In reply to Dr. Hess:
I bought the car at 117k two years a ago for $3500,clean as a whistle always garaged. I use for daily driver has 150k now. .. I don't have much history, so makes sense to do timing kit, water pump and the oil pump service. I'm going to guess its got all original timing components. I have replaced belts, hoses, radiator, ignition mod, cap, rotor,wires and plugs.
Resurrecting this thread with a few updates.
So, although we figured out the oil leak and got the car running well enough to log about 800 miles on it before the race we still spun a bearing within 45 minutes of the start of the race at PBIR last New Years. We had tried to de-gunk the motor twice while we were putting road miles on it but the heat of racing loosened everything up enough that it clogged the pickup. Not a fun initiation into crap can racing.
Fast forward 11 months and we have a rebuilt motor in the car and plans to revisit PBIR in March for the ChumpCar 24. Doing final button up last night we got her started but had a wicked fuel leak under the intake manifold. Ahh, 2 steps forward, 1 step back. We didn't tear it down as it was late but are guessing either the fuel return line connection or a bad o-ring on an injector.
We'll tear it down Saturday and I'm planning on replacing all 4 injectors, just in case. These have over 200K on them and the last thing I want is an o-ring failing during the race. Can you say "FIRE"? Wish I had thought of this BEFORE we installed the motor...
Any thoughts on sourcing injectors for the 5SFE? Advance, Rock Auto, etc.? Any recommendations?
Resurrecting again. How time flies.
To bring things up to date, still in 2011 two members of our original team have quit after our first engine failure. The remaining team members chose to take the engine out of our parts car and have it gone through and built properly. A team members brother is an engine builder (mostly 2.3 Limas) and he tore everything down, hot tanked all parts, cut out pan cover, etc. to get all gunk out, had block bored .020 over, new pistons, rings, oil pump, water pump, belts, you name it. This motor was squeaky clean and sounded great when installed. As the car is street leagl we drove it around for a week or so and it had good power, great oil pressure. Ok, then lets try this again. We entered the 14 hour Sebring Chumpcar race in 2012. First driver takes the track for the rolling yellow and just after the track goes green, BOOM, we through rod through the front of the block. WTF!? Dejected, most of the team gets drunk and goes home. We eventually pull the blown motor out of the chassis, push the car behind the fence and under a cover. Car sits...Other team members seem to have 0 interest in continuing.
Late 2013 or early 2014 I find a 5SFE on CL out of an MR2 for $400. Check it out and it seems ok. You never know when they are just sitting on the pallet but the seller seems like a stand up guy so I roll the dice and bring the motor home. It joins all the other engines sitting in my shop waiting to be actually used in their respective projects...
Which brings us to today. WTF should I bring to the Challenge this year? I am on a NO NEW CARS policy to try and thin down my project list and decide it is finally time to drag this the Celica back out. Spent a long weekend swapping parts from one engine to another (picts to come), got the transmission mounted up and finally shoehorned the drivetrain back in the car. The rear lower engine mount is enough reason to never want to touch this car again. Seriously Toyota? That was your best idea?
Got everything buttoned up last night, fluids added and after priming the fuel lines she fired right up and purred quietly. Whew, the motor sounds good, has good oil pressure and no extra unwanted noises. I do have to replace a dry rotted power steering line but other than that she should go on the ground tonight. I swapped a tag to her and got insurance turned on so hopefully I can drive her all weekend and make sure I didn't miss anything.
Gah, test driving sucks. We broke the MGB engine and now this, get better soon mate
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