Having discovered cracked heads, burned and cracked valves, hammered bearings and a bent crankshaft, we determined pretty quickly that this car saw some serious detonation in addition to the oil starvation. This is likely because the car ran lean.
But how? Mach V Motorsports stands by their tune. They've run many cars in a similar state and never had issues. So we started looking for mechanical problems.
First on the list: fuel injectors. This was unlikely since the exhaust valves were burned on every cylinder and both heads had plenty of cracks. Whatever the problem was, it wasn't local to one cylinder. The odds of every injector getting clogged at once are slim.
That said, this is a 200,000-mile engine running on its original injectors, so we had to check 'em out at least. A professional injector cleaning is a must for any high-mileage car. We took ours out and sent them over to Marren Fuel Injection.
When we got them back, the tests showed about what we expected: They were a little old and didn't flow perfectly, but they weren't bad enough to cause problems. And, after Marren cleaned 'em up, they flowed like new.
We'll have to keep looking.
| Wicked awesome Scooby Rexes in your treeware mailbox. Subscribe to Grassroots Motorsports now. |
