Quote:
Originally Posted by PoorMans180SX
You're right, rebuilding SR20's is impossible, everything is one-time use.  |
It is a gamble for experienced, knowledgeable users
For novices its just burning money.
They can't check the work, they can't find a responsible builder, they don't know the peculiarity of the engine, etc...
There is a large population of failures and zero to none are successful.
In 2013? I took a minute to look through the first few pages of classifieds, and came across a slew of failures all with various causes (no particular reason or explanations)
SRs that built and failed quick:
http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?t=535520
http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?t=569861
http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?p=5765974
http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?t=579996
http://zilvia.net/f/showthread.php?t=586960
Around 2005-2007 I tried my own luck at local machine shops
Ex.
An SR engine from 'Mesa balancing' a well known reputable machine shop with millions of dollars in engine parts scattered all over the place, and a high price tag came back fully assembled with:
1. Massive oil leak from the front of the engine due to incorrectly machined front cover.
2. Missing the front 2 long bolts under the valve cover
3. Wrong initial chain timing
4. Air inside all lifters (All lifters needed to be removed and re-primed with oil because the machine shop literally bled all the oil out of them on purpose, because apparently "thats how honda engines are setup" )
5. Wrong piston-wall clearance possibly resulting with deeply scored cylinder walls after 7k miles
6. A typical .020" bearing clearance (Like for an old Chevrolet) resulted with deep pitting of rod bearing #1 due to oil starvation on cold starts after just 7k miles, it may have also been out of round
It never would have made it to 50k miles let alone 200k or 250k which is what the engine is fully capable of.
There were some builds that are "done" but always for sale with low mileage or "freshly rebuilt with 0 miles" Or something along those lines. Alot of the ones for sale were on their second or third rebuild in just a few months, obviously trying to get rid of a disaster in progress.
I find that most people that build an engine drive less than 1000 miles per year (They would say "Yeah I built the engine and its been fine for 10 years") barely eclipsing 10k mileage, and the same goes for Chevrolet LS engines which are built $20k to $50k in engine parts and it gets 500 miles per year or whatever, still failing even with low mileage. And I can list a looong slew of failures for those as well, even crate engines with massive mistakes I have categorized.
In light of the evidence it would be irresponsible for me to recommend an engine rebuild, other than a pure-FSM rebuild with everything done by yourself on a clean engine in a clean room (not a clean room, just a clean room) with zero machine work or handling by other people.
The evidence is overwhelming.
And there is no reason to gamble like that in the first place. There is a V8 engine out there that weight similar to an SR20 and it will do just fine 300 to 1000rwhp and is very affordable and easy to wire etc... No reason to struggle street with this or roll any dice if you know what you are doing (tuning and wiring etc...)
If you want something done right you still have to do it yourself, that concept never changed