The Project Pad

We have begun to make progress...very little but still, ill take it. Cams were pulled from 1 of my heads and i pulled the BOS header. Took 2.5 hours to pull it off and took a grinder, Dremel, 10 cutting discs, 2 broken screwdrivers, an impact drill , set of extractors, and my trusty rail road spike.

The 7A head is now ready to ship to who ever wants it.

I have to admit, the "trusty rail road spike" has me wondering. What did you use that for?

Doesn't sound fun. I think I had 7 of 16 exhaust manifold studs that broke on me.

DE80q wrote:I have to admit, the "trusty rail road spike" has me wondering. What did you use that for?

this was uses to pound off the seized nuts after I cut through them with the Dremel. lol worked pretty good for a couple of the hard to reach ones.

Got the 7A harness all out tonight. Took about an hour. And yes there was alot of swearing lol. I vowed to get it out in 1 piece and i did manage that.

Also got the battery tray out so i can relocate the battery.

Any pointers on removing that harness? I’ll be doing mine shortly.

jbrentd wrote:Any pointers on removing that harness? I’ll be doing mine shortly.

Slow is smooth:smooth is fast. Lol

Take your time. Try to push 1 connector Through the firewall at a time. Lots of jumping inside the car and outside. Pull harness into the car from the bay. Make sure its not tangled up in other wires. If you have a friend that can feed in as you pull it could be beneficial as well.

And another small setback... if anyone remembers my URS build and the hassle i had with getting that head all sorted out after a machine shop in town messed it up, well the head that came with the Coupe project was unfortunately rebuilt by that same shop by the guy i bought the car from. So to say the least i was concerned about this head. Bought a valve spring compressor and tore the head down tonight....this head needs new guides! Shit! The shop cut corners , and its a real piss off. Back to the drawing board but were making progress.

Man, that sucks. I hope my head rebuild is good. Spent way too much on it for it to be fubar'd. My guy does good work and he thoroughly tested it, but was not that familiar with these engines.

morris400 wrote:83mm Head gasket has arrived!

Looking at this gasket, and trying to remember the MLS i installed before...what are the 5 rings? Are they fire rings? I did not know the MLS had fire rings in it but maybe im wrong.

How do i install them?

This gasket was machined from stock to 83mm.

Did you have to remove the ABS pump to get the harness through the firewall?

Jealous it only took you an hour. I think it took me a few attempts before it was out.

the ABS was already removed lol.. it makes things easier id say.

Yeah if you got that out in an hour without cutting that’s a huge win . It took me forever and I think I unplugged a bunch of wrong things in the process . I’m afraid to even connect the battery ever again

You guys are making me not look forward to pulling 7A harness soon.

Afterthought wrote:Yeah if you got that out in an hour without cutting that’s a huge win . It took me forever and I think I unplugged a bunch of wrong things in the process . I’m afraid to even connect the battery ever again

it took me around an hour with it all pretty accessible. the dash was out already, and hvac removed as well. had a bit of untangling to do but just started pulling lol.

Update : 5 Mar 20,

I have spoke with a few people and have decided to stay with stock pistons on this build. This allows me to allocate funds elsewhere and lower overall cost.

Tore down my spare short block last night after taking a look at my spare stock pistons. The stock pistons i had set aside already were pretty banged up. 4/5 were pitted baddly and i found out that at least 2 plugs fell apart in the chamber and rattled around pretty good on that engine.

So i decided to tear apart the complete short block i had to see if it was in better condition. To my surprise the pistons look great. And there are no issues.

I cleaned the pistons up a bit, and they are going over to Neacail here in Edmonton for ceramic coating and more cleaning tomorrow. The Block and rotating assembly will be heading to a local machine shop next week as well.

You can see the difference in pistons here. The carbon caked ones are from an old S6 engine that i had already torn down. After learning about the plug issue...im hesitant to use that block now as well.

The cleaner pistons are from the spare short block i had that i was going to sell...guess thats not happening now lol.

Using 4 pistons from the good block...and 1 from the S6 block. Rhey are the best 5 pistons i have.




My work bench lol


2 bare blocks now. Close one is the one im using. Far side one will be a build latter on using the 83mm pistons if i cant sell them.


Pistons ready to go get coated.

One of the pistons I pulled from the AAN I recently acquired also looks like it had a plug end come out in its chamber at some point. Its super banged up. If you don't know anyone that needs 4 pistons, would you be willing to throw me the second best piston from your S6 engine for a price?

Spooky Quattro wrote:One of the pistons I pulled from the AAN I recently acquired also looks like it had a plug end come out in its chamber at some point. Its super banged up. If you don't know anyone that needs 4 pistons, would you be willing to throw me the second best piston from your S6 engine for a price?

Sent you a PM

Pistons are coated! One step closer.

Engine is now offically at a local machine/engine building shop. There is some confusion as their 5 Cyl experience is pretty silm. Going to be holding their hand through most of this... i will say im a little bit concerned but its one of the only shops here they would do it.

Ive been speaking with Jeff Gerner and hes provided alot of information and knowledge as well as what to tell the shop tondo and what NOT to do. Big big thanks to Mr Gerner, hes been a huge help through this process. Lets hope it all goes as planned.

Also bought Ferrea Valves. Lol.

There's a sticky in the Engine section on MG. Not sure if that would help.

https://www.motorgeek.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=51871

I hope to God my guy did everything correctly. He's very good, just not that familiar with these heads. He felt really good after he tested everything.

Intake manifold is coming along nicely. 1 more coat required but im super happy.

Looks good! What are you using for injector cups? I’ve heard the old ones will be unusable after being exposed to the heat.

4 out of 5 came out perfect ... i now have to try and get 1 out of my old AAN manifold...or go EFI metal ones.

I ruined one of my manifolds by off-gassing it with the cups still in. They melted right in there and I was never able to properly clean them out of there. I might drill it right out and weld in some aluminum injector bungs.