MNSDAC "Minnesota" meeting

[layapatch]

See you guys at Boston's in Maple Grove at 1:30 today!

[phantomrt]

I'll be a little late. Surprised? Should be there by 2:00

[BobD]

I have Paul's pictures posted on the website.
Thanks Paul. I'm glad you brought a camera. Your close up pictures came out pretty good. I still have to remove mine from my phone. Anyone know how I do that?
I also have January's bowling pictures posted. Now for March and I'll be caught up.

[phantomrt]

I was ticked off after I got my Verizon phone--the only way to get pictures off of it was to email them from my phone, meaning I had to pay for the subscription to do that. The phone cannot be hooked up to a computer to retrieve them. I have no text messaging, no picture/video sharing or whatever, no ringtones, no ringback tones, etc. I didnt want any of that stuff, and this is how they get ya. Okay, a camera in my phone that is good for almost nothing.

[layapatch]

Hey Guys!

Bob, the website looks great!

Can't wait till Mopars in the Park! I hope we will finally have some nice weather for our meeting!

[BobD]

Quote:

Bob, the website looks great! Can't wait till Mopars in the Park! I hope we will finally have some nice weather for our meeting!

Mmmmmmmmmmmm...........Mopar's in the Park......Ohhhh .(Homer Simpson drool)

[Stratous]

So I pulled the head of the Shelby Z today. Everything came off SUPER easy, and by the time the head came off I wasn't supprised to see a brand new head gasket.
BUT, stupid me forgot to drain the coolant before I started. So when the head came off it filled the cylinders up with coolant.
It turned out to be in my favor and acted as a test. Cylinders 1 and 2 slowly drained the coolant through the rings, cylinder 3 drained it so fast that you could almost watch it go down, and cylinder 4 pooled it and didn't drop a bit. The inside of the cylinder walls are flawless.
Thats as far as I made it, so tomorrow I will drop the oil pan and pull piston 3.

So my current plans are to replace the piston rings, rod bearings, and rod bolts. Then I think I will machine, port and polish the head while it's off the engine. THEN since the intake has to come off I might as well match the upper and lower intake plenums too.

This car better rip when it's back together or I'll be pissed.

[RJ138]

I thought you had low compression in two of the cylinders?

[Stratous]

1 and 3 showed bad compression. 3 was the worst, and proved by draining the coolant. 1 and 2 drained, but slowly, and 4 had a nice seal.

[Stratous]

Alright...So I pulled piston 3 tonight.
BUSTED!!
The part of the piston between the top and middle ring is completely cracked and busted up, it literaly came apart in pieces.
Suprisingly the cylinder wall is perfect...I cannot find any flaws.

I really don't want to spend the money on forged internals, so I think I'll just do Mahl pistons, but if I get a bug I will do forged pistons. I'll have to price everything out.

I put pictures up here: stratous.250free.com - Browsing Directory: /My_Car_2/

[phantomrt]

That's "good" news. You should be able to get away without any machine work--just run a glaze breaker through the cylinders and toss pistons and new rings back in, and be done.

Isn't it kinda unusual for a piston to break like that? Usually it is the top piston ring land that busts off in an event like detonation. Who knows what was done with this thing over the years though. Is that a Mahle piston that broke?

[BobD]

Quote:

Is that a Mahle piston that broke?

Didn't the 87 TII's come with forged pistons, or was it just the crank and rods? Glad to hear the block's OK

[phantomrt]

I am pretty sure only the T-IIIs had forged pistons from the factory, but they were also made by Mahle. The reason i am wondering if this broken piston is a Mahle is because there are aftermarket cast pistons out there that are of lower quality. Or maybe it already got re-ringed and the piston ring end gap was too small, thus binding up in the cylinder until the something gave up.

[Stratous]

Oh boy...I have quite a parts list built up:

FWDPerformance -
-Mahl Std Piston Set W/Rings
-Clivette 77 Rod Bearings
-Catch Can
-Daytona Pillar Pod
-Mopar Gasket Sealer
-3" Cat Back Exhaust

TurbosUnleashed -
-Upper and Lower gasket sets
-Fuel Rail Mounted AFPR
-Downpipe Bolt Kit
-High Flow Turbo Oil/Coolant Lines
-3" Swingvalve and Downpipe Kit
-ARP Head Bolts
-ARP Rod Bolts


Let me know what you guys think. I get a great discount from O'Reilly so I will get my muffler and gauges from them.
TurbosUnleashed is actualy a few dollars cheaper on most the things.


Everything internal looks all original. The headgakset looked brand new. There was some definate half ass work done on this car before.
I was gonna have the head done, but I feel pretty confident that I can port it myself. It won't be that extensive, but I am sure that anything is better than factory castings.

[phantomrt]

The only thing I'd add is to make sure the head and block surfaces are within .002" of being perfectly flat.