Well I was happy last night that I'd finally gotten my car saftied and registerred with a 10 day temp permit. Today the wife left for vacation in Florida with her bro and friend so I had an entire week of tuning to look forward to.

Today started out fine and I put a few miles on the new clutch. Tuned much of the off-boost map as well as some fuel tuning. Can't do ignition tuning alone since it requires headphones.

Never one bit of detonation and I was only running 8PSI which is standard and creeping to 12 which is still well within limits. I put on 100km on this freshly built motor. After a fuel stop at the house I was going to head out to pick up a friend. When I went to start it, thud, sounds like I spun a bearing.

So I checked all the plugs, normal, checked the oil level, OK. Then came the coolant. It's nice and muddy. Re-checked the oil and yep, it's watery. It's a fresh head gasket and these things aren't known for letting go at the headgasket. I think maybe my block may have been busted from bending a rod in Nov (bad fuel pump). Now I don't feel like looking at the ------- thing anymore. To make matters worse my spare GT-R motor is in a million pieces on the floor.

-Michael

 

What kind of car is this? that sounds terrible, I would think you would let a car have more then 100 miles to break it in?

 

It's a Mazda 323 GTX I asume
I just got that feeling and after reading the words GT-R I ws ahh yes the 1.8 turbo ... nice nice.
And I kinda remember from the back of my head that someone posted some pic's of hist 323 GTX here

 

i usually keep all my spare GT-R engines on their own chrome plated stands :P

 

what car are you talking about, and whats a gtr? I dont think its a skyline motor... or is it?

 

The car is a 323GTX. The current motor was a BPT from a JDM GTX. It's a 1.8l turbo. The 323 GT-R was a homologation special and I waited almost a year to find an engine (They only ever made 2500 of them). So after I already had my BPT in the car a GT-R motor became available so I bought it up too.

As for break-in, I didn't change the rings, just the bearings and I gave it a good easy 75km break-in which should be more than sufficient for just some rod bearings manufacturer says no breakin is necessary for rod bearings. If it were rings then I would have run it a full 500 really easy to break it in.

So this week will be a marathon. I'm planning to complete the teardown on the GT-R motor, obtain all the parts (all bearings plus rings) and if I can afford it ARP head studs too. Once I have all these then I'd like to get my ported head off the BPT and get new valve seats then swap the GT-R cams and valves over.

GT-R cams are hollow. Haven't measured the lift or anything to see if they're "better" but the exhaust valves are sodium filled so I should be able to get more advance.

All this should be done by Wednesday or Thurs evening and I'd like to have the motor in by Friday. I work during the day too so all this happens after 18:00... We'll see how it works out.

-Michael