Yes, alas I believe the head gasket has a fracture. When i took the rocker covers off, there was bits of milkyness in there. so off with its head!

I reallyyyyy dont want to pull the engine out, so hopefully I can do the head gasket in the car. 

In the mean time, Ive been painting....


 
Did crinkle red covers and metalic bronze insert piece thing... Looks pretty nice and makes the engine bay look heaps better! Not sure what to do the Intake manifold in though.... Would rather replace with ITB's ;)


Sdub has been getting some attention also. Im in the process of restoring to the factory interior. I love having a super nice interior :D More pics to come....

Couple of things happened the past 5 or so days

I got some carpets, although it seemes the drivers side one is missing a MASSIVE chunk


 
The Sdub ticked over :((


 
Anyway got bored yesterday, and decided to tinker with the adub. The original plan was to slap a 20v head on the bigport block, but I wanted to check the bigport bottom end out before I did that. Didnt have a crane that day so pulled the head off

Danny (DVS_MR2) came round to help me with his 4age expertise


 
He then showed me how to remove the timing belt in one easy step


 
Im not sure how well you can see this but on the edge of the bend between the water and oil jackets, there is a split between the two. Guess I did have a head gasket problem haha.



Bores and pistons were okay for a 260,000km engine. there is a slight lip at the top of the bore that will need to be fixed and also a slight score mark in number two. oh and also realised it has hurricane extractors ^.^ 



Anyway engine should be out this weekend. and like dennis said, the engine bay will get a good scrubbing!

Plans at this stage (subject to change)

20v's are hard to find and have their own problems trying to get them to work, so for that reason Im going to just rebuild the engine. Block will be acid bathed, honed. new rings and bearings (still yet to inspect) 

Head will be refurb'd and I'll also be getting 1mm taking off the head. on top of that a trd 0.5mm head gasket, that should be an upgrade over the factory 1.2

Overall I'm hoping for a compression ratio of upwards of 10.2:1 - that should give it a bit more juice ;)



You can see my pesky tow strap here ;) Used to have it on my Sdub but I would get pulled over nearly every week when I had it on, once removed it suddenly stopped happening

Hopefully this weekend is even more productive!




 

Hmm pity I don't have a small port engine laying arround :P

Starting to get prices on all my parts, hopefully start ordering them soon, and then with the help of DVS_MR2 begin the rebuild 

Question for those who a knowledgeable on 4age's:

Looking at running smallport pistons (10.3:) then a 1mm head shave + 0.8mm head gasket

My math tells me this will give me between 11.5:1 - 11.9:1 compression ratio. Will this be too high for pump 98?
Also at what compression will the engine become an interference engine?

Eric
Question for those who a knowledgeable on 4age's:
Looking at running smallport pistons (10.3:) then a 1mm head shave + 0.8mm head gasket
My math tells me this will give me between 11.5:1 - 11.9:1 compression ratio. Will this be too high for pump 98?
Also at what compression will the engine become an interference engine?

IMO, 11+ is getting too much for 98 . The 4AGE 20V Blacktop came with 11:1 and was tuned for 100 octane in Japan (hence why they run less awesome here). With a crappy stock computer (until your running MS) and a bad batch of fuel, you could be rebuilding your motor within a short time frame.
 
TL;DR - Skim the bear minimum you need and just focus on getting the car running again.

Eric, I also just had a more thorough read of the thread re the ADub engine re-build.
 
I agree with what Knightrous has said, and in fact would probably go further to suggest that you don't consider too many internal mods at all. I know that there are many who like to tinker with these cars, but an observation I'd make is that there often seems to be a lot of discussion about "fixing" and not much about "driving".   Now like myself you have one of each kind (I am also considering a Spyder just to round up the collection)  it will be great to have them both running reliably to experience the huge difference between the cars.
 
As an example of this, I could not have done the recent Tassie Nationals comfortably in the ADub because it really is not a "GT" (Grand Tourer) like the auto NA SDub. My 1989 SDub went fantastically well - 6.9L/100km on 98 octane - and in one stretch we did 1480kms - Brisbane to Albury - in one go in 22 hours. If this had been in the ADub we would have had to undergo surgery to be removed from the car.
 
Yet funnily enough I did miss the "cornerability" of the S/C ADub in some circumstances in Tassie where more instant grunt was needed and you really notice the difference in size of the cars, despite the ADub being taller than the SDub.
 
I don't know if your ADub is an Aussie delivered one or not, but if it is then this is another reason not to play around with it too much. There were only 940 of these sold in Australia, and I doubt if more than a third are still going. As the Shannon's rep remarked at the Nationals, original Japanese cars are a real sleeper that must appreciate in value as time goes on. In the long term originality is also cheaper and will give a better return. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who has been on the "For Sale" part of the Forum saying their car with gold plated coil-overs owes them $25K but it either doesn't sell, or they have to knock it down by two-thirds.
 
Walter
 
 
 
 
 

As for interior Walter, the surround arround the shifter, a cloth driver's seat and a factory steering wheel from memory