RE: LIVE motor swap!!
It's ALIVE!
Well it wasn't "dead" yet, but rather than wait until it did die..
prudence and respect for my fellow racers and track owners, I didn't want to puke 6qts of synthetic oil onto the dragstrip.
356,000 miles, the secondary cam chain tensioner decided to lose the nylon pad.
Not a catrostrophic failure by any means, but it sounded like it was going to fail.. at some point.
The noise was happening for 3-5 seconds on start up, but it wasn't the "normal cam chain slap" this sounded like a chainsaw with a loose chain, it was only a matter of time before it sawed a hole thru the timing cover or valve cover.
We thought about just putting a tensioner on the motor, but after further investigation it was determined that the primary chain had to come off, which meant a couple of hundred dollars in gaskets coupled with the cost of the tensioner..
it was more than I was willing to spend on a 365,000 mile motor.
SO I picked up a junker 93 w/113,000 miles off of Craigslist for $500.00 and put the motor, trans and 1 peice Driveshaft into grandmas car.
Drove it home last night and for the first time since I've owned the car, I have a crystal clear rear veiw mirror!!!!
$500.00 well spent!
The "drone" I had wasn't exhaust, it was driveshaft!
The car is smooth as glass at 80+, before the swap I was getting a pretty bad "booming" that started at 70 and got really bad by 90.
I'm quite sure the motor would have made it to 500,000 miles had I put a new secondary chain tensioner on, as the engine didn't smoke or leak.
The 6000+ passes I have on the car equates to somewhere around 850 miles at WOT!
So the SAGA has ended at 365,000 miles, someone "call it, and mark the time"!
