Big day today, guys. I've finally, after about 100 hours of labor, finished reassembling the cylinder head. Just to summarize, here is all that I've done to this thing: Gasket matched, ported, and polished both the intake and exhaust runners, polished the combustion chambers, freshly hand-lapped the valves, brand new hydraulic lash adjusters, new viton valve stem seals, new camshaft seals, and new double platinum Bosch spark plugs. This work is cheap financially, but very labor intensive. If you've got shallow pockets but lots of time to kill, this is absolutely work you should consider doing. I doubt it'll result in drastic performance improvement, but in theory it should allow the head to flow quite a bit better. The new seals throughout should allow me to run this thing for many years to come without having to worry about it. The new HLA's should hopefully prevent the infamously obnoxious B6 engine lifter noise. Without further ado:
So next up on the menu will be finding a machinist to clean and hone my block. Ideally, I'll be able to get that done and back to me this weekend. After that, it's assembly time. Everything to put the engine fully back together is ready, including new timing components, water pump, etc. After that, I've got a bit of work left on the intake and exhaust manifolds. I also plan to at least clean the engine bay, if not paint it satin black as well. Once all that is taken care of, I can finally put the thing back in the car. I've never heard the car run, but I'm getting closer every day. Ah...I need to build an exhaust still, too. Just something to quiet it down while I break it in and start it for the first time. That shouldn't be too difficult. I might even just cobble together what is left of the factory exhaust, at least for that purpose. But I digress, this is a good day, A major hurdle has just been crossed, and I'm extremely happy about it.
Edit:
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Just wanted to add this in real quickly. I just made an appointment at the machine shop, to drop off the block and crank tomorrow. They said they should be able to get to it within a week or so. I'm just having the block hot tanked and honed, and the crank polished. I also just made a nice little order with Flyin' Miata for....something. We'll keep that a surprise for now. When that part arrives, I'll put up some pictures of that as well as all the other new parts that are sitting in the back of my truck, waiting for their day.
