i appreciate your long post, I am sorry for taking so long to get back with you I have just been very busy over the past week and getting hardship after hardship trying to fix this car. I can't find a single shop in the state that is willing to offer me any sort of help, everyone is terrified of an AP1 S2000 and won't touch it like its a ticking time bomb, I moved away from German cars to get rid of that problem but it seems like I failed on that.. 6 of the 8 connecting rod bolts are COMPLETELY stripped and I am at a loss of how to remove them. I found one shop willing to do the machine work but no shop will help pull these Pistons and every tool or person I've gotten to try to take a shot at it has failed.

The only engine I have found for sale that I priced at all reasonably is a 164k mile 2003 engine for $1900... Crazy mileage that is just going to give me more problems.

i listed the car for sale tonight, I doubt anyone would take this on for $5k so I will probably end up stuck with the car, but I will have to wait and see.

 

Bummer. Good luck with the sale.

 

I got a slick idea and did some math and found that a 3/8 12-point socket is roughly 9.5mm... Considering how loose the 10mm fit on the bolts I figured hey maybe I could hammer it on... And it wasn't easy, but it worked. I have, without a doubt, found the source of the noise. The picture below is Pistons 4 and 3 side by side. I'm sure everyone knows which one belonged to cylinder 4..

 

Also, I made another discovery. The crank position sensor(I believe that is the part that goes into the timing cover?) had 2 wires on it broken off, only one was still connected

 

I'll admit I have no clue.

 

The one with the scored skirt of course. How are the crank journals looking?

 

the crank looks to be in great shape, another discovery though that I forgot to take pictures of is that the bottom half of the bearings on cylinder #4 had a couple 'nicks' in them, is the best I could describe it. Very noticeable with a fingernail and looked similar to how you can nick an aluminum part of the engine during assembly/disassembly, I'd say it had about 3 or 4 small nicks on it mostly around the center area of the bearing. This was only in cylinder 4, no other signs of any bearing problems in any other cylinders, I will take pictures when I get a chance and add them.
i went ahead and disassembled the whole timing assembly(plan to replace chains and guides while I am so deep in the engine anyways) so the engine spins very freely now and the crank seems to be in great shape, a couple of the shops I've talked to claim I'd be crazy to not remove and machine the crank, but it doesn't appear to have anything wrong with it and it's quite possible the last shop had already machined it then... what do you think is best?

 

Perhaps the reason the rebuild shop is out of business has more to do with the quality of their work, or lack thereof. What a nightmare. Sorry for your situation.

 

If you have another engine I'd say part out what you can off this engine. The crank can easily get you ~$700+/-$50, you saw how people think they can get full retail price for their used parts.

 

I don't have another engine.. And again the only engine available that I am willing to pay for in any sort of reasonable distance to me is a 2003 with 164k for 1900... All the other options seem to start at 3000 and still have around 100k on them and that seems absolutely ridiculous to me. Would I really be better off with that motor than re honing my cylinder walls and installing aftermarket Pistons and rods?

Ive also been tossing the idea around of throwing a turbo on the car, I found a guy selling a nearly full kit and another guy with an AEM very affordably in my area, I feel like a sleeved engine with aftermarket Pistons/rods would be extremely reliable with like a 7-14psi range application. Again this is all hypothetical at the moment and I may be completely wrong, so correct me if so!