Geoff W Goes Boom

This will shock most of you to hear but it's really not that big of a deal... that said, read on.

On Monday (the 5th) I got excited and took my car up the Putty Rd between Singleton and the halfway Cafe towards Windsor. This was the really hot day - 40 degrees.. This was silly hot and I shouldn't hace risked it in hindsight.

Anyway I drove pretty damn hard for the 16km of winding road with a mixture of 35-75km/h corners to the half way house.

Then proceeded to return towards Broke. Funny name that considering that's exactly what happened. I was overtaking a car just after the windy part and boom, white smoke everywhere outta the exhaust and then the motor stopped.

I suspected a turbo seal or head gasket immediately, having been told the head gasket was the weakest point in the whole set up. Removed the spark plugs one by one to find coolant in all 4 cylinders. I thought the worst for sure. Smashed pistons, bent conrods the lot.

Anyway enough prattling on. Jason was kind enough to organise a new motor for 450 bucks with 70000km on the clock quicksmart. And then curiosity got the better of him and we had to find out the damage.

Here's the pictures that tell the story.

This is the aftermath, job done for now. Thanks Jason, you're the best.

I was quite surprised to find that the block was open deck, As I was led to believe that the Australian delivered models (at least the series 1 anyway) were closed deck blocks.

Here's another showing the condition of the head gasket in an area undisturbed by removal. As you can see it's quite damaged as the type of gasket used is an attempt to be universally fitted to both closed deck and open deck engines.



Each of those little holes is all that lets the water through. Piss weak eh.

This shows the water galleries on the underside of the head.

An overall of the underside of the head



As you can see on number two cylinder the metal ring has been snapped and pushed outta the way. That's the first failure point.

There's a closer look. The gasket was torn apart when removed from the block. Its was so crispy you can crumble it in your fingers.

Jason also discovered that the exhaust cam has been out of whack for a long while, as evidenced by the lack of wear on the lobes of the cam.

This one shows it better



There's some scratching on the left hand one from jason seeing how sturdy the build up was.

Another view

The intake cam was also bent so badly in the middle that a pry bar was needed to get it out of the bottom half of the bearing caps it sits in. So the top end of the motor was seriously stuffed.

The top tensioner on the timing chains had surprisingly little wear on it too. Which I think is a bonus.

As an aside, about 2 months ago Jason and I fitted this battery tray for my new optima battery. It was bought from ebay in the USA and required some drilling of both the original Micra battery tray and the alloy one to sandwich the two together. Not the lightest way to do it but the strongest by far.

The result is a seemingly unsecured/floating battery. Excuse the oily finger marks, there's not much else to lean on in the bay of a micra!

So there you have it.

The plan is to do an 80 thou copper head gasket on the new motor, which will drop the compression a little to be more turbo friendly.

Then swap the motor over and use the current block to build a tough bottom end suitable for more boost. That is Forged pistons, Conrods etc.

So there's an update for all. Hope you enjoyed the read :)

Ah man hate seeing that. Makes White Knights head gasket look like nothing. Very impressive blow up mate!

geoff

is,nt it just some surface rust on the cam, which has,nt made contact with the biscuit shim ?
and could you not open up the combustion chambers instead on the 80thou" headgasket shim, like in the pic ?

frank

bugga mate at least you get another project now aye lol

Shit mate, Thats to bad eh! Um i'm assuming you are running the full 10psi when this happened? What kms did you get out of the motor? Since being turboed and what kms are on the motor?

damn ay, sad to hear. but a f'in hot day and heaps of boost will kill a stocker everytime :(

No way Geoff! Ah well at least you were (mentally) prepared for it

now you finally get to build a bulletproof donk for it

I'm going to sit here from my desk with my beer and say that was going to happen anyway, with turbo or without.

Yes the gasket failed in a big way but I think I see corrosion there.

It was going to to blow but not as impressively.

given the option i reckon 8psi thru a stock 1.3 litre with good fuelling and cooling is gonna be a whole lot more fun than a stock micra engine with... nothing

so my desk and beer says good effort and let the rebuild begin!

exactly what happened to my first motor...well the headgasket anyway..my cams were fine

This is what i found when I opened the motor almost a year later(i think) ..probably one of the more spectacular headgasket failures haha



after it happened, we ran it for about 15mins still as well on 3 cylinders to get back to the workshop..it died about 5 minutes from there..

Those going the turbo route..just change the thing!

and i admire your courage continuing with the car and old motor haha

Hey there geoff, good to see the micra world running its thoughts and ideas. Dam shame about your car.. :( for the skin on my knuckles that is ha ha ha.....
But now its blown up..., thank god!!!.
I say that because we no longer need to air on the side of caution. Let the games begin, and get some man power out of the little f**k*r. Ive drawn up all the plans for you now mate, that motor you got will now be gettin built for some serious power gain.

How funny a v8 blooded mechanic working a irragation pump... HE HE HE just playin fellas.

Lets start a poll
Who of you out there thinks you can make 200kw @ the wheels out of a 1.3ltr micra?

My condolences Geoff! :( Oh micra turbo adventures, its a saga.

But yes now you can build the bullet proof engine, which will be a whole new exciting phase.

Yeah it does look badly corroded actually.. 40 deg heat, that woulda been tough on the old micra engine, you are pretty keen man :P

If you are going the forgies/rods route, What do you think about O-ringing the block and just getting low compression pistons rather than using a thicker (weaker) gasket?

Hey did the car you were overtaking see that you suddenly lost power and did you have to pull over in front of him or what happened? That sucks man.. I never felt that confident with blue monster under full throttle, especially overtaking other cars and stuff just because I was always paranoid about either the engine letting go or the gearbox.

you can.. and i will :P

Shame yes, surprised no. I would have to think really hard to think of a stock compression turbo conversion that hasn't gone bang. Most poeple simply run too much boost for the engines to handle. Even the ones which have 2mm gaskets fitted have popped once or twice now, when pushed hard on track days. Quite a spectacular failure though Geoff.....as they say, if you're going to do something right eh hehe!

All the manual CG13DE blocks are open deck design, the automatic blocks are semi closed deck, which will offer some increased rigidity.

If you're going to go to the lengths of forged pistons and conrods as Cisco did, go for as close to stock sized gasket thickness as you can to maintain good squish. Fitting thicker gaskets is no more than a bodge and is not really a good way forward if you are taking the trouble for a proper bespoke custom forged solution.

Good luck with the re-build, really awesome looking car, sad to see it in that state, but it'll be back.....hope to see it gracing the roads again :)

As for the 200kw at the wheels, that's approx 290bhp at the flywheel.....the Japs already did it and if the owner were mad enough I reckon we've for a fully forged CGA3DE here that could porentially make that with the right turbo.......I doubt the gearbox would tollerate it for long though.....eeeek! ;)

Its nice having a factory setup isn't it...you know its not going to let you down when you need it the most. Just plant your foot and away you go. :)

you've been spoilt

haha maybe.

theres still some fun in not knowing if your vehicle will come home in one piece.

of course but then why do so many people buy lottery tickets?

I'm not sure.

I don't understand willful gambling.

Different things float different boats apparently. Which is odd because I thought the amount of water a hull displaced was sort of the gauge of how well a boat can float.

Converting a standard car into a powerful super car is a long hard road of ups and downs. If you have the interest, passion and spare money, then it can be a very rewarding and an awesome learning experience. Its the best way to learn about cars and working on them I reckon. Car heads who love their particular car don't care if it ends up cheaper just to buy a WRX brand new that is also AWD, reliable, smooth, faster and safer, because its like an addiction that consumes you up and you just have to complete the project and see it through - I can totally appreciate this. You have some dream in your head of getting it all perfect and everything perfectly finished and being proud of it, loving the thought of surprising people with its capabilities and just enjoying it.

then selling it and moving on with life : )

some may argue to have perfection is to have no character.

sometimes the most perfect things are flawed in horrific ways.

Food for thought.

all this needs a new thread.... to get cisco and yom out of the woodwork its obvious a high priority thought process...... I hope Geoff gets it going real soon.