Spoolin

So the issue must have been the head all along.

Have you run a straight edge over the cylinder head surface to see how bad flatness is? Wonder if the head just got warped some after the mill, by not being properly torqued down and a slight overheat, that 2 layer gasket maybe, or some other reason?

Dizings2k

I took a straight edge to the block to confirm it was flat, it is. I haven't had time to mess with the old cylinder head yet. It took about 9 hours to get the hardware transferred over to the new head and reassemble the whole thing back to running.. after that I was pooped and didn't have energy left to mess with the old stuff.

I plan on taking a straight edge and thickness measurements of the old head just to make myself feel better, but I already know what I'm going to find based on the results of a new head on the car.

Still curious on what for headgasket was installed before..

Car Analogy

This is great news this mystery is finally solved. Kudos to you for not giving up. You faced your darkest hour on this journey, as evidenced by title of this thread. But you pulled it together and dragged this to tbe goal line.

Now imagine if you had given up, sold the whole mess at a giveaway price, and you were now reading someone else post how they solved it.

Dizings2k

Ha, funny you mention that. There was someone interested in buying the setup but the tests/oil analysis was not confirming what I thought to be the issue.. that's what kept me going to find the root cause.

Very happy that not only the head fixed it BUT my rings/bores are in great shape too. There was still a chance that I bolt all this back together only to find shot rings too.

I'm thinking about requesting a thread title change, but at this moment I do still feel Inline pro should have caught the head problems and not used some aftermarket HG.. especially since I was told "all new OEM gasket sets" were included in the "Back to 0 mile OEM refresh package". Not to mention that they should have measured the cylinder head before milling it at all. May not be a common problem I had but I would think any machine shop would verify what material they're working with before going at it.

SlowTeg

Ya big props on tackling the issue and being patient. It's always a good idea to set things aside for a bit and come back at it when some of the frustration/anger has passed.

Jub

I would 100% be reaching out to IP if I were you. Again, it is in their interest to make it right for you as well. This is a pretty egregious oversight but it can happen in good faith. I think the conclusion of that though is them admitting it is their mistake and giving some compensation for what you've been through. It is crap customer service to have gone through this twice already and them to not find the issue. You had to do some detective work and find it but it should be pretty straight forward. It does also appear that the "all new OEM gasket" thing is untrue.

Show them this thread. Show them head measurements and/or send it out to them. Stuff happens when building engines and it's fine to chalk this one up to an honest mistake. As for their reputation in doing their best for customers, they need to own it and make amends.

dagle

nice, congrats on the fix. what was the root cause? was it the head, head gasket or the TCT that caused the TCT rattle?

Car Analogy

The too far milled head caused the tct rattle. Its a known concern that you can only mill a tiny amount before causing chain geometry issues with this head.

Root cause of the previous motors demise appears to be running lean due to head gasket leaking.

The head gasket leaking appears to be a tag team of aftermarket head gasket and warped head.

Now the question is, why was the head milled in the first place, and how did it further warp?

Recall this was an engine that was running fine, no known issues other than around 150k miles of use, that was sent in for a refresh (in anticipation of FI). So why woild head need any significant milling?

Maybe

Dizings2k

Yes, the initial reason I took the motor to inline pro for a refresh is that after being supercharged for a season, I did a leakdown test on the 150k mile engine and found it was 25-30% on the middle two cylinders. Admittedly I didn't do a leakdown on the motor before I supercharged it as I thought it was running fine.

Anyway, I took it to them for their "Back to 0 mile OEM refresh" signature package which supposedly reassembled the block with all new OEM oversized pistons/bearings/gaskets/guides/etc etc. and included the same for the cylinder head. Thats when inline pro found sunken exhaust valves due to shoddy previous machine work on the head. That's when all of this started. I suspect I've had a too-short cylinder head this entire time which threw off timing, compression, tunes, etc. Every single time I've done a leakdown on the newly built motor, the leakdowns have been generally high, with the two middle cylinders always 20% or so. So yeah, I think the head has been my problem this whole time.