Down & dirty rebuild?

Recently, The Boy's '99 Mazda Protegé, with 1.8l, has been burning a berk-ton of oil - cold startup, accelerating, idling, upshifts, downshifts, pretty much all the time. At only 121k, this surprises me. It's also been idling like e36m3, with a miss-fire.

I started pulling plugs, the other night. #1 had very minor (dry) deposits on it. #s 3 & 4 looked like a perfectly healthy engine. #2, on the other hand, didn't have much torque holding it in, oily deposits on the VC (and on the hood above it), broken insulator, heavy deposits and the capper: it had previously been repaired with a thread insert, which came out with the plug. I was able to fish a piece of insulator out of the cylinder.

We got an inspection camera to have a peek. It looks like #2 has some scoring on the cylinder wall. I imagine the thread repair wasn't done by pulling the head off and drilling/threading left bits in there, not to mention the broken bits of spark plug insulator.

Tomorrow, we'll be pulling the head, for thread repair. Any suggestions for what can be done about the potentially scored cylinder, short of a rebore?

Nothing? Not even a smartass comment like "Shotgun?" or "Put an LSx in it!"....

Here's the bad plug.

Is this a bp car or that FP whatever pile of crap?

What are you hoping to hear? I don't see how you fix this without boring or replacing a sleeve if possible. Piston is probably screwed up too at this point, right?

New junkyard engine? It sounds to me like more problems than just the plug, those type of repairs work fine if done right.

Swank Force One wrote: Is this a bp car or that FP whatever pile of crap?

It's an FP pile o' crap.

In reply to pres589:

This is a forum full of geniuses. I was hoping someone might have a secret snake oil trick to get by, with this scenario.

In reply to Travis_K:

That's what I thought, but after pulling the insert out of the head with the plug, I'm not surprised that this repair went wonky.

My suggestion

shotgun?

Thanks, turboswede. Now I feel the GRM love.

You'll have to put it together and see how it runs. Try heavier oil, that "restore" crap in a can, whatever, you cant hurt a already broken motor.

Junkyard motor time. If youre going to keep it around and the boy is into cars as well, it's time for a swap.

I've been weighing the options between JY motor or rebuilding, and dollar-wise, it looks about equal. As it is, I haven't found a motor nearby for a sane price, and that would be an unknown condition.

He's into cars, just not so much handy into wrenching. He does like his car, though. Other than the motor issues, everything else works and it's in pretty good cosmetic shape.

Z-max!

It works for Carrol Shelby!

RealMiniDriver wrote: In reply to Travis_K: That's what I thought, but after pulling the insert out of the head with the plug, I'm not surprised that this repair went wonky.

That actually happened on my dads subaru, and after replacing it with a new insert and a bunch of locktite it lasted another 100k or so until we replaced the engine at about 300k because it burned too much oil to pass emissions testing.

What's that restore oil stuff that's supposed to leave metal deposits? Might be worth a shot but I don't think you're going to dodge a rebore, I imagine that cylinder has the E36 M3 gouged out of it.

RealMiniDriver wrote: I've been weighing the options between JY motor or rebuilding, and dollar-wise, it looks about equal. As it is, I haven't found a motor nearby for a sane price, and that would be an unknown condition. He's into cars, just not so much handy into wrenching. He does like his car, though. Other than the motor issues, everything else works and it's in pretty good cosmetic shape.

I don't think a BP swap would be hard at all, and would probably be cheaper to do than you'd think.

And you'd have a much better more durable motor.

In reply to Swank Force One:

If we're going to go through the effort of putting a completely different engine in (I think I've read that there's just enough different between FP and BP, that it's not a drop-n-swap), we'd look for a smashed Probe GT or MX6 and do a KL V6. Go big or go home.

I say try repairing the thread and throw the head back on. Run it up and check the compression. Unless the scoring is bad I'll be you find it's OK on compression and runs fine as long as he's not beating on it too hard it'll last a while.

Then asses option and start gathering parts to do an engine swap properly when he/you/it have some down time and arn't in any kind of a crunch.

Oh, and for GRM-e-ness, the swap should be a TT LSx with AWD, traction and stability control etc.

RealMiniDriver wrote: In reply to Swank Force One: If we're going to go through the effort of putting a completely different engine in (I think I've read that there's just enough different between FP and BP, that it's not a drop-n-swap), we'd look for a smashed Probe GT or MX6 and do a KL V6. Go big or go home.

I can get behind that, but the only thing you need from either of those cars is the motor. You need an MX3 GS donor.

JC whitey used to sell some pills you droped in the plug holes...

RealMiniDriver wrote: In reply to Swank Force One: If we're going to go through the effort of putting a completely different engine in (I think I've read that there's just enough different between FP and BP, that it's not a drop-n-swap), we'd look for a smashed Probe GT or MX6 and do a KL V6. Go big or go home.

I totally support this idea. Especially if the body hasn't rust to dust. It makes a great little car into a fast great little car.

Without pulling the head and having a really good look see it's hard to say. I'd probably replace the insert and see how it goes. It might work and then you've succeeded in doing things the cheap way. If you're berkeleyed then, well, you're berkeleyed, and then it's time to look for a new engine.