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So, I had a pretty good weekend and managed to get the B20 painted and the B18/M40 combination pulled out of the Canuck. Before I pulled everything (quite some time ago acutally) I had measured the compression on the B18 and it was down to 100 psi or less on #2 and #3, the other two were not a lot better being in the 120 psi range. It also had a lot of valve train noise that couldn't be adjusted out. So when I pulled the engine I popped off the head and had a look. Here's what I found.
No cross-hatch left on the cylinder walls, but I wasn't expecting any, no ridge either...go figure. The valves were not recessed, and while #4 looks rich, the rest were burning OK. #3's combustion chamber was oily - lots of carbon on everything. The colour on the exhaust valves leads me to believe that the mixture on the SU's was pretty close with #4 being a little rich.
The strange part was that the bolt on the exhaust side between #2 and #3 was so carboned up that I had to drift it out of the head! I'm guessing that my head gasket was failing to seal the combustion chamber, leading to carbon diposits on the bolts, but no coolant leak.
One to the new engine...after spending hours polishing the block and head I wanted to make sure the paint was going to last. POR-15 to the rescue again. I cleaned all the parts a dozen times and they were about as clean as it gets. This took a full day - not kidding. Then they were acid etched with the POR metal prep and given a coat of POR-15 sprayed right from the tin. It sprays very well - nice shiney black.
Then after it flashed off - I top coated it with POR engine enamel. This stuff is so thick it can't be sprayed...had to thin it with laquer thinner. Then it would come out of the gun! While the regular POR flashes in a couple of hours, the engine enamel takes 24 hours to recoat. It was still tacky after a full day of drying! On with the second coat - even better. The gloss is crazy - couldn't take a proper shot of the engine with the flash on my camera. It will take a couple of days before I can roll it outside to take some decent shots.
The paint had better hold up - I'm not planning on doing this again! Since the block and head were polished, the resulting paint is very smooth and shiney.
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