After nursing the wounds, we are back at it.
Andy and I spent our Saturday morning at "pick and pull" retrieving a 5 speed transmission out of a 89 mr2. We almost pulled the motor but then we noticed a lot of water deposits running down the side of the the block that started right under the head. Checked under the radiator cap hmmm... oily, no go. I have been online and reading a lot lately, doing searches on rod bearings and mr2 engine components.
I now realized if we had replacement bearings, we could have done the work while the engine was still in the car, it probably wouldn't have been much fun in the dust storms but it was possible. I also realized we could have stolen a transmission from another team in the middle of the night, it would have taken us about 30 minutes to get it out. Damn and there were a lot of teams at the track that were candidates, I could only imagine their surprise when they opened up the engine lid to an engine hanging off one mount. I could also imagine that would have meant an automatic spot for peoples curse with a full expulsion from future 24 hours of Lemons races.
The plan of attack will be to get back into the shop and see if we can rebuild the engine without sending it to a machine shop. This can get expensive real fast and I don't think Jay will give us a $0 value on our car to do a complete rebuild. We are also looking at a 500 mile break-in period to get the bearings rings and such to seat correctly based on the rebuild manual. Maybe I can talk the guys into taking turns babying a motor while we break it in. I did find out that there are quite a few cars out there with the 4age motor in them including Geo Storms, Geo Metros, and Geo Novas. Now just to find the right year, with a motor with low miles on it. (Yea Right!)
It's great to get so much support from the other teams. After hearing some of their horror stories I don't feel so bad about ours. Get over it! Pick up the pieces "literally" and move on. Cheer's, and hoping every ones dreams come true in Buttonwillow.
6 years ago
3 comments:
There's an '89 at pick'n'pull? You need to tell me these things.
Should have stolen ours out of the parts car... Joe took half of our engine bolt-on's :)
Damn Matt! I totally forgot about your parts car, I definitely would have done the "drop and kick" on your parts car. That's drop the trans out of your car and kick our piece of shit to the side.
Yep we had the MR2 group from down the road borrow a alternator and water pump from ours, didn't get the water pump back, or a "thanks" for saving their asses in the heat of battle. All I wanted was an engine and transmission but "No" they didn't want to share. I Never forget!:-)
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