well lets start off by saying this has been one bitching pissed off week for me...one problem after another....i am doing a mini me on a a6 with z6 head

ok so now im cranking the motor to test for compression 180 on cylinder 4-2 and 170 on cylinder 1-3..which isnt bad i guess since when i bought the crx si it was testing 150 across the board and this was a year ago.

so first problem i noticed there was liquid on the floor...first i thought it was oil bu ti looked at the block ITS SPILLING OUT i mean not leaking but man flowing freely almost not quite but you get what im saying.....what the hell? i torqued the head bolts in sequence with arp studs and 60 lbs as instructed. the torque wrench i used was digital...and truthfully i dont think i trust it at all....but even so lets just say i torqued it to 40 lbs would i still be leaking this much coolant? ill retorqued them tomarrow with a analog wrench...i am also thinking the guy that i bought this head from said it was rebuilt completely. i mean the head looks spotless...could it be warped? and if it was could it lead to me leaking insanely out of ever where? i scrapped almost all the black stuff off the block before putting it on. please say that the bolts arnt torqued down enough and the head is lifting causeing coolant to spill everywhere....oh yea it only leaks when i crank if that matters at all...

now for the second thing...i put the negative back on the battery to test something...then i wired up the distro with my obd1 conversion harness as soon as i pluged it in blam=e smokes like crazy...got it off but all the insulation on the wire was burned off. the motor is cranking up fine. but i am getting no spark. Now i think i fried the dizzy....i unplugged the battery...and reconnected everywhere no smoke this time and the new insulation is still there...is there anything else i should check for? is there anyway i could of fried the ecu this way? when i reconnect the battery i hear a click go off inside what is this?

man god this has been one pain in the *** week....i just want to get it running again thats all i ask....this has turned in to a one week and going mini me that was supposed to be done in one day....i am not happy...wish i had more help....now i hope timing is right on too...i checked it couple times butwho knows...everythign is going wrong anyways...


Modified by LoCoReX at 12:50 AM 4/7/2005

 

Did you check all of your coolant lines? Are they all secure? For coolant to be flowing out as you say, it sounds like a coolant line is missing or not attached. Also, when you torqued down the head, did you torque it down in steps or did you torque it down straight to 60ft-lbs?

As for your distributor, I would check the fuses first. ECU fuse especially. Sounds like you grounded out something you weren't. You may have also fried the ignitor in the distributor.

Just a word of advice, I know this is fustrating you, but sometimes you just gotta step away from it and take a break. Sometimes in the rush to complete a project, simple things get overlooked, and in the end, these simple things turn out to be major headaches. I've been there before man, don't sweat it too much

 

yea actually i did 4 steps to torque it down...and the digital torque wrench i dont think im trusting to much because when i went to torque my crank pully back on to 119 lbs it really didnt seem that hard? and this was just with a break bar...

as for the distro i used the distro obd 0 to obd 1 conversion. i grounded the vtec on a dizzy bolt if that matters? and grounded a dizzy bolt to a grounding kit...i really do think the distro is fried...but we shall see i guess....oh yea i tripled checked everything. the coolant is coming from the gasket itself...like i said ill retorque everythign down tomarrow with a analog torque wrench. hopefully that will solved that...im just hoping it isnt torqued enough and the head is lifting...i dont know...its been a week...and i really need my car...im so so down right now...

and is it damaging to plug in the dizzy with the battery on? because when i took everything back off unplugged the battery then plugged everything back up it was fine.

 

Hopefully the head isn't warped really bad. What head gasket did you use? After you retorque it, let us know what the prognosis is.

 

i used a z6 metal head gasket. i looked all around and it seems like it s nice and tight...but can it really be that bad from missing some "lbs" of torque?

 

i am sure there are some missing steps

if you have a friend that can look at it, that might be your best bet

 

when you say missing steps what is that you mean? like forgetting a plug?

argh i live in car hell. hell there is nothing arund me no shops no nothing

 

Are you sure you put the head gasket on with the correct side facing up? If it is on correctly and you followed the torque instructions for the arp studs I would think the head migh be warped. Did you check the head for warpage before installing it?

 

no we didnt
didnt really think about it since he bought it rebuilt from the factory


but he needs to get his car out of the garage in a weeks to get my b16 swap

 

Was the head shaved at all from the OEM thickness? Was it shaved alot? If its been shaved a substantial amount (more than .020") chances are the dowels are too long now, and holding the head up off the block, and preventing the headgasket from being squeezed tight enough.

 

Since you have good compression it sounds doubtful that you are leaking coolant from the block... it would read zero otherwise.

Sounds like a hose is just not plugged in somewhere, you just have to find where the ?coolant? is coming from. You said it was coolant right?

 

the coolant is flowing from the whole front side. the back side is pretty dry...its weird...the guy saying the dowel rods might be to long makes perfect sense. Since there are only two dowel rods in the front. The front is lifted up a lil bit but enough for coolant to leak the way it is. even if the head is warped it should be impossible to be leaking so uniformly in the front. but yea th ecompressoin does get to me too..but then agian compression might be good since it might be enough to seal off the cylinder chambers but just up a tiny bit in the front due to the dowel rods....i have no idea..im going to try to file down the rods to see if that works....now i just have to wonder what to do about the distro....

does it matter if the battery is on or not when i plug it up?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by LoCoReX &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">..im going to try to file down the rods to see if that works....</TD></TR></TABLE> yes i would try that...just be careful and keep them circular and don't file too much. i know all about having a bitch of a mini-me...been at it for a couple months with just about everything you can think of going wrong - add hybrid tranny rebuild to the headache. hopin to have it done this weekend.