OK tonight ended up being quite eventful

I finally got the motor up onto the engine stand and started stripping everything off it to clean up and give couple coats of paint. Couple hours went by and i had nearly everything off including water pump, idler pulleys etc etc, she looked pretty bare.

So anyway i thought to myself, you know this things been sitting for while maybe i should give her couple turns over by hand and try get some oil circulating, so i got the breaker bar with right sized socket and started swinging like a monkey protecting his bananas. To my absolute dismay i witnessed water coming out the number 4 spark plug hole
I can tell you i was p****d, i wanted to have this motor in my car by the time i went to Perth on Friday, now there's no chance in hell that's going to happen as the whole motor has to be pulled down and rebuilt
My biggest concern is how long has the water been in there and how rusted is that bore?

So now if i'm going to rebuild this you can be damn sure she's not staying standard, will wait to see if bores are ok but if they need a bore then so be it and i'll put new pistons in as well. Whilst the head is off i want to find someone who knows what there doing with the VCT heads and have it played with to get some more flow happening and well since the cams out as well..........you get the idea
Who does performance cams for VCT's anyway? Anyone?

I took some pics of motor with my phone but damn stupid vodafone isn't letting me e-mail them to myself to post up here so will have to take pics with camera tommorrow.

OK here's the pics i took with the mobile mast night - sorry about the quality

This is how motor is looking at moment




In these 2 pics i have circled the water splatter that came out of the cylinder, i should of taken pic of amount on floor to but too late now.




Come to think of it now i know why we couldn't turn motor around easily when we were unbolting the torque converter bolts now, she was getting hydrolocked

Ohh well now i guess i have reason to pull her down and rebuild with some performance goodies to make her go a little bit better, let's see if we can get 190-200kw outta her

OK i screwed up today, all my tools are down on Gold Coast so was just using what my flatmate had in shed and tried undoing the head bolts to take the head off and inspect bore. Yeah you can all guess what happened ey, stupid me failed to notice that all his sockets are 12 point items and first bolt i tried to undo it just stripped the bolt straight away and rounded the edges

So on that note i proceeded down to my local autobarn and bought an impact industrial 6 point socket for the job and a 1 metre breaker bar while i was at it
I managed to break the rest of the bolts loose but do you think i could get that damn stripped one to budge
So ingenious me thought hmmm air hammer with chisel will get the sucker, well i attached all pieces up and within 1 second of pulling the trigger i though hmmm not good idea - apparently alloy is softer than the bolts lmfao No real damage to head though as i picked it up straight away and stopped immediately before any real damage.

So that gave me the royal proverbial foobahs (s**t for those without sensoring)

So on that note i gave up with no way of getting bolt off, placed the cam back in place with vct gear just sitting on loosely, loosely screwed the rocker cover back on and she's off to my engine builder tommorrow morning for him to figure out as i leave in less than 2 days so don't have time.

I wanted to get the head off to see damage done to bore from water so hopefully my builder has some cool tool that gets that lil sucker out tommorrow whilst i'm there so i can see what damage has been done.

So the way it stands now is it's going in for complete rebuild, all new rings and bearings, ported and polished head, port matched manifolds, hpc coated pacemakers and hopefully a CMS VCT camshaft.

Just need to talk to Joe at crescent again to see if he's had feedback on his new cam yet, hopefully all good, if so it will adorn this new build.

That's it for now

Well i got up this morning and said to myself - "stuff it, i'm not letting that damn motor win"

So after talking to Josh last night i adopted his strategy and broke out the 4" angle grinder, yep i cut the sucker off, mind you now i need to get cam journals machined as well as i got grinder little too flat and the bolt bit that holds blade on came in contact with top of journal Just another thing to go wrong lol

So anyway the heads off and this is what i found

Over 1 cm thick muddy sludge in the bore, now considering i pumped most of it out through the spark plug hole earlier i would of hate to seen how much was originally in there but i can tell you she has slight pitting until half way down the bore


And this is what underside of head looked like


When i pulled the head gasket off it was completely water logged and dripping with water so didn't like the sound of that

Now to start sending pieces off to different workshops to get the rebuild started

Mate it dose not look healthy, at least you got the head off. Personally I thought my idea of Tig welding a new bolt to the top of the head bolt was a better idea than my grinder idea .

Have you sent any parts off to be machined yet?

Josh

Nothings been sent off yet, i contacted couple places today and they were supposed to call me back but haven't heard anything yet.

Flatmate said he'll drop stuff off and pick up after completed for me whilst i'm gone so that helps things along nicely.

Apparently a performance head shop up here has a VCT head on the shelf fully ported and ready to go and know of an aftermarket cam available for the VCT motor but unfortunately the boss wasn't there when i called so no price or any info on cam yet as i just stated they are 1 of the shops who haven't called back...grrr

The other shop is well known in drag racing circles with top fuel cars etc, they apparently just built a 4.0 for someone else and said it came up quite well in power department but didn't give any specifics, not sure if it was a VCT though, he said he would call back as needed to work out some pricing - well i'm still waiting

Then there's Joe at CMS, seriously he has been the best guy to talk to so far, he took the time and went through everything with me over the phone and even gave me some tips i didn't even think of, top guy and knows his stuff

Finally we have the guy who is building my stroker motor, he would build motor and it would perform really well but i sent a mate to him to get his motor built few months back and what started at 3500 quote blew out to 6000!!
Not sure if i want to send this motor to him as he's making enough off me with the stroker plus i want a definate price with no fluctuations

As for your welding bolt idea, that was the better option but not having a welder here made that option a lil hard

UPDATE

Looks like things are a changin - again!!! lol

I was going to sell this car but decided stuff it why sell it and buy something everyone else has got and just blend in so now the Lane is coming in for complete revamp

Everything will be confirmed over next couple days as waiting for confirmation on couple things

Let's just say she's going to look totally different to the point you would think they were 2 different cars if i showed you pic of it now and what it will be

I've said too much - watch this space
lol

Have couple confirmations now so will devulge what is confirmed

Just bought a set of Koya 19x8" rims for the Lane, 245 front and 265 rear tyres
Don't have my own pic of rims yet so just using old owners pic of them on his car so you have an idea



Once couple other things are fitted where they need to be she'll be getting stripped down and sent off to the panel shop where she's getting a colour change to the FG F6 black colour (forgot name of it)

There's more to come yet but still need to confirm, waiting on couple e-mails so should have another update soon

Ohhh let the good times roll hehe

EDIT
Changed post as decided against doing couple things to make way for other things

edit

Flew back to Qld this morning so about to start working on this car to get it ready to sell off to fund new car project over in WA

I figured the cost of shipping this car over to WA outweighed the benefits as i can buy 1 over there for around same price so selling this one off

Have a bit to do to it this week, will be pulling the head off it tonight and sending away tommorrow to be faced ready for re-installation as the car has very slight roughness in idle so we performed compression check and no. 4 cylinder is down a lil in compression so guessing head gasket is gone between cylinder and water jacket (explains where water has been dissappearing to hehe, only around 1L every fortnight but still)

Fitting the pacemaker extractors and 2.5" exhaust i have sitting here from my old EA at same time, so when all refitted will need to take down to exhaust shop to have them lengthin the rear portion of the exhaust to fit and will also fit new smarter looking twin outlet tip whilst i'm at it

Then i'll be pulling out the trans as it's not in the best nick, i have reco'd box sitting here ready to go into it

After this i will be pulling all the suspension out of car and replacing, the KONI red rear shocks and Lovell springs are being sold off and will be purchasing brand new BOGE shocks front and rear for the ol girl and fit the near new King springs i have here

From here i will fit the best pieces out of 2 Fairlane trims i have here and send down to my mates trim shop to have a new headliner fitted as one in it at moment sags, as soon as all this is done she will be booked into a car detailer for a full inside out overhaul getting the whole thing looking like brand new

Then finally she's off to have the windows tinted to finish the car off

All this within the next week, yepp i'm gunna be busy lol

Ohhh and also bought some brand new headlights and blinkers to put in also as one of mine was getting a bit yellow and didn't like the look of it and thought 1 new one would look out of place

Plus the bonus is there's nothing like the look of brand new headlights in any car, really cleans up the appearance if you ask me

Awesome mate, look forward to seeing your progress.

Josh

OK heads off, what a mission
Mate and i thought we'd have it off within hour maybe hour and half max, well 3 hours later

Can't believe you have to pull everything vitually off to remove the head, i was hoping to be able to pull most stuff off after the head was removed from car for ease and convenience but nope not to be, now i have a sore back lmao

But anyway the old girl looks pretty sad at moment with no bonnet and half its heart missing, so it's off to machinist tommorrow and decided i'm going to get the head serviced whilst there also instead of just machining the face and slapping back on

Whilst head is off getting done i'm going to get a start on the gearbox tommorrow whilst head is off making it damn site easier to get to bolts

Will take some pics tommorrow and post up

Good luck mate, are you using the trans that same with the vct engine?

Yeah that's the one

Had it fully pulled down, inspected and worn parts replaced before being refitted to a new case a few months back

Just need to unbolt the AU bellhousing and fit the e series one and she'll all be good, hopefully

even if the e series belhousing does not fit it you can just use the AU one. just bolt it up with the top bellhousing bolts only. Other members have done this and had had no worries.