[s-cars] Engine completey hosed

[djdawson2 at aol.com]

For those of you who can remember WAY back when I posted about my strange engine failure... yeah,it was a full 2+ years ago.

It was while I was on a trip... engine suddenly began to sound like it was detonating.? The load didn't matter, it could even be idling with a small rev, it would sound like detonation.? I quickly bagged completion of the trip, but it was about 700 miles that I had to drive it like that to get home.? The engine sounded more sickly as the trip progressed, but I did get home.

Car has sat for 2+ years... just no time to mess with it.? Someone succeeded in making me feel guilty last weekend, so I got into it.

I started with a compression test...? 1 - 83, 2 - 62, 3 - 101, 4 - 36, 5 - 28.? Stunning numbers.? I pulled off the head today to look at the bad news.?? The headgasket had failed between all cylinders, most notably between 1 and 2, and 4 and 5.? The failure between 4 and 5 was beyond anything I had ever seen, and the gasket material was simply gone.? The cylinder head has a nice little "fire groove" burned into the aluminum between those cylinders as well... deep enough to catch a fingernail.

Inspection of the bottom end showed significant material missing from the #5 piston crown.? #1 and #4 have a good 1/16th inch gap between the pistons and cylinder walls.? #2 and #3 look fine.

Needless to say, the engine is essentially junk.? The head can be milled and get a valve job and be fine.? The block would require a set of oversized pistons/rebuild to be returned to service.

I am wondering how this came to be.? The piston damage I see is typically associated with either too much timing, a lean A/F, or detonation... or a combo of all.? I do use a wideband and an EGT, so it seems like I would have noticed this before damage took place.? No to mention, this engine had run a full 60k miles with the current configuration before it failed... hard miles.

The only change in engine configuration during its 60k mile life, was a conversion to the 1.8t coils.? That was done about 12k before it died.

This engine put out 440+ whp? (or 12.4 1/4 mile power for those that don't like the dyno numbers)... so perhaps this could be a full lifespan for an engine with this type of output.

Either way, I'm a little surprised at the extent of the failure... and the fact that it went so wrong so quickly.? It went from full tilt power to poor running in a very short time frame.? I suppose it is possible that things were not so bad at the point of failure, but that running it an additional 700 miles to get home just made it abysmal.

Anyway... that's where it's at.? Debate at this point is between building another 2.2, or trying a 2.5... parts for which I've had sitting around for years.

That's my story for early '09

Oh, and if anyone want to see pictures, just ask? ;-)

Dave