Well, I've decided after some recent unfortunate events, I will finally make a build thread to document what I've been through over the last year or so. I will give a brief history of the car first.



I bought the car as a running 1991 hatchback. Within one week, this is how it looked.


Eventually became this.


At this stage, the car was running around 11.00's on low boost with a 35R at around 430whp. This is when things get interesting. At 130mph at the end of the 1/4 mile, the hood flew up after one hood pin slid out, and the other snapped in half. This happened a couple weeks into September 2009.

Vid of it actually happening.
http://vimeo.com/6764182

This is how the car looked right after it happened.
.

Thought my luck was bad enough didn't you?

We got the car fixed and up and running again. New roof, hood, windshield, dampners, everything.



This is when things get really bad. A few weeks ago I towed the car out to hit the dyno after buying new injectors (ID2200's). We strap it down and start getting the boost dialed in. Spend an hour or so screwing around with hondata's boost controller, only to find out that my wastegate diaphragm is ripped.

I replace the Tial44 with another one we had laying around the shop and start increasing boost up from spring pressure. Everything sounds great for a while. Dyno prior to problems:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_hbNcp2E4g

We finally start tuning at right around 22psi after finally having steady boost. (The video above was few dyno pulls before the head finally let go) At 7500 rpm on decel the pitch of the car changed drastically. WTF!

We pulled spark plugs and we found that half of the spark plug in cylinder 1 is missing. TIME TO PULL THE HEAD.

This is what we found.





Now, I know what you're thinking. Why would a valve drop? Let me tell you why.

I bought this JG head years ago, and was told it was a ported, pro-series turbo built head blah, blah, blah. Guess what. It wasn't. This head single handendly almost destroyed my fresh 83mm GE sleeved block. I did some research after we pulled it all apart and found that he lied about all of the parts that are in the head. We are just waiting on the no-name dual valve springs to be tested to see if that's what cause it.

Never buy anything from that guy. Ever.

Here's where I'm at now. The engine bay is completely stripped, and I will likely be painting it, and I recieved a ton of mil-spec wiring products for my wire tuck. (Thank you dschybrid for the info on the wire sleeving)

I will update often, and with a lot of pictures as I would like to have the car back up and at the track within a month. Stay posted!

Sorry if there's any grammatical errors, I'm drinking some bourbon and studying for finals at the moment and I really don't feel like editing this.

 

Jeese. That sucks about the cylinder head. Any plans for the rebuild? Im sure it will still be a monster once its done!

 

damn that sucks. definitely subscribing for progress

 

I'm buying a portflow head with a complete ferrea valvetrain from a close friend that had it on his car for a few passes, it is actually at the machine shop right now. The block will get taken out to 84 or 84.5mm and get CP pistons and maybe a new rod in that cylinder.

 

Sounds good. Did the dropped valve actually bend the rod or are you going to change it to be safe? Sorry if i missed it, but which rods were you running?

 

We're not sure if it is bent yet, block is also going to the machine shop this week, but I will likely replace it anyways for piece of mind. They are Eagle rods BTW.