[s-cars] When good Dads go bad (and blow your motor)

[Tom Mullane]

Brian,

My experience with damage resulting from overheats says that the
extent of the damage depends on how quickly the car overheated:

If Dad popped a hose and suffered a sudden and complete loss of
coolant, the head got very hot very quickly and is warped but the
bottom end stayed reasonable cool  and is probably OK.

If the leak was slow and the overheat was more gradual, the car ran
long enough for the bottom end to get super hot and destroy bearings
and maybe rings.  If this is the case, you'll pop on a new head and
the car will run great...until you hit the road.  Then oil pressure
will quickly fall off as engine speed increases and you'll be throwing
an oil pressure light.

Best of luck.  :-/

Tom


Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 08:40:07 -0400
From: "brian hoeft" <qweblog at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [s-cars] When good Dads go bad (and blow your motor)
To: "Floyd Noel" <floyd.noel at gmail.com>
Cc: "trgreen at comcast.net" <trgreen at comcast.net>,
       "s-car-list at audifans.com" <s-car-list at audifans.com>
Message-ID:
       <f6c947d20807080540g3482f525rbda009c8bd2a8eb4 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Thanks for the words guys. I should have been more specific.. I have another
head in my garage to work with and can hopefully do a weekend swap. I will
definitely replace valve guides,seals, have it decked, likely port&polish,
etc.. Unless I find a great deal on a whole motor I can just transplant,
then have mine to work over top to bottom over a year or so.

What I meant to specifically ask is options for valve springs and maybe
larger valves. Does anybody know what Dahlback uses? Are you guys with over
4/500 HP still on the OE lifters? I already have the rs2 exh. cam.

Ive dealt with dozens of cooked VW/Audi motors in the past and this scenario
typically requires only a reworked head, and though I recognize the
possibility of Toms pessimism :-) I will have to side with Dave for now,
maybe for my own mental sanity..

Are there any good ways of diagnosing the piston rings? Ive only had to
rebuild a handful of bottom ends due to obvious failures.