Charlie

Hi,
About a year a go I bought a non running 87 N/A for $300.
The wife was furious. My other car is on it's last legs and I bring home a two seater when there's three people in the family.

I figured it would be a good project car and ordered a master rebuild kit with new hard parts and seals. Then I pulled the engine and opened it up. This is when I found that the rotor housings were shot. This was the first mistake. I should not have ordered a rebuild kit until I knew the condition of the engine.

I kept checking ebay and thepartstrader for either an engine or housings and found a whole engine for $200. This is my second mistake. I should have just put the engine into the car and left it alone as the owner said it was in a wreck but running fine and they drove it into the shop to pull the engine. But having already bought the rebuild kit I took the engine apart and replaced the seals.
Got everything back together and put it back into the car and started it. The car ran, pulled strong, but leaked oil in the driveway, had an exhaust smell coming from the engine compartment. I also had white smoke coming out of the exhaust.
The car would not pass emissions.

So I took it off the road and pulled out the engine a second time. I found that one of the inner jacket water seals had jumped out of the groove during assembly. This prevented the engine from clenching and explained the oil leak and the white smoke in the exhaust. I put the engine back together using a new o ring kit. Car started right up on the first try. I reregistered the car and took it to get emissions and it failed. About the same time I noticed a coolant leak coming from the front of the engine. I was hoping I hadn't messed up another O ring and it did look like the problem was coming from the area around the water pump so I pulled it off only to find the gasket and everything there was fine. Now thinking the problem was another bad water jacket o ring, I experimented with sodium silicate - aka blockweld. The problem seemed to go away but because there was a freeze coming to the area I had to drain the blockweld and refill with antifreeze. The coolant leak reappeared shortly there after.

Now thinking for sure that I rolled and o-ring I pulled the engine out for a third time. By this time I'm getting good at this. I dissassembled the engine and could not find anything wrong. Except I found that I used a poor choice of oil pan gasket goop. I chose permatex #2 and it seemed to embrittle and make a big pile of crud in the oil pan. If I hadn't opened the engine for the third time I know now that I would have experienced an oil related failure in the near future due to the crud foulding the oil pickup tube. I put everything back together using the old seals and RTV grey around the pan. After putting the engine back into the car I found my leak. It was the underside of the hose that brings coolant from the water pump to the BAC. I also bought a new cat from summit racing and installed it. I started the engine and it is running strong with no leaks (yet).
I passed emissions with flying colors. Old HC number was something like 230 ppm @ 15 mph with a limit of 130. New number is 1 HC ppm. All this is without gimmicks like running air back to the cat or alcohol in the tank. (I tried this after rebuild 2 and still failed. ) I had also ordered a TPS because my A-C readings weren't matching those in the FSM but after passing emissions and talking to others on this forum, I found out it was OK I was able to cancel my order and got back the $148 I paid for it.

So the third time around seems to be a charm and it has to be because the wife is about to kill me if I spend any more time working on the car.

geargrabber

good job, glad it worked out in the end.

beamer242

great work. sounds like a love story in the making....enjoy.