My 1992 GTI

[MDoe8]

What a bummer!

[DocWalt]

While I'm waiting on news about the engine... I got these to throw my all season tires on so I'm not going to abuse my sticky tires too much.

[Uniuno]

Did they not use assembly lube or something? I don't get how it could destroy itself that fast.

[DocWalt]

It's a long story that I'll type up when I have the 100% confirmation... butttt..... Pistons were meeting valves hard enough to smash the rod bearings, and worse on #4 than any of the other cylinders.

[DocWalt]

These arrived today...

[stealthee]

Your car needs to be running in order to use them.

[DocWalt]

Things are happening again, got the KW V1s installed in the rear (I'll do the fronts after I get the car running and can get the weight of engine and trans to set the heights properly) along with some Carbotech 1521's (Bobcats for the old school name). I'm hoping the new pads don't glaze and actually clean up the rotors, you can see how terrible the rotors look from the Pagid pads not doing their job. The brake pedal was immediately stiffer with the Carbotech pads, I'm a big fan of their products if you couldn't tell



This is a pic from Pitt Intl. last year. You can see how low the rear of my car sat in comparison to the front. I think the H&R springs were designed to handle the extra weight of the VR6...


I set the KWs at their maximum recommended height, which resulted in this:


I'm thinking I may lower the car a tiny bit, depends how the front control arms look after I get the whole thing setup. Looks pretty good though!


Even though this is essentially a weekend warrior, I figure I may as well finally install the rear speakers I've had sitting around for a long time. I already ran the wires, so it was an easy install while I had the C-pillar/parcel tray things removed for the shock install. The speakers are just some 4x6 Polks. Nothing special, but I'm hoping it drowns out a bit of the highway drone for the drive to KY.

[DocWalt]

and engine news... Cam bores may not be perfectly parallel to the head surface, which would explain why the rod bearings were progressively worse from #1 to #4. Now the reason the valves hit the pistons in the first place... The piston's valve relief fly cuts weren't machined square to the wrist pin bore, so the right hand intake valve was a lot closer to the piston (and touching at higher revs) which led to the rod bearings being smashed. Valves are fine, don't know how, but Supertech apparently makes indestructible valves, haha. The machine shop should have caught the pistons touching the valves, since they checked piston to valve clearance at a pretty huge 120 thousandths... On the left hand valves only

All of that doesn't explain the strange issue of the cams being scored... The shop is not at all concerned about the scoring, and they're going to polish up the cam journals anyway. They are concerned about why the scoring happened, and why the head is so "sticky" feeling. There was evidence of some metallic crap in the cam journals, but nothing copper based. Must have been crap wiping off of the cams or the head wasn't clean enough. Considering the shop spent a LOT of time cleaning everything even drilling and tapping the oil galleys in the head for some fancy hex plugs, I'm pretty sure it was clean enough.

I'm hearing good things from the shop, so the engine may be back sooner than I was expecting. That should take a lot of stress off trying to get it broken in and in a good state of tune for an inspection and fancy alignment.

[DocWalt]

I decided to open up the old engine today... It looks pretty much like I expected.

Blew the headgasket completely between 3 & 4


Evidence that it was ready to leak between the other cylinders too...


Block looks good, checked out fine with straight edge. May need rod bearings replaced, but I'm not sure I want to open that up yet.


Metal just melted or disintegrated.


#4 also had this odd damage like the head gasket was overcrushed or something. No idea...


Gump, you were right, the head is a POS

[KeithMac]

I found my mk2 handled best with the front suspension set up for level/ horizontal wishbones on Koni coilovers.

Mulling over removing my 16v G60 kit and going over to bike throttle bodies.. Megasquirt is already in so that's half the battle.