It's got a HEARTBEAT!!!!
 

Well due to no fault of my own, I did not go to work last night.

So I proceeded on with the car.

Got everything except the wheels on. It took a long time to get everything in order, but I did it.

It took about 40 cranks, off and on, for it to start.

And when it did there was lots of smoke and it made a metal on metal banging sound and oil was leaking fropm the T fitting where the oil sending unit is.

Well I put about 1 can of TB cleaner in it so I think that is where the smoke is coming from and the fact that it is in a garage the intake is sucking the smoke back in it. It ides VERY rough.

I drained the oil out and put more oil in it. The oil was in it less than 30 minutes and was BLACK. After I put 4 more qts of oil and an oil additive the pinging stopped.

I will be either removing the reverse y-pipe and go open headers out side this weekend or I will put a stock pipe on and see what happens.

But it's running

yeah mine was like that after i swapped mine in.... it idled pretty crappy for a few days... after i got some miles on it she ran fine....

Definately change the coolant too... u wanna flush out the solid material that's left over in the cooling system within the motor.

Heh heh...did you even have any coolant? J/K man...

I'm glad to hear that it's running. It will sound and run a little nasty at first (hell, the engine sat forever unused), but will eventually run just like you want it to...

my vg never gave me that kind of trouble when i finally got it going but there was some nasty **** in the coolant system. did you guys have an almost mud-like substance in yours?

not really mudlike... some sediment though

the crap in my engine was almost like a red clay. it was weird. i'm cleaning it out tomorrow hopefully. i'm afraid its going to ruin stuff if i don't deal with it soon.

would it be a good idea to remove the thermostat and let the crap fall off? I usually run a hose on the right side and let the crap just fall right off. I really dont want that nasty sh!t in my radiator. I may just push the car out and flush it out then while is idling. I secured the engine completely now I just have to put the car back together with different mods though..

yeah man I am gonna flush it after it flows through there for a few days.

I would have put water in there, but I was worried it would freeze.

My new engine was very hard to start when first installed. Before I started it I checked the compression on a cylinder, and it was 20psi. After starting it and letting it run for about 20 minutes compression was up to normal and the idle was fine.

Oh man, that would have really scared me seeing 20 psi after all that work...

I've done half a dozen engine rebuilds and an engine swap on various vehicles, and there's always some weird noise or rattle or squeal, but they all went away after a few minutes. You come to expect things like that, but it still is pretty unnerving.

When I did the 5 speed conversion on the Maxima, the first time I started the engine with the 5 speed in it made a jingling noise. I stopped the engine and checked fluid level and what not for about 30 minutes, then thought what the hell, I've come this far, I'm taking it out for a drive. The jingling noise continued while in gear, but after the first right turn I made the noise went away. Whew.

:woot:

Yeee Haw......c'mon now Dixit

I was ready to cry at first. Then I started thinking that the engine had been sitting for god-knows how long w/no oil, etc. I decided, WTF, lets start this thing!

I had strange noises, smoke out the exhaust, smoke from under hood (from grease, oil, coolant burning off)...you name it!

My engine had a few quirks that went away. For the longest time it had trouble starting, and then just fixed itself. Its still got a rattle that I haven't tracked down, but it hasn't hurt anything yet. :nervous: