Background:
-2003 Evo 8, approx. 79k miles
-Was making 318whp with light mods. Tune went to **** and had intermittent detonation resulting a broken ring land.
-I bought the car to use as a winter toy, not really concerned with power output. At this stage my primary goal is to get the car running, probably drive it for one more winter and sell it next spring. I may do a track day with it in September for ****s and giggles.
-I don't have the available facilities, tools, knowledge, or time, to rebuild the motor myself.


Questions:

1) Given that the broken ring land was relatively well contained what are some thoughts on the requirement to replace the oil radiator?

2) Rebuild or not? Unfortunately there is some scoring on the cylinder wall and I'm doubtful if a hone would be enough to clean it up. Given this, a visit to a machine shop is required. Alternatively, my preference would be to find a used short block and sell mine. Net cost would likely be far cheaper than rebuilding? At minimum I can see the motor needing new pistons/connecting rods/seal kit.

3) In terms of replacement short blocks, there isn't really much available up here in Canada although there are loads of Talon bottom ends. Are they interchangeable?

4) Sell the car now as is instead of incurring the expense to rebuild? What is a typical discount from market price for a car with a wounded engine?

5) Other thoughts, options?

 

and a few pictures..

 

Just by looking at the pics your right there is some scoreing on the cylinder wall but it doesn't really look that bad. I think if you did take it to a machine shop and just did a .20 to .40 overbore it should take care of it. You really can't tell how deep it is in the second pic but it looks like its easily fixable. Your best bet I would say is to rebuild. Your not gonna get much for a car with a blown motor. I know people will say well its an evo. I don't car if its a lambo if the motor is gone thats cost off the price in my eyes. I would just rebuild it, get yourself either stock pistons and just have them mounted to the stock rods or if you wanted to get a full solid build in go aftermarket on the rods and pistons. It is so hard to tell but looking at it you may have gotten lucky on the machineing unless there is more damage that I didn't see. But if it is something you want to get going, I would just take the block in have them do the work on it and get a set of new pistons and go with it. Being you really don't have a monster setup it should be fairly cheap to redo. The hard part would be finding the overbored pistons in the oem, and if you can't then unfortuneately aftermarket are where you will have to go.

 

I'd suggest having the injectors sent off for inspection too.

 

Thanks for the reply Cursedsm, given the lack of motors around I think I'm gonna rebuild the bottom end. Any good treads regarding what needs to be changed if increasing the deplacement with aftermarket parts. Thougts on keeping the OEM crank with different rods? Aside from tuning, rods/pistons, what else needs to be modified to go down this route? I would assume going to 2.4l would diffidently require the crank to be changed? (good threads to read..?)


barneyb, why would the injectors be suspect?




Any further thoughts on if the Oil Cooler is pooched? I'm thinking replacment is only required in situations with far more debris going through the motor than what I'm dealing with.

 

Typically its rod bearing failure/contamination that requires a new oil cooler. If you have all the pieces of the ring you should be okay. However I wouldnt leave anything to chance since buying a replacement oil cooler kit (not OE) is really cheap insurance if there was any question in your mind. $350 or another motor because there was something in the cooler?

 

If your not looking to make much more power then it does now then just hone it, a used set of pistons, new rings, new bearings, polish the crank, new oil cooler. That is if those scratches aren't very deep. cheapest working fix. You can spend as much or as little as you want. Take your block to a machine shop then go from there.

 

fwiw, I lost a good chunk of a ring land too... Just got done dropping the long block back in the car. Went with 9.0 cr Wiseco pistons/manley rods, acl etc... I bought a couple of plugs to delete the oil cooler but the more I think about it the less I think anything got in there. The rings were intact, I only found bits of the piston in the wastegate and the exhaust mani... When I pulled the pan, everything looked fine too-- no chunks. I think I'm gonna hook my oil cooler up. As JohnBradley said, an oil cooler replacements called for when you spin bearings/have something go awry in the crank case. GL with what ever you decide to do and please wish me the same!

 

Been awhile but just to update and close out this tread. I ended up installing a used Evo9 motor (& harness) sourced through this forum and the car has been running great on a Magnus tune since last October. Hopefully everything worked out as well for the others in this thread. Thanks to all for the advice