Did you guys thought about valve seals leaking ? Had a similar issue in a 4g63 turned out to be bad valve seals.

 

He already it replaced them.

We have come to a fairly certain conclusion that it's the short block. An autopsy will confirm.

 

any update here? Did you find out the cause with an autopsy?

 

Hey ddlopresti,

Just a few updates, but nothing too major. In short, I ran out of free time to work on the car and need to keep it in one piece for now just to be moved around without losing parts.

My plan this year right after the build is to propose to my girlfriend and move into a place together. Between saving for a ring and preparing for the move I haven't had the opportunity to drain fluids, throw the engine back on the stand, spread open the legs of my poor ***** of a wallet to the car again, and re-blueprint the block, which I will do with a vengeance later this year.

In the mean time. I had the car retuned by Aaron @ English Racing and it drives great. It will literally drag all the cars in my area. It's just mechanically screwed up because of the high oil consumption. It burns 1Qrt every 75 - 100 miles. On top of that my drivetrain needs to be refreshed as the transfer case and rear diff are beat. They aren't broken, just more gear lash than I'd like. I should have expected this when I bought a used transfer case after I was ripped off earlier in the build.

One of my front lip mounting points broke loose after I tightened my APR carbon slitter too tightly. The carbon fiber is so rigid that if you torque the center bolts too much it flexes the entire bumper It's an easy fix, but annoying to do.

Here's a quick cold start E85 video showing my new map switching method and idle.



There's more work to do.

-pal215

 

Sounds like a cammed v8 -

 

Those cams sound angry!
If the oil isn't leaking thru the valves then its leaking past the rings and that will hurt octane . Lose enough octane and it could knock. Oil is also harder to light off.
You don't want to rattle any engine, specifically the bigger crank 100mm engine.

Are the plugs wet with oil? A qt every 75-100 miles is something to be concerned about. I would stop driving it. Its unfortunate that it needs to come apart again but sometimes things happen.

 

Thanks! Exactly what I was going for

Yup! I'd say 3 out of 4 plugs have some wet oil on them and oil is definitely getting passed the rings. The car does knock on occasion for exactly that reason, even on E85.
I'll be pulling the engine out again this October once we move into the new place and blueprinting the whole thing. Should be an entertaining autopsy. If my bearing clearances are good and the bearings look good, i'll reuse them. I expect this to be a rehone and new rings type operation, otherwise i'll have to buy a new set of pistons and rebore. Worse comes to worse i'm going to have to pick up an empty short block. Rods and crank I suspect are reusable.

 

If I am correct you didn't even put 1000 miles on this engine? Is there anyway you can check the ovality of the liner?

 

Probably 4000 miles as of last weekend. Egg shaping of each cylinder? Yup! You can use a dial bore gauge to measure each cylinder on an x and y axis to determine if there is any oval shaping going on. If it's too out of spec the block will require a rebore. I just need to wait until October after I move to pull the motor again.

 

This process of rebuilding and braking in the motor is so tough. I hate it.

Plus to find the actual cause of failure is a bit challenging. At this much power one starts asking questions about reliablity of a daily driven car. Do you find this ok ? or it might just be a mishap ?

 

Absolutely, it's a very labor intensive process from start to finish and a lot can go wrong, but it's fun in a sadistic kind of way Lol.

As far as reliability goes, I have faith that if done right a high hp evo can survive just as long as a stock one. I only say this because back when I had 430hp with the stock long block, I beat the living hell out of the car on a daily basis haha. I kept up with maintenance and drove it like a track car more times than not. It was tuned for it of course, but it gave me more than 60,000 miles of fun running like that at 29 psi on the stock turbo. If I can get at least that out of a nicely built 2.3 liter, i'll be more than satisfied. This is going to sound crazy, but out of all my car friends with rsx's, s2k's, civic's, bmw's, my car actually used to be the most reliable ....then I built it further.

 

It certainly won't last as long as a stock power motor, but this kind of oil consumption is not acceptable. Something prematurely failed. And my guess will be that its due to poor assembly practices.

 

A man can dream

I wonder how many motors come out of map that don't do this kind of thing.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm back.

My fiancée and I finally finished the moving process. Now turn my attention and funding back to the evo. I am very happy with our new place and the garage is a larger two car which gives me room to work, sweat, and curse.


After all of the nonstop oil consumption issues the car had it's now time to take it apart again and revise.....even when trying everything short of pulling the block.

I'll leave you with an appetizer.

Last night's work:



Stripping the engine bay again.




3/4 plugs covered in oil and 1 insulator broken. Good thing I stopped driving the car after we moved.



FP Black looks like day one, although I bet there is burnt oil caked up inside the turbine housing. Compressor housing looks clean as a dinner plate.


Stay tuned for more. Once I pull the block, i'm going to blueprint it completely and compare my results to those of MAP.

-Pal215

 

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Keep us posted and good luck!