I know my tune is good because I have a wideband display in the car with me, running about 12.3 at 17 psi of boost. I've been tearin' it up all over town this last month. Ripped both motor mounts, driveline shakes pretty badly now and the clutch is slipping regularly on daily trips. Like I said, I've been having fun. Out of all the engines I've ever built, I've never "blown" one up yet, even on the job. Never played with gas turbos either though. I'm always pulling it into the shop and checking things over for catastrophic failure and never seen this coming. It didn't use oil.
Anyway, I got into a tangle with a Mitsubishi Colt? last night. A mid 90's hatchback looking thing. I ran neck and neck with this guy to about 125. Met up with him at the gas station. He's running 32psi and a 50 shot through a 1.6 (insert mitsu turbo motor here). I'm sure he told what engine it was, something swapped from a XXX- I am not hip when it comes to the import tuner scene( Ha! I've got a turbo bimmer!)You know what I mean. If someone has a clue what I'm talking about, please let me know if my car should have been performing better or not.
The guy seemed pretty cool so I listened to him talk at fifty miles an hour for another 20 minutes and then went home. He mentioned alot about how clean my car was, that he didn't expect something like that to be so fast and somewhere in there he said, "My car (his car,not mine)is an eleven second car." We weren't at the strip, my response was "I don't know nothin'."
At this point my car is still running great until I start it up this morning. Constant smoke from the tailpipe and about 1 qt low on oil. Rings? Turbo? Hmmm. When the head was off for the MLS gasket, I had TONS of piston-wall clearance. Upwards of 0.040". It looked like a diesel to me. With good cross hatch and an everage 160 comp test, I figured if I didn't know what I was doing, I was only going to ruin a junk engine anyway. The piston slap was always pretty loud on cold starts.
Sorry the for the long winded post, I'm looking for some engine advice and though I'd get the scenerio in place. New pistons are $700 and it seems like new tight engines are touchy with boost. I've seen my fair share of fresh overhauls come back with 6 scored liners! I've also read about fresh gas engines giving on the dyno under boost, being replaced by high mileage stockers and lasting an entire season. I guess just another used engine would do but I'd like to make the b35 head swap. Would anyone risk reusing a MLS headgasket? They're kind of expensive.
Either way I'd like to take the opportunity to thank the members of this board for posting up all the info in which helped me to build such a fun car!
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