Taking a journey through pain and a misfortune. A speed6 saga.

Now that I've got you excited to see a custom 2.5L build.. Lets make you wait a little bit... How about we rebuild the PTO(Transfer case).. PTO is short for Power Take Off unit... I found using this term made it easier for finding parts and information...
Remember this leaky thing??


Lets tear it apart.. Good news it looks clean inside..


Make sure you take a punch, or in my case a chisels to mark the bearing caps before you pull them off.. They are machined to match the housing and need to be installed in the same orientation and place when things go back together.. This also leads me to talk about the upgraded bearing caps that are on the market... I researched these before diving into this.. I was finding enough reports of people spinning bearings and ruining the case, it made me decide against upgrading the caps.. I do drive the car hard, but I don't have plans for any major racing.. I believe the issue with the upgraded caps is to do with the machining.. Technically you should get things line bored if you put new caps on.. Spent 10 years working in specialty driveline/transmission shops rebuilding differentials..If you've ever built a differential.. You use all the same principals and procedures here..



The wear you see on the inside of my bearing caps, and case half, is from the bearing races slowly spinning over time... This slow movement is ok.. If you can feel ridges with your finger nail.. You've got problems.. In my case everything here was healthy..


While it was apart, I took the time to inspect the oil pump... Pay attention to how it comes apart when you take the snap ring off.. the washer is a belleville washer that goes back together only 1 way.. It's been to long now, so I can't remember which direction it goes back on..


The wear you see here on the pump gears is ok.. There's no ridges or anything like that which can be felt with a finger nail..


No wear here on the side of the pump gear.. This is important to check..


Don't forget to check the housing for wear.. Mine shown here is in good shape...


The inner pump gear has a step in the center.. So it can only be installed 1 way.. The outter pump gear can be installed 2 ways... The machined dot needs to be facing the cap/top..


I tore the whole PTO down and replaced all the seals.. Part of that was removing the pinion gear..


This is a crush washer.. If you are familiar with building differentials, you'll know what this crush washer is.. It's job is to help maintain proper pinion bearing pre-load... You'll want to order a new crush washer if you get this far into a build.. technically once crushed, it can't go back together again.. As you can see there's quite a height difference.. This takes a really strong impact gun to crush, or a big ass breaker bar with special tools to keep the pinion from turning.. I have been able to do some back yard work, to spread a crush washer and re-use it.. but it's not advised..


Pinion bearing pre-load gets set by checking rotational torque.. So you need the bearings lubricated by gear oil and an inch pound torque wrench like you see here.. 6 - 12 inch pounds is a good range for used bearings.. 20 - 28ish inch pounds for brand new bearings.. As new bearings "break in" they will loosen up to about 6 - 12inch pounds.. This is something you've gotta sneek up on while crushing the crush washer..


You should replace the pinion nut since it's a nylock one time use nut... If you don't.. You can "stake" it by using a chisel to indent the top, and use red lock tight.. you don't want this nut backing off..


Don't forget to replace the oil cooler seals.. when you do, there's a notch on the oil cooler.. It need to get lined up in the corresponding spot on the case..


And with some good quality RTV, everything is all back together... there's some extra details, but this covers most of what it takes to rebuild the PTO..

 

I'd be curious to know if you have a forged crank in the 2.5.

 

I don't buy into information that a 2.5L bottom end is good enough to gap the piston rings, slap the mazdaspeed head on it and call it a day.. The information surrounding the 2.5L motor and it's strength under boosted applications comes from the NC Miata world, where they run different turbo setups, different tuning solutions, Port injection (Which is a MAJOR difference in terms of knock resistance, air charge temps/cooling, fuel-air atomization and other important factors).. It's really important to understand that direct injection does not work the same as port injection..

So why did a buy a 2.5L?? Well because I could buy all the goodies needed to do a complete "built" motor set up... The estimated costs going this route were going to come out about the same as a used Mazdaspeed motor.. That includes the cost of buying the 2.5L motor.. I wasn't anticipating much when it came to machine work.. I had torn down, and inspected the 2.5L before I ordered all the goodies. From what I saw, it looked like it shouldn't be a problem to stick with standard clearance parts..

Balance shaft delete, oil pan baffle..


Forged pistons from fab9.. Not pictured was a set of Molnar Rods, King bearings all around, ARP head studs.. I tried to get ARP main studs, but they were on back order.. Autotech HPFP internals, E85 safe rebuild kit, Damond motorsports PCV plate, A dual catch can setup from a local supplier.. I wanted to get an EGR delete kit as well, but with EPA regulations making big waves around sueing companies for selling emissions defeat devices, this product wasn't being offered.. .


For me this wasn't about building a bullet proof motor to make big power with.. I plan to hit the limits of the stock fuel system, back off a little for safety and leave it there... technically when done right, I don't "need" a built motor to do this...My long term goals around putting this drive line into my 88 323GTX means I'll drop about 1,000lbs of weight.. this will make it easier on the drive line at these power levels.. I don't really need to go this far But If I am in this deep, why not upgrade and try to future proof..

 

Before we get into the important information regarding a 2.5L swap.. lets have a look at some differences in the blocks..

The oil squirter isn't a bolt on piece.. It's built into the block.. It's hard to show in pictures, but where it's located means there's differences in how the oil passages are drilled in block.. These are built into the main bearing locations..


You can see in this picture the stock 2.3L oil squirters still hanging out into the cylinder bores..


Below is a coolant passage drilled between the cylinders on the stock block...


The 2.5L doesn't have this coolant flow between the cylinders.. I'd assume this is due to bore restrictions/spacing.. Since the 2.3L and 2.5L share all the same cylinder head mounting bolts.. Something would have needed to change in the block casting to make sure the 2.5L bore would be strong enough.. If you're into race built motors and how important cylinder cooling is, especially up close to the cylinder head.. This should be something to consider... Once way to look at it.. The 2.5L has more strength in this area, but less cooling.. A lot more research would be needed to prove what's more important or if this should be important.. but it's a difference worth noting..


Block differences on the fire wall side are pretty simple.. no location for the turbo drain, no oil feed for the turbo.. A support boss missing that's part of the turbo support brace.. there's lots of information out there on how to get around these problems..


Radiator side doesn't have any differences.. Make sure to reuse your stock Mazdaspeed PCV valve if you do this swap.. N/A and turbo valves are different..

 

Thanks for you take and pix on the PTO. There have been a couple writeups about the PTO, but it has been a while since someone has visited the topic.
I guess its a Speed6 thing, lol.

 

Let's take a closer look at something that can apply to a stock 2.3L... Timing Chain upgrade... This comes from the updated style that 2.5Ls and newer generation motors in general run..

On the right you've got a stock 2.3L chain, oil pump drive chain. crank gears and oil pump drive gear... On the Left you've got the 2.5L stuff... At first glance it's pretty easy to see they are completely different..


Let's take a closer look shall we? Why upgrade the timing chain?? Well the stock 2.3L stuff has issues with "stretching", becoming loose and hitting the valve cover on cold start up... A "stretched" timing chain is actually and poor way of describing whats happened.. Belts stretch, chains don't... Chains wear out.. The most wear happens in the area of the link pins.... A 2.5L chain has more of a laminated design vs traditional barrel and link design... This means there's more material in the pin area to spread out load and wear... When a 2.3L chain wears in this are it gets sloppy.. The chain gets longer due to this wear.. Hence the concept of it "stretching"... To compensate the tensioner needs to extend out further to take up the slop..



Next up, lets look at the drive sprockets.. I am going to focus on the crank sprocket specifically.. First off, the Mazdaspeed crank sprocket has the main timing chain drive sprocket and the oil pump drive socket separated with friction washer in between... A 2.5L is a 1 piece design.. That means 1 less spot for timing to slip..

A 2.3L Chain grabs the chain links between the barrels in the chain.. Something you wont see talked about, is the the wear that happens to the drive gears.. this is over looked when it comes to chain replacement and part of the cause of a "stretched" chain.. Circled in red is the drive side of the tooth.. If you look close you'll see how its shaped differently than the other side of the tooth beside it.. This is 200,000km's worth a wear that's happened... this wear shrinks the overall distance the chain travels.. the tensioner needs to push out further to take up the slack thats created.. So you take a chain that's getting longer over time travelling a path that's slowly getting shorter.. The tensioner can only push out so far in order to take up the slack created.. Chain tension is important, there's forces acting on the valve train trying to turn the camshafts in the opposite direction... The hardest place to control this takes place in the distance between the between the camshafts.. This is why the chain ends up rattling on the valve cover in this area..

A 2.5L chain has a different design to it... My poor drawing shows that it's a string of "U" shaped links.. The teeth on the gears ride inside the "U" shape... There is no separate barrel.. There's a lot more surface material spreading out the load..


The 2.5L gears are different.. The teeth are wider, there's a lot more surface area... So less wear happens.. The circled area's show the drive side of this 2.5L Chain.. This was 60,000kms.. You can barely feel that wear when running your fingers or a screw driver over it..


The oil pump drive sprocket is different on the 2.5L... It's got less teeth on it... 19 teeth, compared to 22 teeth, This over drives the oil pump to increase volume/pressure..


I am not sure where my other pictures have gone.. But part of the reason for the difference in the oil pump drive is to do with the tensioner... the 2.5L tensioner and chain guides are different... There's a hole in the tensioner that lines up with a hole in the chain guide.. This lubricates the chain with pressurized engine oil, rather than the chain relying on being lubricated by "splash" The chain guides are different shape as well.. Especially the guide on the tensioner side.. If you decide to upgrade your chain.. You've gotta replace everything.. the VVT assembly, exhaust sprocket, crank sprocket, oil bump drive sprocket, both chains, guides and the tensioner.. I tried to mix and match stuff during my engine build but it wouldn't work unless I used everything from the 2.5L... (I've done this on a 2.3L as well, not just on the 2.5L I was builiding at this point in my build thread..)

As I've googled, and browsed the forums, I found small details like this was missing, incomplete or maybe "unknown"... Hopefully if people have more to add as I continue, it'll get shared..

Plenty more to come as I get the time to post it...

 

Do you have a picture of how the 2.5 chain and gear interface? I can't picture it in my head

 

Thank you for the write up about the 2.3/2.5 chain dress. You have me thinking about my future endeavors.

 

I don't have any other pictures... But maybe this is more clear... The tooth sinks into the chain in the space I've circled in blue... The drawn picture is my poor excuse to draw a side picture of the link... The poorly drawn blue hump would represent the gear tooth.. On the right, that's what the chain looks like flipped over from the top...

 

There's one person who's asked about the crank shaft... Let's take a closer look..
2.5L crankshaft on the left... 2.3L on the right.. It's pretty easy to see the counter weights are shaped and sized differently... there's a different level of machine work between the 2 cranks.. The 2.5L is what you'd expect to find in a cheap, econobox type motor.. pretty basic bare minimum... Where as the 2.3L shows a level of machine work you'd want from a more performance application..


Here we have the 2.3L crank shaft... tipping the scale at 44.5lbs..


The 2.5L crank shaft is substantially lighter.. There's variations in 2.5L's.. This is something that might be different if the motor comes from a hybrid vehicle (which is supposed to have a higher compression ratio), or if it's from the Ford line up of vehicles...

This shows the 2.5L crank shaft in my motor is a cast unit, you can see the parting line in the sad casting where I've circled in blue...


A lot more machine work in this area of the 2.3L... I haven't done the research, nor did I look close enough to tell if this is a forged crank shaft..


The area where the thrust bearing rides is something to take a look at... This is the 2.5L crank..

The 2.3L crank shaft has more surface area, thicker metal.. This will make it stronger when resisting thrust forces..


The 2.3L oil passages are chamfered... This promotes even oil flow across the bearings...


Here we have the 2.5L oil passages drilled into the crank shaft... pretty basic.. When rebuilding a motor, this is a place you want to run a pipe cleaner, lots of air and solvent through.. You'll end up with a a bunch of junk getting stuck in there that'll end up in your new bearings.. If you've sent your crank out to be ground, cleaned and you are doing the assembly yourself cleaning these passages are extremely important..

 

Lets get into the important details that can get heavily debated depending on who you're talking to... Pistons!

2.5L piston.. interesting dish shape to it... I didn't want to spend the time measuring compression chamber area's, so I don't have information on how this might changed or effect the compression ratio.. The dish shape is purposeful when it comes to getting the fuel to atomized and evenly get distributed through out the air charge as it enters the cylinder.. The 2.5L piston isn't designed to have fuel sprayed on it and ensure a good mix... The fluid dynamics at play, are quite interesting.. If you youtube videos done with clear cylinder heads, or cylinder walls.. Some of the high speed footage is really interesting to watch..


Gen 1 piston top.. This is actually a poor design piston for a direct injection motor... Gen 2 pistons have a pocket machined into them.. This is purposefully designed to help aid in lean burn conditions... If you squirt a the fuel into a small area and keep it more concentrated you can better ignite it... I don't think I can explain how important details like this are with out writing some kind of 5 page report paper... My career as a mechanic gave me the opportunity to attend various levels of OEM training... Each manufacture has some interesting concepts on how they make this work with in their direct injection systems... VVT, dynamic compression, and various other factors come into play with this..



The 2.3L piston is on the top.. the 2.5L piston is on the bottom.. The connecting rods and wrist pins are different sizes... The 2.5L piston has more "meat" around the wrist pin... This could be important if you were building a high reving, N/A screamer type motor...

From the side you can really see the difference between the pistons.. the 2.3L is on the left.. 2.5L on the right.. The ring lands on the 2.3L are thicker... the ring groves are wider.. The crown of the piston is thicker.. The 2.3L piston is longer, which will aid in stability and loading when moving in the cylinder bore... Which wrist pin is stronger?? I am not sure, you can see the 2.5L is thicker.. but there's some physics involved with the larger diameter 2.3L pin... I under stand some of this from a basic theoretical principle, but not enough to go into details here..

2.3L Compression ring thickness...

2.5L compression ring thickness..

If the stock 2.3L motor can be a bit delicate at times... It doesn't make sense that the 2.5L pistons are going to fair well... if you still aren't convinced... Lets look at the rods..
2.5L on the left... 2.3L on the right.. I don't think I need to take measurements to show which one is stronger..



2.5L on the Left... 2.3L on the right..


Rather than measuring, we'll just lay the rods on top of one another.. 2.5L on the top, 2.3L on the bottom.. It's pretty clear.. the 2.3L is a bit beefier.. with a better shape to it, to help prevent bending..


If this isn't enough proof... I can't help you... The only true benefit to the 2.5L swap, is the abundance and availability of the motor its self.. As I mentioned, I was able to get a good running 2.5L with 60,000kms on it for $900... I could blow up 5.. 2.5Ls at that price difference..

 

I guess it's time to start building this motor now..

Lots of time spent measuring, second guessing myself... not remembering if I wrote down the correct numbers... I had taken on WAAAY to much at this point in my life.. My boss was pushing for me to finish his 67 Camaro build.. So I was working my normal 8 hours in the shop and spending 3 - 4 hours a night after hours working on that project.. Then I would spend an hour or 2 on this build.. Sleep? pfftt... who needs sleep? ... So picture taking and overall build quality of this motor started to suffer at this point..

measuring cylinder bores.. This block only had 60,000km's on it, I wasn't worried about issues.. but I did this to match any machining differences between the new pistons and try to get the best piston to cylinder wall clearance..


Setting piston ring gap... I don't remember the specs.. I went with the recommendations on the instruction sheet that came with the rings/pistons... From what I remember, it was a pretty standard gap you'd find on a turbo build..


Mechanics tend to be lazy when it comes to cleaning out threads.. It's the nature of the flat rate, cram and jam, gotta make money world... I don't fit in with that norm... Over the years, I've worn out my own personal tap and die set... Cleaning out the threads for the cylinder head bolts/ARP studs is and important process.. Otherwise you aren't actually torquing the bolts properly... You wont get the proper clamping loads... It's amazing how you can get away with being sloppy when it comes to an OEM build.. There's a lot of room for error in the OEM world... but if you're going to start pushing something harder, that room for error shrinks quickly...

 

August/September of 2021 the build took a back seat.. I bought a new house, moved started taking time to setup a new home garage... For those of you living out here in the PNW, you might remember the disaster we went through in November of 2021... Major rains caused a major flooding issues, and land slide issues.. I almost lost my brand new house 3 months after moving..

This is the aftermath of a landslide that came down tearing through the 2 properties next to mine.. Thankfully no one was living in these houses yet, but a few construction workers were on site.. No one was hurt... I was home when this happened... It was really scary.



The City determined I needed to leave my house for safety, until the hill side was stabilized... So I was stuck in Chilliwack, evacuated from my house having to live in a temporary place until Christmas time.. My mental health at this time tanked.. I ended up taking a leave of absence from work... I had to spend time getting the house organized and myself back on track... The build was low priority so the car sat in the back compound at the shop I worked for... During this time there was a break in.. I didn't intend for the car to sit in the back compound for so long, so I hadn't been careful with storing parts.. I had stuff in the trunk of the car.. It was all stolen...

I did mange to get the bottom end assembled sometime before the summer of 2022..


I bought a -10 AN swivel fitting and chose to drill and tap the block where the stock 2.3L turbo drain would be.. This worked, but wasn't a good location.. The block was much thinner that I expected in this area... The fitting once screwed in interfered with the connecting rod.. I ended up using JBweld to help the fitting stay threaded to the block, and had to grind the fitting back on the inside of the block.. There's a better location between the ribbing closer to the timing cover for running the turbo drain to... Oil feed for your turbo comes from a adapter plate you put inline of the oil filter... This means you need to switch the oil filter housing to a GEN 2 housing with a spin on filter..


Oil pan baffle installed..

 

Dang, that slide looked BAD!!

 

The building with the tyvek was 2 stories.. The 1st floor was wiped out.. The 2nd floor is sitting on the mud.. The coach house/Garage thats damaged and twisted almost fell over... If it had, it would have taken out my new shop.. half of the bottom floor of both the houses was wiped out.. load bearing walls and all...

Credit to the builder.. Inside the house next to mine, the upper floor dry wall didn't even crack.. All though if I had been living in 1 of those 2 places I wouldn't be here today... My ex and I were living in the basement suite..

 

I've found some more pictures.. So we are going to take a step back and have a look at some of the differences between 2.5L and 2.3L timing chain components...

both 2.5L chain guides on the Left... both 2.3L ones on the right.


This is the tensioner side guides stacked on top of each other.. The 2.3L guide is on the top. 2.5L on the bottom.. You can see how much more arch there is to the 2.5L guide.. This will help with increasing tension..


Here you can see the difference in the 2.3L and 2.5L tensioners.. The 2.5L tensioner has a hole in it that corresponds with a space in the chain guide for lubricating the chain..


On the left the stock 2.3L Chain guide on the tensioner side.. On the right the 2.5L chain guide.. You can see at the bottom, the hole where oil is fed from the tensioner, to lubricate the chain.... Also take note all the metal embedded into the 2.3L guide.. This was brand new with next to no miles on it.. All that metal is from the stock engine blowing up..


Something often over looked, is the oil pump chain guides.. These Often get over looked and should be replaced.. One of these its from the stock motor in my car that blew up.. the other is from a different higher mileage 2.3L... There's a major amount of wear going on..The chain wears more heavily on 1 side..

 

So at the time of the land slide, I mentioned my car had been sitting in the back compound at work where it was broken into and a bunch of stuff was stolen... I had a large FMI, piping kit, my stock intercooler, stock exhaust manifold, a knock off T3/T4 turbo and some other parts stolen.. This put my build behind quite a bit..

I was able to pick up a turbo kit for a 2.0L Escort/Fusion for under a $1000.. This came with an FSworks cast manifold, A no name, but brand new turbo with specs close to/little bigger than the stock turbo.. A FMI, and full piping kit.. plus some other goodies..

Picking up these parts felt like a potential win... So I started prepping the cylinder head to install it.. Well that win didn't last long.. I had sent this head out to a machine shop 6 months or so earlier to get the valves fixed/checked.. I gave instructions for the machine shop to completely go through the head, fix any worn valves, make sure lash was set right... Well the machine shop didn't tear the head apart.. they just vacuum checked the valves and fixed cylinder 2 that blown up... So when I took the head apart to install new stem seals, and loook at doing a home porting job... I found the exhaust valves on cylinders 1,3 and 4 were pitted.. Carbon build up that hadn't been cleaned off allowed the valves to seal... Once clean, that wasn't the case... Soooo back to the machine shop the head went..

 

The build took a back seat for a while as I took on some other projects at home.. At work I moved to a new location where I'd get to focus on my bosses project cars.. At home I had my friends 99 Camaro we did new suspension, sway bars, shift kit, custom ECU tune. Custom built brackets to fit Acura Integra seats in the car, and a custom roll bar.. My friend who owns the car is 6'4.. He needed to get a set of seats in the car that would put him as low as possible so that he could see out the front window, with out looking at the top frame.. The roll bar wasn't built to any track specs, but it was proper DOM, floor plates, ect.. He just wanted piece of mind if he rolled the car he wouldn't get crushed.. There used to be a company that made kits, but he wasn't able to get one..



At work, I pulled the 302 out of my bosses 74 Camaro tribute car, and put a 400hp 383 stroker in the car, with Holley Sniper EFI, The goal was to make it look what I'd call stock plus, Were weren't doing any crazy wire tuck work.. Just make it clean clean clean... You would have thought he would have learned from doing the 67.. That all body work should be done after major mods.. but nope.. I had to work around this absolutely straight, mint, black paint job...


Just like his 67, the little details were important..
I hand made the brackets, did my own version of hose protection...


As I was doing all this work I happened to stumble apone a facebook market place post... Well that sure looks like a stock Mazdaspeed6 intercooler... There were more pictures to which I was able to verify this was a majority of the parts of mine that were stolen... So I messaged the seller and posed as a buyer..

I played it pretty cool and setup a meeting with the seller.. Before going a head with it all I got the number and case file of the officer who handled the original break in at the shop.. He wasn't going to be able to do anything for me, because the parts didn't have personalized serial numbers and I bought this stuff so long ago I didn't have proper proof of buying them.. I had enough pictures from other posts and stuff that logically it was easy to prove these were my parts.. I gave the officer the address and he checked it against known criminal activity.. At that point it didn't look to suspicious.. The house looked like a typical car guys house when I google map checked it..

When I arrived it was a whole different story.. The house clearly looked like a crack shack... The man who came out of the garage was clearly a drug addict one step away from being on the streets.. I parked back from the house a bit to give myself an easy out if needed.. He showed me into the garage and let me look over the parts.. I kept it cool while he told me his story about them.. I asked some questions to buy a little time to see if there was anyone suspicious anywhere who might jump me.. When I felt the coast was clear I told him the parts were mine and I was here to collect them...I showed him pictures and told him he had 2 options.. I take the parts and walk out.. or I call the police, who I had on stand by if need be..He was surprisingly cool about it.. thankfully.. Apparently all the parts were left there from someone else who owed him money.. He begged me for a few bucks at least.. I didn't pay him anything.. I felt bad enough that I almost gave him my burger king lunch that was in the car..

Once I got home and did an inventory I figured out that not everything was there.. Most notable part missing was my stock throttle body..

I got really lucky though.. In the parts was a discontinued down pipe from Corksport for a Mazda 323 GTX/GTR 1.8L turbo motor.. I didn't even know it had gone missing...

 

So, how much further off the rails can this build go? Well....

My stock throttle body was missing.. I dug through everything and couldn't find it... A corksport larger throttle body was cheaper than any replacement stock throttle body I could find.. If you're going to install a bigger throttle body, you might as well port the intake right?? wrong... the intake throat behind the throttle body is really thin.. I ended up putting a hole in the intake... frustrated... I put it a side..

If you fuck up once, why not twice right?? chose to do my own porting work on the cylinder head after I got it back.. Everything started out great..




Pictures are scarce at this point... I was going through a bad split.. lawyers... being forced to put my house up for sale.. travelling 160km's round trip for work.. Lets just say stress was getting to me.. I screwed up bad.. cleaning out the pocket behind the valve I dug a little to deep and ended up into a coolant jacket..

Not to worry!! I had just built a aluminum rack for my bosses, sisters work van.. I was getting pretty comfortable with aluminum tig welding.. I can fix both of these screw ups right?? Kinda... I got the intake manifold fixed well enough to be sealed... The TB flange was a bit warped, but I was able to flat sand it. I was able to weld up the hole in the cylinder head port, but didn't have the energy to figure out how to best leak test it... I was doubting my skills and took to FB market place to look for parts options...

As luck would have it, someone was selling a "good" running 120,000kms gen 2 motor from a wrecked car for $2k.... At this point I was discovering there were other small bits and pieces I was missing after the whole stolen parts, recovering them, moving ect... So I bought the motor...

 

So what kinda of motor does $2k buy you?? The seller had a video of it running before he pulled the car.. This "should" be a decent motor right?




Well crap! that's not good.. Let add insult to injury... I had lent a friend my KLG4 V6 swapped Mx3 to drive while I borrowed their truck to pick this motor up... While they were using my car the idler pulley bearing seized up and broke the water pump/power steering belt.. They drove my car over 20min's with out a water pump and no clue it was over heating... YIKES!!!... When I caught up with them later, there was noooo water in the rad... The car fired up and sounded like it was ok, but I didn't want to know how bad it really was... I parked the car off in a field on their farm and they lent me their truck to drive while I got the speed6 fixed...At this point I owned 4 vehicles and all of them were broken..

Ok, lets get back to the speed6... The leak down test showed it was an exhaust valve issue causing the poor results you see above.. So off came the cylinder head and I took all the valve out.. maybe I could clean up the valve and do my own at home valve lap.. call it good enough??

Intake Valves were dirty.. pretty typical, but no issues here...


The exhaust valves on the other hand.. Lots of carbon... When cleaned with a wire wheel, there was lots of bad pitting and wear as well..


It's hard to see, but the exhaust valve seats are also pitted pretty bad... Well, off the machine shop this head goes.. This time a different machine shop..