For the price of a headgasket I'd pull the head and see what the pistons look like. Did he say if the engine idled with its big cams? Remember, you can only pull so much timing before it becomes counter productive. If it's actually an 11/1 engine, you may find max power at 4-5 psi, before you have to pull all the timing out. If it was only making 118, I suspect there won't be anything too radical, but I'd want to know what was in there before wasting too much time on it. My 1 cent. No refunds.
Bill Cardell TurboDog's Dad Flyin' Miata 1-800-359-6967 (sales) 970-464-5600 (tech support) www.flyinmiata.com www.fmwestfield.com -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ashraf Farrag Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 10:27 PM To: Miata Power List Subject: Modded N/A engine: Use directly for a turbo setup? I have come into the possession of a low mileage (50k) 1993 1.6L engine to replace the fairly broken (spun bearing? still don't know exactly what went bad but it made an awful racket when I decided let it hibernate) 1990 block on my turbo car so that I can get it going again via the path of least resistance (versus rebuilding the broken 1.6 or rebuilding the spare 1.8L I've got kicking around). The engine that I now have (bought sight unseen, I know, I know...) is configured as follows: Stock bottom end Head shaved (unknown how much / what compression) Larger valves Unknown custom cams Adjustable cam gears N/A, the engine made 118 RWHP. As you can see from the lack of details in the mod list, the previous owner was not very knowledgeable about what exactly was done to it by the machine shop... So, the question is what to do about all the unknown stuff. Is there any way to easily identify what has been done to the engine? My brain is pretty dead from schoolwork but wouldn't a compression test tell me something about the potentially higher compression ratio? Cams, I suppose the valve cover can come off to try and figure out what the difference is vs. the stock cams. The main question in my mind is do I install it as is with my existing turbo setup or should I put a stock head (conveniently enough, it came with one, along with a ton of other Miata "stuff") back on it? Based on the increased horsepower, which has to mean some better airflow, I'm not really able to think up what on that head would be counterproductive or work against the turbocharger. My turbo car has a MegaSquirt, so adjusting timing to compensate for raised compression and cams should not be an issue. I am looking for some initial feedback at this stage. I have a lot going on in the next couple of days of grad school, so it may be a while before I can poke at the engine to get information to feed back into the discussion. I won't be doing any actual mechanical work for a while... TIA, --Ashraf _______________________________________________ Miatapower mailing list [email protected] http://list.miatapower.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/miatapower _______________________________________________ Miatapower mailing list [email protected] http://list.miatapower.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/miatapower
