Well, hello there! It's been a little while since I've updated this thread, hasn't it? Let's see... only a year, five months, and five days! So.. what have I accomplished in that time, you ask?
Uh.
Let me explain. No wait, there is to much. Let me sum up: Moved in to new shop in January of 2019. A few months later, had stupidmobile towed to said shop and pushed it into the corner. Not so much in to the corner that it's like out of the way or anything, but in the way of only about 25% of the space. Which is annoying. Decided that I wasn't even going to bother with it and wanted to turn it into money. Started selling a few parts off of it and made a couple hundred bucks. Then I waffled a bit and decided that I wasn't willing to admit defeat just yet so I took all the parts off the market.
In between all of those steps there was a fairly significant amount of time for a couple reasons. First, I am definitely suffering under the whole sunk-cost fallacy in that knowing how much I've spent on this dumb thing makes it really hard for me to walk away from it. I realize that isn't rational, but it's there. I am also intensely stubborn and not very good at the whole "quit while you're ahead" thing. People keep telling me that when you're in a hole, step one is to start digging but I just keep at it with that shovel. Finally, I am both intensely intimidated by the thing while also holding the concept in my head that it is just a damned engine and it's not like I've never been inside one of those before.
So here we are. Since I've got some time on my hands (I really should be fabricating motor mounts and getting hubs made for the Neon), I decided that I was finally going to delve into this and see what I can do. In the end, I may wind up parting this thing out, but the realization that I came to before was that parting out the vehicle will involve disassembling the engine since there are individual components in there that are worth more than a bad engine is worth as a whole. Since I'd have to take it apart anyway, why not start with the engine parts? I can tear into it and see what is wrong, what would need to be done and if it's worth fixing.
Which brings us to today:
Look, ma! No turbo. Or intake manifold. Or "charge air distribution thing" or whatever the hell the fools in Stuttgart call the thing that the rest of us call an intake manifold.
Just from taking this apart, I can see why so many people want to delete their EGR systems. The air goes into the turbo, through the intercooler, into the (whatever-the-convoluted-term-they-use-for) throttle body and then the EGR output joins in before it hits the intake manifold. These are the ports where the sooty air hits the intake manifold:
They're just caked in soot and oil and stuff. It's awful. The nastiness goes on downstream, too. It's a little hard to see, but the intake ports on the heads are all clogged up as well:
I was also able to see why replacing the swirl motor didn't fix the limp mode / MIL problem:
The intake manifold is basically two individual manifolds that have a crossover tube connecting them. In the left-most ports in this picture, you can see that each cylinder has a little flap and that flap is connected to the linkage on the outside of the manifold. That linkage then connects to the M55 swirl motor. In Theory, with the motor removed, which it is here, those arms should move freely back and forth, opening and closing those flaps. In Reality, however, all that soot and gunk has the flaps frozen solid. Here's the best part, though. And by best part, I mean the worst part. Those flaps cannot be serviced or replaced! I'm going to try to clean them up, but if the linkage breaks or something like that, the only solution (other than putting the 4.7k resistor in place and ignoring the MIL) is to replace the freaking intake manifold. Thanks, guys.
The next step in the process is to remove the high pressure fuel pump which is driven by the left side intake cam. The bolts are M50 Torx heads (I think? M45? M55? one of those three) and my socket in that size is a little bit broken, so I need to get a replacement. Once I have that, though, I will continue the tear down. I'm actually pretty close to being able to pull the heads off so that I can get a little bit better view of what's going on. Getting the heads off is not likely to be the final step, but I'll be able to determine if there is any damage to the heads or valves and I'll be able to get a look at at least most of all the cylinder walls to see if there's any damage there. Last time I checked, the only way to get a new block was to get a whole re-man engine that that was about $10k, so that won't be happening. If, however, the block is good then it might still be worth trying to put it back together.
