Finally got around to plucking the engine out of the PV. This is the 2.2 liter B20 with a modified head (ported, shaved, big valves, double valve springs), roller rockers, an 'R' cam, headers and DCOE's. And, rather unexpectedly, a sudden loud rod knock.

Nothing unusual was under the timing cover - the steel gears I put only a few thousand miles ago with the 'R' cam were looking perfect, no slop fore and aft on the cam. Drained the oil and out came little copper shavings - not a good sign. Off with the pan, wiggled the rod ends and, as expected, #2 was rather loose. I unbolted it and found a spun bearing. The crank looked very slightly scuffed, but the rod looked pretty galled. The other rod bearings looked pretty good, with the occasional glimpse of copper showing through the gray. The main were also pretty good, nothing to note other than some modest wear.

Can't fathom why that rod would have spun like that. The obvious suspect to me would be oil starvation, and there was an 'issue' with the oil pump on that car. About a year earlier it had suddenly started to blow oil pressure gauges by spiking the pressure sky high on cold startups. But I figured that until it started popping oil filters it wasn't a problem. When I took the oil pump apart it looked fairly rough inside, but I suppose that is from sucking in those little bits of spun bearing the last few miles. The pressure relief piston was stuck in place as I suspected. But nothing looked as if it would have stopped pumping. The seals on the delivery pipe were still intact too.

Almost more worrisome to me, however, was the fact that the very recently installed cam had 5 lobes well on the way to going flat. I only put this cam in about 2 or 3 thousand miles ago. It wasn't new at the time, but looked it, and I used a brand new set if Isky 'hardenable' solid steel lifters with it. The lifter's wear showed that they were free to rotate in their bores (all very smoothly worn in circular pattterns until the face was concave). The engine has always been within a 1/2 quart of full of Mobil 1 since the cam was installed. For the cam to go that bad that fast something had to be seriously fouled up. I'm just wondering if the combination of the fairly high lift 'R' cam, the 1.6:1 rockers, and the double valve springs is just too much. Or if those 'hardenable' lifters need to be hardened somehow before use? Or perhaps that cam had been reground to 'R' specs and had no hardened surface (it was stamped 'R' on the end). I'm a little at a loss as to what to use to reassemble the valve train. A lower lift cam with the rollers, stock lifters/pushrods?

Also, a couple of the 6-bolt main 'big bore' pistons had some unusual wear marks on them. They *almost* look good enough to use again. There was one broken ring on the #2 cylinder (again) but mostly they just have lost a little bit of their machined surface on the skirt sides. But two of them had very isolated and small rubbed/galled looking spots on the side between the top and the first ring. The only thing I could guess is that at some point carbon had built up at the top of the cylinder walls (above where the rings keep it scoured) and the piston rubbed against that. The cylinders are clean now, but perhaps back when this engine was still in the 145E wagon and being driven more sedately by my father (with a rich running D-Jet system dumping a little too much fuel in) it had lots more carbon.

All in all, not quite what I had hoped to find inside there. I had been hoping for just a straight forward bottom end rebuild - I have another refinished STD crank with rods and mains already, as well as another freshly overbored 92mm B20 block (done 15 years ago, stored unused since then). So now I still need to figure out:

Rods/Pistons - What to do about that galled rod - my inclination is to pitch it and get a new set, but is it possible to reuse? It isn't blued and shows no signs of overheating, just galling on the inside surface. I supposed it could be machined, shimmed, and reused (with rebalancing of the set). Or get another set of 6 bolt rods and special 92 mm pistons. Or a set of modified 6 bolt rods and standard B21 pistons.

Cam/Lifters - You'd have to count me as rather disillusioned with the Isky lifters at this point in time. Or perhaps it was the cam. Pondering a KG19 cam and stock lifters for this time 'round.

Heck, I'm also half heartedly thinking about just scouring the papers for a rusted out Turbo 240 and squeezing that under the hood.
--
I'm JohnMc, and I approved this message.