unccpathfinder

sanity and my back killing me...i got the heads pulled and found something that was very interesting...a tiny piece of metal had hit the head in a couple place and welded to the piston...but it was on the driver side and all the noise was coming from pass side and bottom end...but heres the pix of the piston and head... im going to go ahead and try finish pulling the motor tomorrow on a fresh back

its almost 2 and i've been on a roll until about an hr and a half ago when 3 of my heat shield bolts were rustd off and i had to grind and eventually tin snip the driver side off...intake is pulled and exhaust is unbolted but the gf just showed up cooked me some brawts and fries so imma eat and then pull the heads and see if maybe my noise was top end and if not onto starting the pulling operation...then i gotta get cleaned up a lil so we can go to the monster trucks tonight more updates and pix to come

heck yea man...shes a MEGR like me and loves that crap if it wasnt 20 deg last night she woulda been right there all night long...she was designated air gun operator during assembling the engine hoist... well we ended up drinkin with some buddies till like 3 so i didnt get my 8 am start in but 10 isnt too bad plus that let it warm up a lil bit...update thru out the day will prob be coming

well as most of yall have prob read my motor did something crazy on me about a month ago and i still think its a broken crank...hopefully i'll discover the answer tomorrow... but as of tonight i took the 350 block off of the engine stand and put the shortblock of the 86 maxima on it tomorrow morning im going to pull the pan and make sure the oil pump looks good and all that jazz...im kinda going on a budget so im not doing things the easiest way possible heres what im going to do... tomorrow i plan on pulling my old motor doing all the wonderful steps to get that accomplished...but before that im going to go to the parts store and get the oil pan seal and rear main seal and possible a new oil pump b/c i know its going to take a day or so to get it...then im going to put the short block in my truck since i've gotta wait to go home to get the gasket set (gotta guy at the parts store that hooks me up for at cost) so i'll put the shortblock in and prob bolt the heads on not to spec tho but to keep moisture out...then go home in a couple weeks and pick up the gasket set (pdq wasnt so quick and didnt get in B4 i came back from break) so then i'll do all the top end work after i get that but before i get to top end work im going to do clutch and machine my manifolds since the pass side is warped and being a TA in the machine shop this sem will help me out a lot im prob missing some stuff but i feel i need to get downstairs with the gf cuze shes been so nice tonight...she helped me out with some stuff until she got cold and then went inside and then she made sure she broguht me a fresh beer on the half hour knowing my pace for the evening was about that...but i'll post pix and updates as the project moves on...or lack there of

Thanks Ted...thats a lil outta my league im just trying to make my truck run again not really worried about making her quick...well i've called a buncha machine shops here and no1 can really tell so it looks like im going to be doing some free labor for my buddy at his yard cuze they have an 87 4x4 wrecked nose end (motors bad cuze he pushed everything in on the timing belt cover and it came off and broke the harmonic balancer and all that good stuff) so i guess im going to be dropping the tranny off of it and comparing the pathy motor to the maxima motor and see if it'll work the maxima motors he has are front wheel drive...really wish my cuz would go ahead and say you can buy my pathy esp teasing me last night by letting me drive it around town for like 2hrs cuze theres nothing else to do here

im back home and paid a visit to the junkyard where i used to work every now and then and he has 2 86 VG30 motors out of an 86 maxima that he said i can take my pick from they both have 110k on them...but my ? is will it work or not b/c i havent pulled my old motor yet so i dont know the length of the output shaft of mine and i dont wanna screw up on this...plus im 120 miles away from my truck now so i cant really pull it and measure

after getting up this AM at 7 to drive the gf to the airport so she could go enjoy the virgin islands for 5 days i came home and pulled off the timing belt and cam gears and what not and found that my oil leaks def are the cam seals i could follow the oil trail all the way to the tranny it was 4x worse on the driver side than the pass. side so that covers my horrible oil leak which it hasnt been cranked in over a week an its in the 40's and if i wipe the around the seals in like a half hr or so u can see it starting to seep out again but for the horrible raquet it makes im still unsure of...but im still curious if the noise im hearing is predetination or detination by compression where i might have damaged a plug wire so its not sparking? i've never heard this 1st hand b4...but i wouldnt expect it to be that loud? what i was gonna do is change cam seals timing belt (even tho it only has like 25k on it) plugs and plug wires as well as a battery since that has died but i cant really do all that and cross my fingers and hope everything cranks up good but i doubt it...but i cant do any of that until after christmas due to the fact that im broke (hell i changed a horn in saturn last night for an 18 pack haha)

lemmie tell ya 2 drs are a lotta fun when ure driving it doesnt matter if they have to crawl in the back, it beats crawling into a car i just wish mine would revert back to about a month ago and run perfectly fine

not owning a snow blower but it is a 4 cycle motor right and not where u mixed 93 and oil for a 2 cycle?...i've also heard if u run a tank dry and have trash in there and refill it it'll clog up the filter in the tank maybe try changing fuel filter out side of tank 1st? or even better yet i dont think its that cold yet but maybe the gas solidified (froze)?

u're sure u ran out of gas and didnt break a timing belt? i donno if u've pulled a plug or wire to see if its actually sparking or if it just wouldnt crank up but i had the same thing happen and i broke my timing belt...hope thats not the case for ya

yea he had some stuff to get done so as the battery was dying and i didnt have a charger the best we could do is see that the pressures were dropping as the battery died cuze we did go back and check 1 of the 1's we already had done that came out to be the 125 and it had dropped to 60 but do plan on running a better test after i get some $ to get a new battery or find a charger to borrow the oil light hasnt come on so im not sure it actually works so i think the pressure gage might help out b/c i know im getting some pressure b/c we pulled a valve cover after running it and it had oil up there as well as in the oil filter i have finals today tomorow and weds so i prob wont get to mess with it but i think im going to pull the the timing belt and housing just to see if i can pin point the leak

ok well we got thru 2 cylinders B4 my battery was very weak and measured the 1st 2 at 125 and then the next 2 came out to 60 and the last 2 around 30 or so but the battery was really really weak and now it just clicks and we suspect that it def wasnt spinning the motor anywhere near 300RPM so we figured compression was good on all 6 since it seemed to decrease as the batteries power decreased before running the test i cranked it up for him to hear and he said it sounded like a car that had just had its oil changed and the oil pump wasnt working properly so i guess my next thing is to to get a oil pres gage... do oil pumps contain a weep hole like the water pump so in the event that they start to go bad they spew oil to say "hey look at me im going bad"?

not coming from the oil filter checked it good and tight compression check is still waiting my buddy has been slack about making his way over here im really thinking i broke the crank or bearing...my friends dad broke 1 and he said it sounds exactly like mine and he drove it 5 miles home i think im gonna drain the oil off today and see if i have any metal in it ::crosses fingers and hopes no::

yea i def agree with that

i checked the cam seals already and those were clean of any leaks

well if i do this its gonna be snatching this motor out and dropping another in so i have the least amount of down time thanks for the heads up on the heater core i had a fun tango with 1 of those in an olds acheva my mom had when i was about 15 it was PITA to change and some great engineer thought it was smart to make the inlet and outlet tubes out of plastic so they cracked and emptied in about 2 mins (although he did redeam himself a lil bit by enclosing the core and having a drain that ran it outside instead of in the floorboard)

yea i had the valve covers on and good and tight and they werent leaking well i can get a hoist from northern tool for about $140 which i was planning on buying before my truck broke so i can pull the 152 out of project scout and put a 350 in but for now project scout has once again been put on the back burner i was thinking rear main seal but the oil is coming from the front side an oil pressure gage will mount where the sensor is now correct? the 1 that goes to the dummy light?

well as bad as that leak is i think that means im gonna have to pull the motor to fix that b/c thats horrible...and now i start kicking myself in the butt for switching over to high mileage oil...i know that prob isnt the cause of this but a couple days after changing the oil all this crap comes on...

from my other topic im thinking the motor is going to have to come out here before too long so my question is about the steps the FSM has listed and do they have to be done i searched around and couldnt find anything on it so if theres other topics about it if some1 could drop a link that'd be great i know the following must be removed: a/c compressor ps pump accelerator cable heater core exhaust radiator think the starter but not sure harness and grounds motor mounts tranny i might have missed some obvious stuff but i think i got most of it the FSM says i need to remove propeller shaft and crossmember tranny and its crossmember and the front driveshaft bolts so is it really necessary for all of that other stuff to be pulled i know loosening up the tranny and sliding it back on its cross member will help me out but dropping everything out seems to be a lot of extra work

i used a really long bolt and it seemed that it was def bottom end noise... but not really conclusive evidence b/c by each cylinder on both sides the noise sounded about the same but around the pan it was a lil louder...for the 5 mins i ran her i did notice she dropped a buncha oil and this is the 1st time i've ever seen it drop a oil spot in the driveway but i do belive that is enough evidence to go ahead and start saving for a engine hoist still no clue to where the oil is coming from i pulled the alt and all that good stuff and everything is just coated

well i've been searching for a ride all morning to northern tool so i could pick up a stethoscope but i have failed miserably every1 is hung over cuze yest was the last day of classes... but i cranked her this morning to check and see if i could tell where its coming from by putting my ear as close as i could to the heads and under the oil pan and i can almost say its prob the crank b/c its a lot louder than any kind of lifter noise i've heard and its petty loud from the underside too going to try and build a stethoscope but the only thing im not sure on is if i need to make a vaccume on the tubing running from the "ear pieces" to the probe b/c i think i need to but not sure but im gonna go try different things to see if i cant figure out where its coming from

well the fan shroud isnt in the truck so that eliminates the fan how would i check for a failed lifter when i pulled the rocker arms i checked all of them and they seemed to be oiled and moved freely and were clean of any unnecissary wear i might climb under there this afternoon and see if its coming from the bottom end...thats where i really think its coming from

fans clear as well as balancer and i did notice more (blue) smoke black is often b/c of exhaust leak and the o2 getting bad readings...i have had b4 since earlier i discussed a lil smoke after idle...but i will take the advice of pulling the belts and all that good stuff to check it out

i pulled the rockers and all the lifters looked to be in normal condition not any crazy wear or nicks everything was smooth... the scope idea i had but there are 2 reasons y i havent done it yet 1. its really loud the video doesnt really protray that 2. with my luck i'd be listening and then QAPOW something bigger would break and i would be somehow seriously injured still donno what im gonna do... :sniff:

heres the video that'll let u hear the awful noises...any idea's? http://webpages.uncc.edu/~jlstocks/BadNoise.wmv