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Motor Woes (continued) Cylinder Head
Posted by
davecarama
,
01-16-2012
·
2,841 views
Well, after a little bit of research with machine shops, I have decided, it would be best for me to just wait. On everything. I think I am going with a junk yard motor and settle for mid pack ITA for however long it will last me. In the mean time, save my pennies and slowly rebuild the motor I currently have, and rebuild it to be special... a real ITA motor.
So I gathered up all of my motor parts and brought them back to the garage from the last machine shop I contacted.
I have been driving around with a '95 Miata head in my ,07 miata trunk for the past 3-4 weeks! I just took it out this weekend and brought it to my basement. I figured what the heck, It's mine, I can take it apart if I want to! So I took out my workshop manual and started tearing it down.
It really didn't look too bad from this angle:
But this angle... not so great. Although I do think the HeadGasket was doing it's job, the carbon buildup on the valves is pretty bad.:
Why not so great? Mainly because all of the carbon on the valves:
Peeking around the head, this is a photo of the exhaust ports. Based on the FINE line of soot, looks like it is not matching up very good with the header... That will be one thing I fix when I start working on it. I will file that down so that the openings on the head match the openings on the header. The rules in ITA say that is aloud, but only as deep as 1" into the head, so I need to be careful that I do it properly. Perhaps I will have the machine shop deck this port to minimum factory spec, so I can port further into the block... hmm...
This is an image of one of the intake ports... Look at all the crap in there!!! Again, this too will be port matched. Same 1" rule applies.
This image is of the head with the camshafts removed. There is a specific sequence to getting these out... I followed that sequence
Camshaft Caps. Pretty cool. They have stamped into them I or E (intake side or exhaust side) and #s 1-5 with arrows showing the direction they face. Makes one less thing that you need to label!
Finally, this image shows the yucky HLAs. These things were so dirty, some of them didn't even compress when you pushed on them. Like my organizer?
The HLAs are pretty expensive at $25 a piece at RockAuto.com, so I want to service these. Here is a walkthrough:
http://www.miata.net...a/cleaning.html
That is about as far as I got... I tried taking the valves and valve springs out, but those keepers are not letting go. I can't wait to get them out so I can check out the damn valve seals (which I think are toast), but that is something for another day.
So I gathered up all of my motor parts and brought them back to the garage from the last machine shop I contacted.
I have been driving around with a '95 Miata head in my ,07 miata trunk for the past 3-4 weeks! I just took it out this weekend and brought it to my basement. I figured what the heck, It's mine, I can take it apart if I want to! So I took out my workshop manual and started tearing it down.
It really didn't look too bad from this angle:
But this angle... not so great. Although I do think the HeadGasket was doing it's job, the carbon buildup on the valves is pretty bad.:
Why not so great? Mainly because all of the carbon on the valves:
Peeking around the head, this is a photo of the exhaust ports. Based on the FINE line of soot, looks like it is not matching up very good with the header... That will be one thing I fix when I start working on it. I will file that down so that the openings on the head match the openings on the header. The rules in ITA say that is aloud, but only as deep as 1" into the head, so I need to be careful that I do it properly. Perhaps I will have the machine shop deck this port to minimum factory spec, so I can port further into the block... hmm...
This is an image of one of the intake ports... Look at all the crap in there!!! Again, this too will be port matched. Same 1" rule applies.
This image is of the head with the camshafts removed. There is a specific sequence to getting these out... I followed that sequence
Camshaft Caps. Pretty cool. They have stamped into them I or E (intake side or exhaust side) and #s 1-5 with arrows showing the direction they face. Makes one less thing that you need to label!
Finally, this image shows the yucky HLAs. These things were so dirty, some of them didn't even compress when you pushed on them. Like my organizer?
The HLAs are pretty expensive at $25 a piece at RockAuto.com, so I want to service these. Here is a walkthrough:
http://www.miata.net...a/cleaning.html
That is about as far as I got... I tried taking the valves and valve springs out, but those keepers are not letting go. I can't wait to get them out so I can check out the damn valve seals (which I think are toast), but that is something for another day.
Jim