As cool as this shot of my coolant line coming off was it was the death bell for my engine.
Coolant never got above 235 but that doesn't really mean a lot when there is no coolant and just air in the system. I should have just turned it off and let them tow me off but I thought I could make it since the coolant wasn't getting that bad and didn't want to ruin anyone's lap. If you remember I went back out for one more session after this, loaded the car on the trailer, unloaded it and then let it sit until easter sunday I started it up just to let it warm up and thats when the real trouble started.
Ignore my removable tractor muffler but here you can see the water on the piece of wood under the exhaust. It was dripping at a fairly fast rate way more than just condensation. Also you can kind of see the white smoke (steam) coming from the exhaust as well.
THATS RIGHT I TRADED MY SUBARU MOTOR FOR A HONDA AND THEN BLEW THE HEADGASKET.
but it gets worse, way worse. As it turned out the here is our best hypothesis:
The engine overheated at the track for the coolant disappearing, the 1 cylinder warped, allowed water into the cylinder, hydro locked the cylinder and chipped the piston at the relief cuts. Then the cylinder cooled and the un-flatness caused a small leak into the cylinder that was burning off, or something like that in a different order we don't totally know except that it all started from driving without coolant.
Either way it had to come out again, and I have a hillclimb in less than 2 weeks at this point (and I thought it was just the gasket that needed to replace, didn't realize the block damage.) and my buddies come over and we rush and get the motor out in about 2-2.5 hours that night. I take it to the machine shop the next day and that is when he tells me I need a new block or get some 88mm pistons. Well we can't find any 88mm pistons that are instock and ready to send over so after much deliberating and getting to the end of the week we decided to just call it.
Listen I need to stop, I need to calm the hell down. This pressure to succeed and make events is why I'm in this situation in the first place RUSHING stuff especially when you are doing this alone is not a good idea because you start making mistakes and it adds up.
That's why we decided to slow down take the time on this 2nd rebuild. Sleeve the block, get the pistons, do it right, and check everything.
I have my buddies miata I helped him build a couple of years ago that we are going to take to the hillclimb so I can get some points for the championship, but I'll beable to slow down (literally) and enjoy it and not be so stressed.
On a positive note I did get my diffuser fixed and some new Hawk DTC-30s for the rear in time for the hill climb lol
