belt, tensioner, oil pan gasket (again!), and that damned rear main.....got a decent amount of work to do, but heres teh pics I have...tell me if you see anythign unusual...

Actually piston1 is alot cleaner than all the others. the others have carbon on them and 1 does not...







yea, I know there is some corrosion in the coolant passages.....shoulda seen teh coolant resivoir when I got the car...
Is that a burnt valve on the intake side? What are those light spots on teh pistons? they all have it on teh same spot.

Thanks guys!

daubleaaron

The tops of the pistons all look fine but you you need to take them out of the block to see how the ringlands are doing.

B16CRXT

if teh ring lands were broken, wouldnt there be scoring on teh cylinder walls?

daubleaaron

You have the head off and your going to have your pan off. If I were you I'd yank out cyl no. 1 and check the ringlands on it. I wouldnt just trust the cyl walls.

B16CRXT

ok, I'll be doing that tomorrow....anythign look unusual with anything? liek that one intake valve with teh spot on it, or how the pistons all that that clean spot on them? whats that about?

JoeyD

The reason that the one cylinder is cleaner than the other ones is because you had a leak in the head gasket or a blown head gasket. The problem with the head gasket allowed coolant in the cylinder. And when this happens on a hot engine you effectively "steam cleaned" the piston. Get it?

HMT-Admin

definatly pull #1 out if it was low. Ring lands can break and can do no damage at all to the cylinder walls. When the piston is out look very very close to see if there are any cracks anywhere in the ringlands.

B16CRXT

Welp, I pulled #1 this morning. Two cracks on one of the ringlands... heres the best pic I could get of it...ANYONE GOT A SPARE PR3 PISTON THEY'D LIKE TO SELL ME DIRT CHEAP ASAP?

accordepicenter

if you broke one id replace them all since you have it apart, its not like these are $800 pistons

B16CRXT

normally, I'd agree and just go ahead and put the forged internals in, but I'm seriously, dead broke right now, and I cant afford bearings for each rod. I was told by a friend that bearings were like $80...I'm gonna look into that later...

anyone got ideas on those clean spots on the pistons? Or that one intake valve?

Also, on the piston is has a 2 cast into the cap and teh crank has 3/c and 3 on it....what numbers do I go by for the new bearing?