strokin' it. M20B31 build (finished!)

[Raxe]

Update, more work today.

Picked the block up on Thursday, they did a great job. Threw a nice coat of black block paint on that evening.



Dug the 89.6mm crank out this morning:



Cleaned it really well and installed the special crank spacer:



Installed main bearings and dropped crank in, fits like a glove.

Installed M54 rods, the "spirolox" pin retainers are seriously annoying without the special tool. Custom ross racing piston on left, stock M54B30 piston center and stock M20B25 piston on right.



Ringed and ready to drop in:







Installed pistons and rod caps, spun assembly... perfect! Top of pistons is dead even with top of block.





And that's another 6 hour Saturday.

[Raxe]

)sorry to hear that bro.. those piston i get blind like your RS's to shinny.. ;)

I took the wheels off again while the car sits, don't need them getting oxidized. ;)



And one more of the Lamborghini, we see it enough that nobody really notices it anymore haha.

[evandael]

excuse me, but why aren't there more pics of the murcielago?

the pistons are pretty too, don't get me wrong. can't wait for more updates!

[hfabricius]

Very clean, making me have second thought on rebuilding my m20 to a stroker after I get the m50 as a temporary. I must so though, I cringed pretty bad when I saw that head damage!

[csermonet47]

Heartbreaking on the head :( Glad to see you still have a good attitude about it and are still going. You do nice work. Subscribed!

[e30lyf]

)sorry to hear that bro.. those piston i get blind like your RS's to shinny.. ;)

[Raxe]

Last week our mail guy made my day. I've been waiting for these puppies since the first build.







85mm 9:1 CR with 89.6mm stroke equaling 3.1L and can hopefully run 87 octane with no issues.

The new block is currently at the machine shop having the pistons fitted, new head is already assembled (again) with the same setup. Hopefully next weekend I'll make some progress on the car.

[Raxe]

Then bad news: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=245731

Anyways the thing sounds beastly, nice rough idle and just overall completely raw. Pulls very hard up top and is overall a fantastic return for the effort.

Until tonight.

This is only the second day I've driven the car since completion as it snowed over the weekend and screw that. Anyways, I'm reasonably driving to a friends house to hang out and thinking to myself how great the car feels, when all of the sudden around 4k in 3rd I feel a quick miss (big stereo, can't hear anything) and see a huge plume of smoke in the mirror as the engine stalls. I quickly shut off the car and coast down the on ramp as far as I can before pulling over, engine completely dead. Seized up, won't crank. Found the coolant reservoir was totally empty, as well as the lower rad hose but not a leak in sight. :<



Make a couple calls while waiting for a tow truck to show up, sadness slowly sinking in..



Tomorrow is going to suck, especially if I don't get any sleep tonight. Cylinders 1 and 6 are completely full of coolant, 2 and 5 partially, spark plug from 6 looks like this:

Damage pics below...

The big bottom end wasn't in the car yet thank God, it's just a stock SETA block. Bolts and all gaskets were Victor Reinz parts. Still no official verdict on the cause of failure, but a little researching leads towards an unsafe amount of clearance between the SETA pistons and the oversized valves + larger cam. Why it ran fine for 100km is a mystery to me though.









...

Found the valve seat in the throttle body... yikes. Thanks for all of the encouragement guys, it's really motivating. The head is stripped now - practically none of the valves are reusable. One of the techs noted the strange wear pattern on the intake valves, it appears as if they were all touching and rotating.



I think this is a case of a hasty valve adjustment, poor parts combination and not enough double checking. Lesson learned, the second rebuild will be done much more carefully. Picked up all of the new gaskets and hardware today. :)

[Raxe]

I'm going to keep everything in this thread from now on to stay organized, so here's another big lump update since March.

Installed the 272 camshaft and rockers, and completed the head:





Had the valve cover and intake manifold powder coated candy apple red:





Completed a marathon 12 hour day installing everything to the point of running:







With Ireland Engineering aluminum street radiator, no fan:

[88SuperETABD]

Oh, and about the earlier post...my ie 272 cam is a regrind. no problems after 30k+ miles, and i had bought it used, (only for 3-5k tho)

[88SuperETABD]

wow...that head looks beautiful. i wanna rebuild my engine. i wanna click over 300k first tho.

Keep up the great work and update us asap!

[Raxe]

Update time! My cellphone camera skills suck pretty bad.

Managed to pick up a free complete M54B30 a couple weeks ago, went right to the good stuff:







Then somehow managed to pick up another M20B25 for free:



Got to work:



Head is pretty clean for a car with 580,000km on it:





Took it to a machine shop yesterday to have the head machined and oversized valves fitted:





All of this is in about the course of a week, next up is head reassembly with IE rockers and 272 cam!

[gverelli]

Updates needed!

[!AjHoWzA!]

I love it! Looks soo sick bro :D

[digger]

There is no cam card I don't think. It is IE. I didn't get one when I bought mine, and when I called they couldn't even give me any info..

In my opinion you should have gone with long tube headers from eBay, but no big deal... and once you put the headers on you might want a center muffler or resonator. I have headers straight into a muffler and it's pretty loud and droney. Just a few words of advice. Looks like some real progress was made, keep it up

that was my point........