At the beginning of the year, I had planned to start doing NASA HPDE with my '06 MR. Unfortunately, my engine was not as healthy as I would have liked... I noticed that there was some fluid that looked like dirty coolant pooling on the transmission in various places. Initially, I tried using a hydrocarbon test on the coolant system to see whether or not there was exhaust in the coolant. Unfortunately, I could not see much of a difference in color, even when I subjected the fluid directly to the exhaust near the exhaust tip. Perhaps this has something to do with my fuel being E-85? Nevertheless, I looked inside the valve cover and noticed quite a lot of milky oil pooled in certain places. Not good..
I drained the oil and found the oil was fairly milky with a fair amount of glitter swirling around. Aww crap! Head gasket!
As a first step, I pulled the head off to get a view of the cylinder walls to see if the stripper glitter had done any significant damage to my cylinder walls. Luckily, it looked as if they were okay (the cross-hatching was still visible ), but the bearings still worried me quite a lot, so I decided to pull the engine and send everything over to MAP so that they could just go ahead and rebuild it, and pressure check the head.


More to come later when I have more time!!!

 

Damn, that sucks. Glad to hear you got it together. My buddy just got done going through this same exact issue. Heres a picture of his WW IX MR.

 

Yes, that is Notch. He is the little fetus who helped me rip out the motor. He came out for the week to help me get it all apart and to haul the engine/head back to MAP so they could go through it. Only took us about 4 hours to get everything out and in the back of his truck. Not much of a long drawn-out process when you have a tech helping you I guess. Oh well, that just left more time for . And we put up a fence on the back of my barn... For some reason... Alcohol does weird things mang...


Anyhow, a few months later, I got the engine and head back from MAP. I actually drove home for a couple weeks to pick it up there (I am from MN, in case you can't tell from my thick accent) and Ryan at MAP ended up giving me and my dad a quick tour of their shop! Great guys over there. Seriously, I can't say enough good things about MAP. I will get into that a little bit later.


So, got the head back, and started putting her back together.






Look at that cute little pissbucket!


Threw in the lash adjusters and cams and put the caps on. Starting to look like an engine again (omgomgomgomgomg1!!)


Eff yeah cam gears! YEAH DICKS!!!


Hung the engine up by its weiner so I could put it on an engine stand. Makes stuff a bit easier. Oh, and there is my dog (not) helping me out. Little dickweed...

 

Once I got the engine on the stand, I threaded the head studs in (I am using MAP tool steel head studs) and put the head gasket on there after brake-cleaning the mating surfaces on the block and head. I set the head on the block and went through the head torque sequence. MAP recommends torqueing the nuts to 45 ft-lbs several times before going through the final 3-step sequence up to 85 ft-lbs in order to ensure proper seating of the head gasket. I did this in sequence every time (slight pain in my ***, but well worth it to ensure that s*** doesn't blow) and got everything looking pretty damn good.



Once the head was on, I bolted on all the timing wing-*****, knick-knacks, and doo-dads and put the timing belt on. As it turns out, the timing was off a tooth (jumped a tooth maybe? I dunno... Maybe the younger, dumber me f***ed it up...) on the old engine, causing detonation (evident on the valves, I found out later from MAP), which most likely caused my head gasket to go poopie. So, having done the timing a couple of times now (I am a sloppy retard, but an experienced one), I have found that the best way to set the timing is as follows. Zip tie the timing belt to the cam gears such that the belt is tight between the gears when both the intake and exhaust gear are at their respective TDC positions. You can use a wrench to turn the gears a bit since they won't sit at TDC due to the valve springs. Then, put the belt around the crank gear so that the crank is one tooth counter-clockwise from TDC with most of the tension taken out (minus the one tooth of tension that rotating the crank will take out) of the non-tensioner side (the right side in this pic). From this point, once you tension the manual tensioner pulley (the one with the two small holes), the slack will be taken out of the belt, and the crank should rotate one tooth clockwise, bringing everything into the correct position. Boom, f***in' magic and totes mcgotes amazeballs... After this you will be free to control all women. Use your Peter wisely.


Once I got everything in time, I started to turn the crank over. Everything looked good, but I kept hearing a clicking noise (a LOUD noise). Figured out it was the intake cam. Every time one of the lobes of the intake cam got to the highest lift position, the valve spring tension would slam it straight to a closed position. This was occurring because the engine was totally drained of oil at MAP, and the MiVec system was not primed, leaving no oil in the intake cam gear and causing the intake cam to move freely with respect to the gear (within the range that the MiVec would allow it to of course). I called MAP about this, and their engine builder basically said that this was a fairly normal phenomenon and that it would stop happening once the engine was primed with oil pressure. Theoretically, it would be possible to prime the MiVec system by removing the timing belt and turning the oil pump over with a drill. I did not do this however because I am lazy. I turned the crank over about 15 times to make sure nothing de-tension-ified or whatnot. Everything looked good, so I drank a beer and called it a night.



There's one of my stupid f***in' barn cats (not) helping me out... Stupid b***h...
*Edit* Lol, also just noticed my creepy f***in' dog with his Satan eyes in the background! What a pervert!

 

Upon the next morrow, I decided to bolt the flywheel on and install my new clutch and pressure plate. Except... When I went to put on my new ACT pressure plate, the holes were not lining up with the dowels on the flywheel. When I say they were not lining up, I mean that they were not even close... At the orientation of closest fit (the pressure plate is designed to fit in only one orientation) with one dowel lined up, the other two holes were misaligned by 1/16"-1/8". Oof. I took my old pressure plate and test-fit it to the flywheel to ensure that the dowels had not been reinstalled incorrectly or bent in some way when I had it resurfaced. sure enough, everything fit alright... I also noticed that for whatever reason, there were no balancing marks on my new flywheel like there were on the old one... Weird... THE WHOLE THING IS JUST F***IN' WEIRD MAN!


And now to why MAP and ACT are two seriously kickass companies... I called MAP and they got me in the pipeline immediately to report a faulty product, even though (as they put it) that it is almost impossible for ACT to send out a faulty product since their quality control is so damn good! I sent pictures and descriptions to MAP about what was going on, and they forwarded it to their contact at ACT. Within a few days, ACT had sent me a pre-paid label to ship the faulty product back to them, and a brand new pressure plate was on its way to my house. Yeah, my project was delayed slightly, but honestly sh** happens. I can't thank MAP and ACT enough for the professionalism and outstanding customer service that they both displayed here. Thank you guys.


A few days later, I got the new pressure plate, and it fit like a lubricated glove.



Got the engine off the stand and put it on the tailgate of the tow truck (because future f***in' racecar!) and got the clutch in there, and...



got the pressure plate all bolted up and such. Like I said, everything went together great from this point! Yay snow white!!!



Got the tranny (that's transmission, not chicks with dongs) bolted up to the engine and got it set down in the garage next to my Asian lady just before it started raining... Freakin' Ohio weather man. I blame white people.

 

The next day, I got the engine and tranny mounted in the car. Basically what we did (my woman helped me, she is a damn good woman) was tilt the engine/tranny over on its side with the valve cover facing the front of the car and slid that bish under the chassis. Once it was there I started tilting it up while the woman jacked up the engine hoist to help hold it upright. Once it was basically in the correct orientation, we lifted the engine up into the car and got it oriented so that the input shaft from the tranny to the transfer case was just about aligned. I put the shaft in position and rocked the engine/tranny back and forth and all around (do the muthaf***in' hokey pokey you sloots!!) and had the woman turn the right halfshaft until the splines matched up just right and she slid right in nice and deep like. Got the t-case bolts threaded in and tightened them a little bit at a time until the t-case pulled itself onto the tranny. Once that was completed, we lifted the engine side up and rested the engine mount sort of in its clamshell. After this, I slid the transmission mount into its clamshell and put the studs in the tranny into their respective holes in the mount and put the nuts just barely on. Afer this, it was just a matter of tightening and loosening the nuts holding the mounts onto the engine and transmission respectively until I got the holes to line up in the clamshells on both sides and got the bigass bolts through there. After that, I loosened the bolts on the rear mount (this can be done with the engine and everything in the car using a wrench. It sucks...) so that it was free to move around a bit, and put the bolt through the urethane where it mounts to the subframe and then re-tightened the bolts on the tranny side. Once that was done, I put the piece in that the front mount attaches to, and pressed it up into its clamshell. Unfortunately, the hole from the clamshell to the mount didn't quite line up, so I had to loosen the nuts on the transmission mount and passenger side mount a bit to lower the engine/tranny and get it in the hole (what, you think you're too good for your home F***IN' BOLT!!?). After it was in and tight, I tightened everything back up. Voila, engine mounted bishes!!

If anybody has any questions about how the **** to get your mounts all lined up and properly in, pm me. I may actually be able to offer some hints since I have done this twice now.


Once the engine was in, I got the intake manifold bolted up and in the car. Look at that sexy little piece of OEM...


After that, I got the exhaust all in there and bolted up tight. IT'S TURBO TIME!!!! Well, almost. Gotta get the rest of the miscellaneous crap bolted on first.

Got all the tubes twisted up in the right positions and stoof and all the sensors plugged in (well, almost all of them as I would later find out) and put in some fluids. Because... Well, everybody likes fluids... Especially when they are being used to go fast. Makes bishes wet. Literally, if you pour it on them. Anyways, disconnected the crank sensor and turned the motor over until the oil pressure light turned off (about 6-7 psi). Plugged the crank sensor back in and went to start it. Crank, crank, crank, crank, no fire. Ahh wut the duck dick? Oh, what is this? An SES code? Plugged in Evoscan only to find!!! No crankshaft reference signal... PISSNUGGETS!!! So, I started taking the accessory stuff back off.


For the record, this is precisely how to install a crankshaft sensor upside down. If you're not a full retard, you will see that there is a slot in the sensor where the reluctor wheel passes through so that your ECU can tell where the hell your crankshaft is!! Again, magical unicorn nipples! So, I put everything back together, primed the oil system again and she fired right up. I used Lucasoil SAE 30 break in oil (as recommended by MAP) and performed the break in procedure for 20 minutes.


And here she is! All together, running and driving. Of course, I still have to do some more break-in miles for the engine and new clutch before I can really have some fun with her, but she still handles corners like a sexy bihatch!!! Forgot how much fun it is to feel my sexy, sexy evo sit down and GRAB the road like a Velcro treefrog and RIP through the curves!!! DAMN it feels good to be a (white) gank-star! Will post more updates with random shiznight that I will be doing this winter. Perhaps a diff replacement in Ling-Ling's (yeah, that's right, my car's name is Ling-Ling because she is the most attractive Asianest bish ever) future? Perhaps a re-paint of my Brembos so that I can fade the crap out of them on the track next year? We will see. I will also be posting stuff about all the track days and stuff I plan on doing next year. Might even trailer her home for one of the proving grounds events at BIR! Only ever driven that track once! Until next time, peace out my gear-dick brethren.

 

lol good write-up!

 

By far the most attention grabbing and hilarious thread I've ever read. Great write up though. A lot of small things I need to make sure I don't miss while putting mine back in soon.

 

The added commentary is hilarious! Nice build.

 

Haha, thanks. Yeah, it gets kinda old reading boring dry build threads after a while. Figured I would have a little fun with it. Good luck on your project EvoSkunk! Let me know if you have questions about anything I talked about here. Hopefully I will have more updates about Ling-Ling's adventures in the near future!

 

That was funny
What part of ohio are you in?

 

Just West of Columbus actually. Where in Columbus are you at?

 

I'm Around Westerville

 

Oh okay cool. Yeah I am near London. You do any track/auto-x stuff around OH?

 

I will be at some auto x stuff next summer