I hoped there was just a bent valve and it would be as easy as putting a new head on an being back on the road, so I rounded up all the gaskets, got cams for the secret cam swap, and decided to put on a 086 head because I had one with the manifolds. Anyway I pulled the oil plug today and found a mess, looks like I will be replacing at least the pistons and who knows what else when I get it all apart. I decided to start a build thread so if I need help I can hopefully get some quickly. I will get some more pics of the damage when I get into the engine far enough, but here is what I found attached to my oil drain plug when I pulled it.

looks like you got a problem there sir



2010 Lonestar Bash 2nd place J-Body Street Class
2011 texas heatwave 2nd place american compact street class

Nastay!

ouchies!

Looks like a valve spring retainer lock

I'm going to hopefully get the head off tomorrow before I have to go back to college but if the block is messed up I am thinking of building a 2.5 stroker to put in it. I was planning on the supercharged 3.8 swap but building a stroker just sounds like more fun.

I do have a nice race ported 086 head in the classifieds



Jason
99 Z24

LG0/LD9 for Life
10 Year Bash Veteren

I got the head off today. I was actually surprised at what I found. the lifter had the center knocked out of it and the cam housing had the entire side busted out of it where the last lifter was. I guess the valve retainer came loose and everything went down hill from there. The surprising part was when I pulled the head off to find that the piston was still in one piece with only a slight mark on it. I guess everything broke on a up stroke and there wasn't enough of the valve fallen down in the cylinder to cause damage and it just touched it enough to knock it up and bend it enough to stay. Anyway here are some pics of the damage.








I'm not worried about that head, I have a 086 to put on and I am doing the secret cam swap so I will just use the 2.3 exhaust cam tower. Next weekend I am going to hopefully get the 086 head drilled to match the 2.4 block and maybe start putting it all back together. I might put on a 2.3 timing housing because the water pump looks like it will be easier to put back on because of its design, and It also gives a cleaner look without the filler cap on top but I haven't decided yet. Is there any reason for or against that I don't know about?

Well, you might have to do some machining to get the 2.3 timing housing to fit. I know the bolts to the cover are all different... I would also assume the housing as well would be too. You also would have no real way to fill your oil. (other than the dipstick tube)

Any idea why it happened?? It's impressive that the oil plug held onto the valve retainer.

These motors are amazing the amount of abuse they can take.


Drive Force Fabrication

It got me home with all that damage to the top end. I even replaced the ICM thinking that was the problem, that went out on me once before and it sort of ran and sounded the same. A compression test told me there was something inside wrong with it when the first 3 cylinders had 180psi and the fourth never even moved the needle on the gauge. It would still fire right up and idle, it sounded like a 4-wheeler and smoked because of the open valve but it never stopped running.

I got work done, matched the head to the 2.4 gasket. I also got my exhaust cam earlier this week, and started smoothing out my intake manifold and cam covers. There is still a lot of sanding and smoothing to be done, not to mention cleaning and getting everything to look nice but sitting it all together looks better than a pile of aluminum.

I got the head bolted on and torqued down today. I also finished cleaning the cam housings and painted them with high temperature paint. Still don't know if I want to paint the intake manifold or maybe polish it later. I sat everything on to see if I liked the look of the paint. I like it better than greasy aluminum for sure. I will be painting the motor mount when I take it back off, getting rid of the AC and cleaning up all the wiring. All I need is a warm weekend with no rain and it should be running again.

The engine is together and running. Idle is a little rough but it smooths out above 1000RPM. I am going to drive it tomorrow and I am on spring break all week so I will have plenty of time to break it in easy.

Glad to hear its together. sounds like a fun little setup.

Everything is good after last week driving it easy and fixing an oil leak then somehow getting an air bubble in the cooling system and chasing it around for a couple days,then having to replace the timing chain tensioner everything is finally straightened out and it runs better than I thought it would. I plugged all my numbers into a compression calculator it ended up with 11.77:1 the car has no trouble getting out of its own way now. I will get some pics of everything together tomorrow.

I am still having overheating issues. If I let the car idle it never gets hot and I can get in it and drive it after it has sat running and the temp never even gets close to overheating. But if I don't let it run long enough for the thermostat to open and drive it very far the coolant boils out of the head before the thermostat opens. So next weekend I am removing the one in the lower pipe and putting a new one in the head, and that should fix the issue. Anyway here are a some pics of everything together and running.

huh?

There is not a tstat in the head. Only in the lower pipe that goes under the oil pan.


Brad is a Shady Mother @!#$

MD Motorsports

I swapped to a High Output 2.3 head. On the earlier heads the t-stat was in the drivers side of the head where the temp sensor is. You can run one in either spot just not both.

When i ran this setup I kept the stock 2.4 t-stat and did not run one in the head. Also I had overheating issues when I first did the swap too, wound up being an air bubble that was stuck somewhere, can't remember how I got it to move but once it did I never had an issue again.

Update: It ran good for a while but the idle was rough because apparently the timing was off a little. The head and valves are still fine but the old bearings didn't like the new top end. A rod started knocking when I pulled in the driveway so I shut it down and rounded up all the parts to build the bottom end. New crank and bearings, rings and an oil pump, so hopefully I don't have to take it apart anytime soon. While the engine was out I cleaned and painted the bay, I still need to touch up a few spots and hide a some more wires but its coming together. I have about 400 miles on the new rebuild, I haven't had it above 3000rpm but it is by far the best this car has ever ran.


I also put the old spacers from the rear on the front to space it out until I find some new wheels for the front.