So I toyed with deluding you. Telling you it’s all perfect… running out there with 200hp. Tweaked and going strong… BUT IT’S NOT. Here is a cut and paste of an email I sent to a curious friend this morning.
Maybe not dead, but definitely damaged. Hard to tell why though… and part of me wonders if it wasn’t related to idling the motor for 10min without oil pressure last month. Saturday there was a bit of blue coming out the tailpipe, yesterday there was more. Compression test shows 175 175 175 110psi. Number four always gets hottest on 4AG’es. Number four is going to get the least oil when there is no pressure. AFR’s under boost were never leaner than 11.5, so… SAFE. I bought some colder plugs, and they were looking a little hot hot. We were trying to trace an oil leak… but on it’s last two runs, it pretty much dumped a liter, making it pretty easy to diagnose that it was coming out of the pan (gasket… not my bungs). I wonder if the blow by was making it too hard for the gasket to do it’s job.
And… as accurate or inaccurate as my iPhones dyno app is… it started to lose power as well. It went from reading 130hp, but then wouldn’t show more than 80. But maybe that was just the clutch slipping? Actually… I don’t think it was, but the release bearing sounds HORRIBLE! Like the clutch is being contained by the bellhousing and nothing more.
So at the very least I should replace the pan gaskets, and release bearing.
I did actually feel pretty fast though…
Oh yeah… idling without oil pressure? Never blindly follow instructions when they don’t seem entirely correct. This is related to my oil filter sandwich plate and plugging one end of it.