Not nosey at all man. I was driving "briskly" one day - merely matching (and beating) the similar "brisk" pace of an S4 - when she just lost power - total compression dump. Started running rough - SES, pulled the codes - and...
(not actually my plug - but same problem)
That was April 11th 2007. I drove it for a while after that, until it got so bad I didn't want to risk total bottom end loss. So...August 2nd (BGPM '07 started on September 7th) - I started the tear down. Brian, Jay and another buddy of ours helped pull the motor and eagerly took off the front head...and this is what we saw:
1,3 & 5 had all chipped at almost exactly the same 1 o'clock position. Weird.
So...we dropped the pan...it got uglier...
Pan...some holes belong...others...well, not so much...
Like a great big oil pan shaped pinata...yayyy!!!
We continued with the tear down and after pulling all of the pistons out...something...was amiss...to say the least.
First time I ever got the skirt off of something and wasn't happy.
The truly amazing thing was - not a single knick on any cylinder wall. I'm still amazed by that to this day.
Fast forward to August 20th, 2007...BGPM was just a shade over 2 weeks away. I'd sent the heads out to be resurfaced, fluxed, valve job, new seals as well as having the crank polished. In the meantime, I'd made some cosmetic changes...see final pic.
August 27, 2007 - picked up heads and crank - also went and bought new bearings.
August 29, 2007 - Brian and I both wanted to personally car bomb O'Reilly. Long story short - I happened to be the lucky guy to find out that there was a packaging error in the bearings - the rear bearing in the box (I looked at all of that they had in stock - at 2 stores) was not even for the L67....nice. Thank you Federal Mogul.
Ordered Clevites from ZZP - which I should have done in the first place when I bought the gasket set. Live and learn...
August 31, 2007 - Brian and I worked until about 6 AM assembling. Only to find out that ZZP mispackaged the gasket set - and I only got 1 set of head gaskets. Yeah, that just happened. Called - second gasket shipped out overnight.
September 3 and 4, 2007 - So...lets recap - motor...*poof*, bearings - steaming mess, head gaskets - likewise...got it? It's not over...
I got home from work - got the 2nd head gasket and proceeded to begin bolting them down. Before you ask - YES - I went through about a hundred Qtips cleaning out the bolt holes. I got the first 3 or 4 bolts torqued down fine...the next...oh...ALL of them - all stripped. So - poof, bearings, head gasket, now head bolts = Swash in fetal position. I called my guy at the performance shop I use and he suggested to just use Heli-coils. Sweet - place 20 mins. from me has them. Got home - and got all of the holes drilled out - until the last one - when (you didn't think THIS was going to go smoothly, did you?) just as the bit bottomed out - it snapped off and fell inside the wall of the block. Yeah. That too, just happened. As a sidenote - I will always be a Ridgid tool guy - because their 18v cordless drills can take a hell of a beating.
This one wasn't really a big deal - 5 minutes of fishing with telescoping magnet and I got it out. Brian came by later and we got all of the coils inserted and all of the studs - (obviously had to switch)- torqued down. Woo hoo!!! So it's now about 11 PM or so I think and we hooked, hoisted and lowered the motor back in - and that all went smooooooooth. Started reassembling all the "stuff", and I went to grab the new TC bolts, when I noticed something sitting on the workbench...that really...REALLY didn't belong there.
I'd forgotten to put the cam bolt in. That's right kids - cam bolt. It was then what Brian likes to call - Swash's F*ck It Hour. I was done - I was beaten, defeated - and I had done it to myself. Lack of sleep - in way too big of a damn hurry had caused this completely asinine mistake.
But alas - Brian said - "No, we're getting this done." And 45 minutes later - cradle dropped, cover off, bolt in, cover on, cradle up - done. The guy is a f*cking animal. It is now about 4 AM..."Brian, go home." I stayed up a bit later and did a few things more.
September 5, 2007 - T-minus 2 days until Branson...
7 PM - Finished buttoning up the motor, ran through double checks - again - and fired it up. Uhh...that aint right. Brian and I just look at each other with this - "oh poop" look. It was out of time. For future reference - firing sequence on an L67 is 1-6-5-4-3-2 NOT 1-3-5-6-4-2
Fixed that little issue and she fired right up. SEG's all around at this point.
September 6, 2007 - Branson Eve
Now - we are here:
Took it to the muffler shop - got my DP welded up and hit the road the next morning. "Broke it in" on the caravan down to Branson - and even gave the Bastard a bit of a surprise.
Couldn't, no,
wouldn't have been done without Brian. Period.
All that - and then I sold it to Jay (ABRASV), and downgraded to the GTO. LOL.
-Swash