Rescuing my VE

pachadwick · 12-02-2012, 05:22 PM

Hi All,
Here's an interesting challenge. How to fix a cracked head without taking your engine apart.

As the first SR20VE in conversion I've run the motor to death, 287,000 miles and most of them arduous on the race-track and in rivers. See my 2007 experience with hydro-lock

.

Back then I noticed some stress cracks but ignored them on reassembly because it wasn't leaking and passed pressure test. As they were

in 2007.

Fast forward to Autumn 2012 and I have been experiencing water loss and a degree of "bubbling". The vehicle is near end of life but having just spent the summer roller-painting it

I am not ready to send her to the scrap yard in the sky quite yet.

Any with the wonders of modern technology, not available in 2007 I have taken a peek inside the combustion chamber with a camera you might more readily associate with porn films. Anyway I've nailed cylinder 3 and you can see

!

So what's next? I am proposing to seal the cracks in situ. This crazy engine already lives on, it's been doing hundreds of miles already on a proprietary epoxy emulsion called "steel seal". This stuff "kind of" works, it stops gushes of coolant by "crystallising" in at the leak to atmosphere but is not really good enough to save an SR20VE at full 8K rpm. I find that the cylinders pressurize the coolant system and "Push" a cup full into the header tank each 100 miles. So I've been driving it, keeping the revs down below 4K and it does go fine, even get 36mpg but I am missing the power!

My plan is to scrape the cracks out using a special tool and the porn cam, then fill the cracks with Belzona 1111 metal filled epoxy and then smear 1200 degree resistant silicone over the top and silicone in some NGK iridiums and then drive it for one more year or until the spark plugs fail.....

I'll update this thread with pics, but if anyone has experience of this kind of rescue don't hesitate to share your experience......

pachadwick · 01-01-2013, 03:40 PM

Hello everyone and Happy New Year. I have completed my repair, it was more difficult that I had anticipated, getting a working endoscope that gave me the view to do keyhole surgery and then getting the hang of working in reverse upside down was also hard. Today I applied the final 1200 degree resistant silicone, I need to wait 3 days for it to fully cure for flame exposure. You can see pictures of the stages I went through, needed to do 3 cylinders, some with 3 cracks others with 2 (mainly the exhaust valve seats to the plug thread).

I'll post next week to tell you all if it holds....

:-)