Hey everyone, my current z24 is slowly and surely dying. Basically the 3rd cylinder is letting oil from somewhere and a number of mechanics have looked at it and given me their opinions, one mechanic thought it was likely a piston ring and another thought it was the valve stem seals. Since the valve stem seals were a lot cheaper to replace I changed those first which seemed to work but after about a week and half of driving the car is still rapidly burning through oil. Firstly 3rd cylinder keeps burning out spark plugs, like I mean they look like they've had a day in hell after only a couple weeks of normal driving and the other major issue is the bottom end is struggling to make the pressure to push the oil from the sump into the head. Today I was driving around town and when I got home I checked the oil, it looked okay because it hadn't burnt to much but when I removed the oil cap a bit of smoke was coming out.
So if I want to do the piston rings I'm looking at around $1000 so an engine swap makes sense. I would be happy to replace it with a z24 but in Geelong, Australia they are pretty hard to find and they aren't cheap, another option is to possibly convert it to a KA24, vg30 or an SR20. The main issue I'll have with a conversion is my pathy runs on dedicated LPG/propane through an impco carburetor. This means if I want it to run on fuel injection it'll cost me another $500-$1000 to get the LPG computer, chips etc. So another question is could you convert any of these motors to run through a carburetor?
Any advice or opinions would be greatly appreciated.