I got my heads off yesterday and saw this...





It puffed white smoke when I got on it once and a while. I assumed the oil was getting past the rings but it looks to be the valve seals...

Have any of you taken your heads off and noticed something similar? I'm just curious if the bushing on the seal just isn't tough enough or if it's just that I have 110K on the heads...

 

My VE30DE had leaky valve stem seals and my pistons looked exactly like that. Gotta keep up the regular oil changes. You remove the heads on the car or did you remove the engine?

 

Did you compression test it ahead of time? Never had the head off the Max motor but I can't see anything horribly wrong in that picture. Just some normalish carbon/MTBE deposits. Are all the piston heads more or less the same in buildup? Any oily buildup or just dry carbon?

White smoke would also be water, not oil, probably coolant if the engine was fully warmed and it was above 50 outside. That would be a head gasket leak or a cracked block/head.

-RMB

 

I took the motor out of the car prior to removing the heads. I have a new block that everything is going on to shortly.

 

I should have done a compression test prior removing the motor but I didn't. By the time I thought to do it, too much was already off the motor.
No oily build up, just flaky carbon. I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew there would be some carbon build up but had no idea what to guage it against. This is the first motor I've rebuilt.
The block looks fine, no cracks and the head gaskets seemed to be alright also. I don't think water was the culprit.
Most of the cylinders look the same, some worse, some better. All to a similar degree though...

Thanks for the comments...

D

 

Did you pull the motor yourself or did someone do it for you?

 

I did.

 

Hand tools or air tools? First time pulling a motor or are you experienced in this sort of thing. I've been considering building one for some time now.

 

This is the first. It's not so intimidating if you have a place to work on it comfortably and another means of transportation. I have a service manual and that's about all I've needed so far. I do have air tools but that mostly saves time. I have spent quite a bit on tools; engine stand, shop crane, etc. Some tools you'll only use once but I figured it's nice to have them in the future. You're pretty good at cars from what I can tell, I don't think you'd have much of a problem building a motor.

Knowing someone who has done it helps a lot too, I'm on AIM most the time: MadMaxxx95 There are some pics of my progress on my homepage...

Good luck

 

bizump...

 

How much will all this cost??? the bottom end... did u rebuild that yourself?? or did you buy the bottom end rebuilt already? top end.. replacing valves? resurfacing them??i would like to know the progress of your project.... depending on the price i might consider this too

 

I've never pulled my VQ engine apart, but every other engine I've taken apart didn't look substantially different than what I'm seeing in your pictures.

 

Good, that's what I wanted to hear. I wasn't sure if it was excessive or not... I haven't seen anything prior so I had nothing to compare it to...

Thanks.

 

technical threads attract veterans

 

Forgot to ask, did your engine use any significant amounts of oil? It does look like your intake valves are slightly more gunk than the exhaust. But I agree, doesn't look bad at all. If you were losing coolant, I would take a real close look at the HGs (if they aren't too destroyed) and maybe have the heads checked for cracks(flouresent lighting w/ dye or something like that) You wouldn't want to put cracked heads back on.

 

And a good machine shop could check the head for any warpage and do that fancy-dye treatment thing for bad cracks (magnafluxing???)....

-RMB

 

I wasn't losing coolant, and the head gaskets looked to be in good shape for 110K. I'm taking it to a reputable machine shop so I'll see what they say. Thanks for the info.

 

Whew! Hope all goes well.