Engine kaput update

marts66 · 18-11-08, 03:20 PM

Well all, i went to look at my zed and to be honest i don't believe the guy is completely right. there is some damage to the head but it is under the cam carrier and looks more like wear caused by oil starvation, maybe as there was so much contamination of the oil from the water it had stopped being as effective and the water loss i thought was the heater tap leaking was actually the head gasket and it had gone earlier than i thought. pheww!

so i have decided to have my engine rebuilt by a guy in lancashire famed for extracting power from rover engines (125 bhp A series...nice) i'll also be having a cold air feed put in while the engine is out and as i need to get a new head i am going to get one from a mgf as there is a 135 bhp version and i have been advised that the only difference is the cams 9.5mm lift opposed to 8.8mm...voila, ported and polished head, high lift cams and some high density air going in, i'm hoping it'll be nice. so at the moment i'm running around in a 2.3 saab 900 in black....picked up for 500 quid....so if any one is flashed by one around newcastle don't be alarmed i'm just joining in

marts66 · 19-11-08, 01:39 PM

Hi again,

well, the zed's been delivered home on the back of a trailer waiting for the move down to lancashire, the head has been sourced and is being delivered tomorrow. have had a good look at the engine, bores seem fine, liners don't appeared to have lifted (checked them the same way we used to check renault liners, straight edge and feeler blades) but quite a bit of mayo around, which i've been told not to worry about; so later next week the odysey continues, the zed gets trailered down to lancs and after a fettlin' comes back happy and with a bit more oomph, will let you all know how it's going (if you're interested

) and if any one has any comments or thoughts or come to mention it ideas while the works being done, please feel free to post.

Maxxed_Ross · 19-11-08, 05:31 PM

sounds like it's going to be an interesting project

You might want to look at getting the engine mapped anongside the cams. A friend of mine fitted high lift cams and the car ran like a bag of spanners until the ECU was upgraded.

I believe the standard one can be tuned to a degree, so it depends on the cams I think