+1

 

I am opposed to it. Take out the motor and rebuild it. If you can do it yourself great. Otherwise send it out to get it done. I had my bottom end rebuilt through Laskey Racing for $3550 (sleeving included). You can choose what size pistons/ compression ratio so I didn't have to worry about having to put the crappy 3mm head gasket in. It really is worth it, especially if you have a higher mileage motor. Just have to wait 1.5-2 months for them to work on it. Seems like forever when you are waiting for it to come back. Inline Pro also does rebuilds if you want to go that route. Costs a little bit more.

 

If I had a bigger turbo it would be... Right now 2nd is my favorite. 1st is just worthless...

 

So can someone clarify for me why the bottom end (rings/ringlands) would go before the headgasket? I haven't had a chance to look at the engine in detail yet but from a superficial analysis, there's a loss in oil at the dipstick, major pressure from valve cover breather and a bit of moisture around the matting of the head and block that looks more like oil than coolant.

There is still all the coolant in the radiator and from the look of it, there are no coolant leaks at all.

so again, assuming that the tune was good, I've been driving this thing hard for the past 6 months, and the head gasket is still intact, why would the bottom end go? Oil starvation (I did not upgrade the oil jets) or weak rings/ringlands?

Thanks again for any insights boys.

 

My bottom end let go and the h/g was fine.

My motor wasn't detonating, it just built a $hit-ton of heat and put all that heat into the pistons/cylinders.

Oval the cylinder walls, and melt ringlands. Especially doing long pulls in the higher gears, loads the engine.

 

So what can one do to avoid this situation? Was it just my engine's time? Like I said, I have been driving this car hard for the past 6 months and we even did some pretty crazy runs in the mountains with my mates' c63's, M couple and IS-F.

Would going with a 3mm head gasket alleviate some of that heat? I am only asking still because I'm looking at an f22 engine with a 3 mm head gasket and some arp head studs and bolting on my current turbo kit and retuning. I don't plan on running that much more boost; however, I don't want to run into this same problem.

And to further clarify, my last motor had about 130,000 KMs and it was boosted at around 115,000 KMs.

 

if you enjoy having a life and not hating your car, DO NOT USE A CRAPPY BAND-AID THICKER HEAD GASKET.

 

haha, I'm starting to realise your distaste for these things, and I just PM'd you! Thanks for the help!

But as I said, if I am going to just simply get another engine, I'm acutally looking at an f22 and slapping on my current setup, what can I do to avoid having the same thing with broken piston rings/ringlands? I'm pretty confident in the tune that my tuner did, but I don't want to experience this again.

 

Well, I just did the compressoin check and I'm not sure what this means. Here are the numbers and the order I did it was the first number is closest to the front of the car and the last is towards the tranny:

135, 140, 125, 130.

I did the test with the engine cold and then warmed it up but ran into a wee bit of a problem. The compression tool got stuck. It was hand tightened, and very tight, but now it's just spinning and it won't unthread back out!! Any ideas to get this thing out?

*EDIT*

I managed to get the tool out and get the rest of the readings
Also, I started from the side of the engine closest to the firewall this time and I was only able to get one number:

150, 150, 150 145.

So, I as under the impression that as long as the numbers are close to eachother it's okay...unless all my cylinders are stuffed up!

 

Well, got it started again after putting in about 2 liters of oil and got her running.

Here's a link to what it soundslike:

Engine running

What's that ticking sound? Again, the compression numbers I listed above.