I finally had time to disassemble the head-intake-exhaust manifold-turbo assembly last night after having it on the bench for a few days. Everything came apart without much fuss, though I couldn’t imagine doing any of it with the whole assembly still on the car. It was definitely easier to pull the head with everything still attached.

The good: The turbo assembly seems to be in good shape. There is a fairly large amount of radial play in the compressor-turbine shaft, but no noticeable axial play, and no oil in the compressor housing. I also didn’t see any cracks or damage of any sort on the whole assembly. So, it should be fine with a rebuild.

The bad: There’s more cracks in the head. There’s cracks in the small water passages and more alarmingly, cracks leading from one of the valves to the outside of the combustion chamber, on all cylinders. See below:

Also, the intake manifold has been sloppily ported between the mating halves. Luckily, the rest of the intake manifold has not been ported, nor has anything else. Also note the lovely homemade gasket. I should be able to smooth these out:

So, the long and short of it is that I’m looking at replacing the head now as well as having the turbo rebuilt. I kind of had a feeling this was going to happen. Stay tuned, things should start to get interesting from here on out!

You guys will be pleased to know that I pulled Sunshine’s head off the other day. Unfortunately, it’s too heavy/awkward for me to lift out of the engine compartment myself with the intake manifold, exhaust manifold, and turbo still attached. So, a friend is going to give me a hand with it tomorrow. I can’t wait to get it out and on the bench so I can see what I have to work with. Will the manifolds and head already be ported? Does the head have a valve job? I’ll see soon enough.

So far the Shelby has been much easier to work on than my Focus. I don’t know if it’s because it has such low miles on it and has spent so much time indoors or if it’s just because I have more room to work with in the engine compartment…or both. No fasteners have been frozen (knock on wood) or stripped. The only difficulty I had so far was figuring out what to use as a jacking point to raise the car high enough to put on stands, and getting the valve cover off. It was nearly glued in place with form-a-gasket (instead of silicone) so it was really difficult to remove. The throttle body is also stuck in place on the intake manifold. I have to figure out how to get it to separate without damaging anything.

This may be the saddest car-related video I’ve ever seen.

Well, there’s my bike and a nearly all-original Buell S3T for starters. Another photo of the S3T and more party crashers after the cut.

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I’m only several months late with these photos…

See them all under the cut. Enjoy!

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I received Forza 4 for Christmas and have started playing it a couple of days ago. One of the cars you can buy is the 1986 Dodge Omni-based Shelby GLHS. It is the same car as my Charger-based 1987 Shelby GLHS, but with the 4-door body style instead of the Charger’s coupe body style. Naturally, I made a tuning that matches the mods that have already been done to Sunshine (so far), so now I have a virtual clone of Sunshine in Forza 4. I’m a dork, I know.

The car has actually been very successful for me in C-class so far.

EDIT: If you are a Forza fan, you should definitely pick up the Microsoft wireless wheel controller. It’s awesome and works much better than I expected it to.

Quick GLHS road test on the SPEED channel. I love the cold air intake on his car.

How is the car coming along?

A little light winter reading material for me.

Hey Santa! It’s a bit last minute, I know…but how about four of each, 5x100 bolt pattern, 7” wide with a 40mm offset? Thanks a bunch ;D