So my FD is down for the winter and its time for some long overdue motor work. The last time the current motor was out of the car was in 2004. I have not put a ton of miles on the motor (maybe 35k), but they have been hard miles. I had been having smoking issues over the past year so I finally decided to pull it and tear it down.
Seeing as I built this motor when I was 17, there were quite a few things I would have done different had I known better. It appears that I had ported slightly into the oil control ring causing the front oil control rings to wear well past spec. I believe that, combined with using the original (now 120k mile) metal control rings ultimately led to the smoking.
There were other issues I found while I was in there, chattering from the 3mm seals, a dented rotor, and poor side seal clearance on the rear rotor just to name a few. The rusty coolant passages were from years ago when I lived in FL I made the mistake of running the system with little to no coolant.
See the blow by here… this explains why my catch can was filling with fuel!
I have cleaned everything and stacked the parts away on a shelf until I decide what to do. I want to start over with a 2mm motor, and polished stock ports. For now, I am focusing on other projects.