The Project Pad

Yep, just carbon buildup. You can soak the pistons in seafoam and it should come off pretty easily.

The discolored rings at the top of the cylinders is just where the piston ring stops its travel.

Holy crusties/detonation on those pistons, batman.

Edit: Or is that a bunch of dirt/dust that's fallen in after the head removal?

Sam

Just look like a bunch of carbon to me.

:stupid:
Mine looked the same way yours does. Just some carbon build up, nothing to worry about.

ChrisAudi80 wrote:Chris, are you redoing that connection between turbo cold side flange to inlet tubing?

Looks a bit ghetto. Are going V-band on the intake tubing?

Probably not, it holds pressure just fine. The weld is good in terms of penetration and such... just ugly. The reason for that is my buddy's welder started to catch on fire when we were doing my pipes and then friend's welder sprung a leak and was just a general POS when we were trying to redo them lol. Welder is fixed now so hopefully we can get some pretty welds out of it this time around. I'm not going v-band, I'm going Hargett QDC at all of my large diameter air connections.

EDIGREG wrote:Yep, just carbon buildup. You can soak the pistons in seafoam and it should come off pretty easily.

The discolored rings at the top of the cylinders is just where the piston ring stops its travel.

Thank you, that was exactly what I wanted to hear.

SeStone wrote:Holy crusties/detonation on those pistons, batman.

Edit: Or is that a bunch of dirt/dust that's fallen in after the head removal?

Sam

Not what I wanted to hear lol. That thought passed through my head, but I honestly haven't seen enough of it to know any better. The tune is pretty conservative, so I'd guess its just carbon as everyone else has said.

Thank you Ed and Jon for further confirming/suggesting that Now, does anyone have a really good magical degreaser that doesn't require me to scrub for hours? My current degreaser isn't cutting it. I have simple green too, but haven't tried it yet.

pistons look like every other 20vt i have pulled apart.

I've heard oven cleaner for the carbon but I have not tried it.

Umm, brake clean to clean things. A little for the piston, a little for me. A little more for the piston...

Wire wheel OK on piston top. In fact mirror finish your pistontops like your turbo coldside. The best part is that polishing this actually makes HP(ok, so technically it won't make it). This will help keep detonation away(your pistons had evidence of carbonbuildup from ingesting lots of oil, rings looked to be sealing well though, no washing at edge of pistons typical of wornrings). And the oil ingestion is a completely different story.

CAREFULLY remove piston rings, one at a time and organize(up/down). Do Not mix order/orientation of piston rings, in fact I poopoo the thought of reusing the piston rings. Try not to break the rings on removal, they are oohhh sooo delicate.

These rings are currently in my avant...
http://www.rockauto.com/catalog/raframe ... de=1007288




Then carefully clean the grooves that the piston rings live in. I usually use an old piston ring(you really should replace at this stage) broke in half and wrapped with tape(handleside) and scrape all the carbon out of here too.

The key to the engine build game is patience and cleanliness. If you rush, shit will break or get forgotten. Check everything at least twice. When you think it is clean, 'wet' a white papertowel in motoroil and wipe your part. If it comes back clean, then it is. If there is dirt on that white papertowel, clean more.

Oil everything at the end of the day to keep corrosion at bay and keep covered so dirt can't fall out of the air.

So many more tips to add... Wish you lived closer man I want your car to stay together for a longtime after this. Cause it should.

Ian

Thanks for the advice Ian, its much appreciated! I agree that reusing rings is dump and I'm still considering replacing them since it doesn't look like honing will do much (lots of cross-hatching still in there). I would like the car to not have to come back apart either, but it will since I'm going to want to put a main girdle, full balance, dry sump setup, etc. in the next year or two. The car just needed some attention NOW and its getting it along with some "while I'm in there" stuff like I-beam rods and an 01E lol. Got your PM and I'll take you up on that

Interesting developments tonight, not so much in terms of the rebuild. In the hour or so I had to work, I just disconnected the alt., starter, ps pump, and ac comp connections. That doesn't leave too much more to be disconnected though.

What was interesting is this... I am staying at home with my parents for one last summer; next summer I'll be out of school and on my own. They are in the process of selling the house, so another car for me has always been out of the question. Tonight my mom came out and saw what I was doing to the car for the first time and said, "Wow, maybe you should get another car." LOL! I am considering it... I think that would tend to slow things down on this car a little bit though.

Let your parts heat up in the sun...then oven cleaner...let sit for an hour or so...then pressure washer to rinse off....requires very little 'elbow grease'

Thanks for the responses guys. I will probably try out most of them if not all.

I'm still not at the point where I can pull the motor and tranny yet. Tonight I just pulled the front axles and one trans mount. When I tried removing the other trans mount (an 034 motorsport spec mount) the nut just started spinning on the bolt going nowhere fast (yes I made sure the head of the bolt wasn't spinning). I guess the nut stripped out. High quality metal!

I also planned on disconnecting the driveshaft, but the only wrench I could get in there with a 6mm hex on it was my 3/8" craftsman which I broke a little bit ago. It works on low torque stuff, but when it comes to high torque like the driveshaft, it just pops out of gear. Sears is going to get yet another 3/8" ratchet visit from me tomorrow

*edit* I'll add a question in here... for the mls hg, do the head AND block surface really need to be refinished? I'm sure the answer will really be yes... just wondering if that is truly the case. I feel like at least the block can just be cleaned off very nicely.

I didn't resurface either on my 3b...worked out just fine...i read a lot of suggestions that it needed to be done with the mls gasket.for another build, especially high boost and power, I would probably resurface. I was worried about it, so the peace of mind has some value. Just my 2c.

OK, thats kinda what I wanted to hear. Thank you. I'll "resurface" it to the best of my abilities haha.

I would check the block surface but given that you didn't have any sealing issues prior to tearing down my guess is it's fine. Clean the block surface very well, and have the head decked by a machine shop and you'll be good.

Stock don't worry about it. Around that magic 600whp number with standard arp studs, you need all the help you can get to not get headgasket issues. Unlike paper gaskets, MLS gaskets thrive on flat, polished surfaces. Evo guys will polish the surfaces with compound to get a near mirror finish of 35RA at 800whp levels. Some swear by it and prefer it to orings.

The motor I'm building now didn't even get a head shave. Just cleaned up both real well and made sure that there were no high spots of gasket material and such. I think I'll be fine for the 300whp I'm shooting for, but then again I haven't run it yet either. :wink:

Only concern is the two different metals (cast iron/aluminum) obviously expand and contract differently at temperature. I agree on having the alum surface checked and surfaced. The cast iron block should be just fine

Ugh, you guys are making me nervous. I just cleaned mine very throughly and through back on there with an MLS. It never once had a problem before and ran 20psi for 100k of its 200k mile life...

heh, well it will be interesting to see what happens. I don't want to deck either one (definitely wont be doing block now), but we'll see.

I like your reasoning to tear the motor down... similar to mine haha

well I didn't want it leaking on the driveway anymore lol. I marked my territory on a multi-million dollar house's driveway when I picked up the lambo wheels... pretty embarrassing.

Might have a deal on another 90 by the way. That will be fun to beat on for a bit

Very nice! How much for the 90?

I dunno yet. Its in the cl find of the day thing a few pages back, but I could get it for a bit less.

Gotcha.

So are you gonna go with out decking the head? I know I'm gonna pull my head towards the end of summer and have it all rebuilt and decked then, but I really don't wanna worry about it now...