Ryan’s season has been awful… and now it might even be over.
With plans to go south of the border often this year, a custom trailer was ordered from Rance Aluminum. Custom… but it arrived two months later than promised, and even then, wasn’t exactly to the specs ordered. Ryan would not recommend that you buy your trailer from Rance. Being two months late meant renting and borrowing trailers to make it to the early events. It also meant that all the storage places within the proximity of Ryan’s house were full by the time it arrived.
And then…
The first event Ryan attended, the front dampers blew. Hard work followed, and a week later a totally new front suspension was installed, along with a new wheel/tire set up.
At the second event, the intercooler came apart. A massive boost leak meant only 3 pounds of boost. Once again though, the car was fixed within a weeks time… … …or was it? Somewhere between the fabricators shop and home, the engine developed a viscious knock. Speculation was that a bit of welding slag/dripping had gotten into the IC and entered the motor. The noise disappeared with a bit of run time however.
Event three: for a few moments a boost leak was observed through a pin hole in a weld on the IC. Then no boost at all was observed. Then no boost at all and lots of black smoke. And that’s what brought the car to back to [QR]GaraGe.
The hope was… that some combination of the massive boost leak and/or debris through the motor had led to the turbo being damaged. That hope shrunk today however, when the 3SGTE turned some less than mediocre numbers on a compression test.
This makes me wonder if we want to find a mangled turbine or not, when we pull the turbo sometime in the next couple of days…
At least the AE86 is getting faster… more on that later.