My engine didn't NEED a rebuild (it actually had almost 163K mi). I sent it in for a new head gasket, rear main, and a few other things and my dad decided that it was time to have it rebuilt. I think it had the worst case of piston slap I had ever heard. It didn't matter weather it was cold or warm, it slapped quite loudly below 1500 RPM. It drove me crazy! It was a little worse when the engine was cold, but it was loud when the engine was warm as well. The valves were within spec according to my mechanic. Also, it was using 2+ liters of oil between oil changes (5K km). Oil was leaking out from many of the seals and the compression wasn't the best. I was going to run the engine for another 50-100K km, which my mechanic felt it could do, but he said that it would be all down hill. I bought the car with 241K km (150K mi) last fall and it was slapping bad then and was using around 3 liters between oil changes until I had some seals replaced. This way I shouldn't have to worry about the engine for the rest of the car's life as long as I take good care of it. After the turbo was removed my mechanic checked the play in the shaft and it seemed to be in fine shape, so we just cleaned it, and bolted it on to the rebuilt engine. Although, we had to make a adjustment with the wastegate. It seems as though the mitsu gen IIIs have a problem where over time the sleve for the wastegate rod sinks down (hot/cold cycle) and makes it so that the wastegate door cannot close properly. My mechanic called a company (forget their name) that specializes in turbo rebuilding in California (I think) and they told him that it was a common problem with the gen IIIs. He was told to just remove the rod and give the sleve a few taps to put it back in place. The turbo seems to be boosting fine and I hope it continues to do so for a long time. Oh, one more thing; my new engine is still tickey/slappy until the engnie is up to temperature. It's not nearly as bad as before, but it is noticable. My mechanic is hopeing that it's the valves and he is going to take the camshaft out on Tuesday and replace the "valve silencers" and check the valve adjustment.We're just hoping that it's not piston slap! If it is, should I be worried about it getting worse, or should I just not worry about it becomming an issue?.................. I posted asking about this last week and recieved a FEW responses, but they didn't completely answer my questions. Since then I have more then doubled the mileage on the engine and the sound has not seemed to become worse. Anyway, I didn't mean for the post to be this long, but I had to explain a few things :)
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Chris. Halifax N.S. '91 745Ti, 260K km.