metaruss

In early September of that year, I finally had the time to tear apart the engine to see what was going on.  As I disassembled the intake ductwork, I was disgusted to find that the PCV vent line was tied directly to the intake duct, just past the air filter.  The large amount of blow-by from cylinder #4 blew oil through the PCV system, through the intake, the turbo, up through the intercooler (!), and into the intake manifold.  Most of it ran back into cylinder #4, causing it to burn all this oil.  When I pulled the head, I found that the headgasket was fine, the #4 piston was fine, and there were no cracks in the head or block.  I expected to see a whole in the piston from all of this blow-by.  When I disassembled the head, I found that the exhaust valves guides were worn, but the rest of it looked OK.  The head had a multi-angle valve jobs done at some point, so I decided not to mess with the valves and just grind them.  After grinding, the valves seated very well, and I decided not to worry about the somewhat worn valve guides.  There was no indication of the valve stem seals leaking, but I replaced them anyway.  Cylinder #4 was carboned up really bad from the oil, as was #1.  The only possibility left was the rings.  When I pulled the pistons, I found that the upper ring on #4 was broken is six places and a huge chunk of the ring land was gone.  The sides of the piston was badly carboned up from being driven this way for so long.  Luckily, there was no scoring on the cylinder wall at all.  The ring pieces were held in the piston by a nice coating of carbon.

I was very surprised to see that the block had almost NO wear.  There no ridge at the top of the bores, either.  I decided to deglaze the bores just to see how it would go.  The first few passes with the honing tool showed the bores to be very even.  A slight ridge appeared at the top, then disappeared a few passes later.  #4 had a small spot where the piston must have been slapping, but it disappeared as well.  I re-measured the bores and they were still straight and round.  I then made several performance decisions with the help of a few people from the SDML (thanks to Gus, Neil, Dempsey, and Garry).  Here are all the parts I ordered for this engine:

• Venolia pistons: 3.4430 diameter, 14cc dish (thank you Chris)
• Full-floating 0.936″ Ford floating wrist pins and spiral-lock retainers from Venolia
• Turbo II rods from Forward Motion
• Rod bearings and piston rings from Mopar
• Lash adjusters from Perfect Circle
• New turbo oil and coolant supply lines
• Fel-Pro headgasket

Here is a shot if the pistons and rods after they had been balanced and the rod ends were modified to hold the larger pin.  Pretty pistons, eh?

Along with all that, I replaced all gaskets and seals as well as the radiator and heater hoses, fuel lines, and vacuum lines.  I also had to repair all of the wiring harnesses under the hood because of heat damage.  The Venolia parts took two months to arrive.  So, while I was waiting, I got ready for some future performance enhancements.  Here are the parts I collected:

• ND Performance 3-bar computer set to 16psi.
• Fel-Pro 0.020 inch “Head-Saver” head shim to reduce compression to about 7.8:1
• K & N Universal Round filter to fit perfectly on the turbo inlet (RU-0640)
• Conquest intercooler (early version)
• 1st generation Talon BOV
• A bunch of 2 1/4″ exhaust pipe and truck radiator hose
• My own, custom PCV breather and oil collector

I planned NOT to use the ND Performance computer at first.  I decided to run with the stock CSX computer and the 804 injectors to take it easy on the engine and make it run rich, which is good for break-in.  I would also plug the wastegate actuator can right on the manifold pressure to keep boost very low for the first couple of hundred miles.  I would be saving the Conquest intercooler installation until the next summer, so I just used the turbo outlet hose from my ’88 Turbo engine to run the engine as a Turbo I, since I had moved the stock Turbo II components to my ’88 Shadow ES.