Thefireball

Warmed up the motor again this afternoon. Idle was wonky again when cold, and lots of smoke from the exhaust. I don't think the head gasket(s) are sealing properly upon cold starting, but then the smoke goes away once the motor is warm, and the idle settles to normal.

​​​​​​Compression numbers after warming the motor are now:
1. 133.5 psi
2. 155.5 psi
3. 164.5 psi
4. 160 psi
5. 159.5 psi
6. 158 psi

I revved it a bit after warming it up. Sounds great. The whole motor seems great when it's warmed up, it's just when it's cold it has issues. I'm hoping things will settle once it's been driven a couple of miles.

619rcr

Happy to hear its running again.

Thefireball

Well, this was to be expected when you have uneven compression in cylinders.
Started it, rough idle, warmed up while I put the wheels on. I was putting the car into gear before I did that to see how it would do. D5 light kept blinking everytime I did.
Reversing out of the garage, lack of power. Accelerated forward onto the road, and it was barely making any power. I was flooring it, and it barely went anywhere, all while the D5 light is flashing. Kind of like the Lexus with it's blown head gasket. Sure don't look forward to working on the 1UZ-FE.

So to sum it up; I failed rebuilding heads. Probably should just have the seats recut, replace all the valves, but I skipped steps and cheaped out.
I'm just going to order a set of J32A2 heads, and swap them out while leaving the block in the car. I can only hope the ones I buy are off of a running motor.

Thefireball

I've aken a bit of a break from posting. Got tired of making an ass out of myself on here, and getting a head of myself with posts. Going to try to limit how much I post. I already hate coming to this thread because the car should have been fixed multiple pages ago. Anywho, let's get to it.

After my last post, I was pretty bummed out, then worked up the motivation two days later to keep going. So I had the motor out in less than 5 hours. The motor should have worked better than it did. 2 days after that, I had the motor completely disassembled. When tearing it apart. I discovered I didn't torque the head bolts down to spec.
You see, I had read debates online of people putting oil on the head bolts. Some said not to, but the manual said to. Being me, I figured the more the merrier. So I was dunking the bolts in oil, and installing them without letting the excess drip off. The result: most bolts coming out with little to no strength. Only like 3 took some strength. That's nothing when you compare it to the fact I had to use bolt extractors to get the original bolts off on both the ones I installed on the trashed J35, and the original bolts on this motor. Lesson learned; moving on.

This time, I've decided to stop pretending that I know what I'm doing, and cutting corners. I'm following the service manual as best as I can. In doing so, I've obtained some Prussian blue, Dykem layout fluid, and a good $50 caliper that's accurate to .001 of an inch. I also acquired a dial bore gauge and a micrometer set, accurate to .001 of an inch as well.




Starting with the heads. It took some time to figure out how to use the layout fluid and Prussian blue correctly, but I got it figured out. Immediately, I could tell where most valves were not sealing, using both a flashlight in the dark while pulling the valve down, and using Prussian blue. I pretty much relapped every valve. Each time I was finished, I would check with the Prussian blue until I had a good contact patch. After I was done, I checked the valve seat with layout fluid, and every valve seat is within tolerance, with the 3 angle seat still visible.
I have my concerns though. See, I started with the original rebuilt head first, and a lot of seats were near tolerance. I can't think of the numbers off the top of my head, but they were way closer to the service limit than the original heads that came on this motor. I had a lot of problems getting the valves to seal, and had to swap some out for better in shape valves. Even now, after they've been sitting for about 2 or 3 hours with gasoline in them, it looks like 2 valves are leaking. Not a full on flow, but a leak after an hour.
But the original heads have been amazing to work on. Pretty much every valve had an amazing contact patch, and the service limit on some of the seats were either in new tolerances, or close to it. Knowing how worn this head is, I might try and work on the other original head, and see what it's measurements are. I'll just need to get it resurfaced if it's in better shape.






Next up: cylinder bores
This took me like a full day to figure out, but now I can do it easy peasy. Zeroing in the micrometers were an absolute pain, because I had originally used a cheap plastic calipers then a harbor freight caliper, only to find out they weren't very accurate. So I then splurged on that nice dial caliper, and it has been amazing. I love this caliper.
I used the thimble, or whatever it's called, to dial in the micrometers, and then checked it with the caliper. The digital calipers kept giving me inaccurate readings, but the dial caliper fixed that issue. I then zeroed in the bore gauge, which also took some practice, then measured the bores finally.
Good news: every cylinder is within tolerance. I'm not going to bother posting the numbers, because this post is already long enough. I got worried when measuring cylinder #5, as I thought it was .001 of an inch away from the service limit. But I redid it tonight, zeroing everything all over again. I guess I was doing it wrong, because it was actually 89.035mm where as the service limit is 89.065mm. If you're wondering why I switched to mm, it's because my bore gauge reads in mm, and my micrometer reads in inches. That really messed me up at first, and had me freaking out when learning how to use all these tools.




So, all I have left to do is check over the cylinder heads for any leaks, measure the pistons, hone the cylinders with a 400 grit ball hone, replace piston rings, and it'll be time to start putting everything together. If for some reason I still fail this time, I'm just going to buy a crate engine.

Now, I have some news. I was going to fix the Lexus' head gasket issue, but decided to throw the car up on Craigslist to see if anyone would rather fix it instead. Listed it for $600, hoping to get at least $500. Any less, and I'd fix it. I'll spare the details, but some one bought it. Though it still sits in my drive way since I sold it 3 weeks ago due to the person struggling to tow it home, I had the money, and I bought a car. I'll be making a post about it soon, but I have some issues to work out with it first before I do. But for now, all I'll say is that I got a hell of deal. I paid way too little for what it's actually worth.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

^
Looks like you have been hard at work trying to sort things out.
Interested to see what new project you picked up.
BTW, when time permits, could you confirm the milimeter wrench size (17mm or 19mm) of the two flange bolts (#6 & 13 on the link below) used to connect the starter to the torque converter housing?
Alternator Bracket - 2003 Acura CL 2 Door SPORT KA 5AT (acurapartswarehouse.com)
Thanks in advance.

Thefireball

Both are 17mm. Here's a pic of bolt #6 using my calipers, because they're fun to use.

teh CL

iTrader: (1)

Man, this thread takes me back.

The ups and downs of the DIY learning curve. I love & hate it but you'll appreciate it once your older. Ask me how I know..

That TL better be getting a J35A6..

Thefireball

I love that I'm learning something that I've always wanted to do. The funny thing is that I never cared about cars as a kid. I didn't start driving until I was 18. My first car was a '99 3.0CL, and when I felt VTEC for the first time.. well, it's the reason I'm at where I am now, lol.
I do NOT look forward to the struggle of putting this all back together, and throwing it back into the car, only to find out I messed something on. I will not give up until a J35 is running in this CL. Then I can start working on getting the M90 S/C bolted on.

As for the TL, not sure if I want to do the J35A6 swap. It's more HP vs more Torque. The TL will not stay stock, but I'm not going to race it like I do the CL. CL is my race car, TL is my daily driver/grocery getter/family hauler. I'd like to try my hand at turboing a car, with the whole sh-bang of welding up my own headers and such for it, so maybe I'll do that with the TL? I've also been looking at a horribly in-shape base model RSX that needs a lot of love. Maybe I will do a turbo build on that.

I'm indecisive on things right now.

Edit: Anyone used these: https://www.powerrevracing.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=P860&CartID=1
Might try throwing in some of the cams from the newer RL or TL Type S off the J35A8 instead of staying with the J32A2 cams.

Thefireball

It's been awhile since I've been able to make any progress, but the time has finally come. I have some findings that I wanted to share, as well as a mistake that I made (again).

Everything that I ordered was:
- New enginetech standard sized J35A3 pistons
- Camshaft seals
- Head bolts
- Head Gaskets
- Intake runner to manifold gaskets
- Timing belt tensioner
- Oil filter
- Crankshaft main bearing
- Hastings piston rings
Gaskets for the runners was because everytime I would bolt them down, they would make a crunching sound. They were on a closeout sale, so I figured why not for $10. New tensioner because I already have fairly new water pump, belt, and idler, but I have compressed the same tensioner so many times, I just want to be safe.

Starting first, I made a mistake when putting back my cylinder heads, both originally, and now. I didn't realize the valve springs were different between the intake and exhaust sides. They look exactly the same, but it was thanks to the RockAuto website that I found out they were different. The service manual didn't mention this when it said to install them. It took me searching through it to find where it had all the different lengths for parts, and thankfully, I was able to sort through which was which by using my calipers combined with the free length specified.
I went ahead and fix one head, but still have the other to do.

Next up, I believe it was 619rcr who had mentioned that I should replace the piston rings originally. I'm glad I did, because I learned a lot about this motor because of it.





The majority of the oil control rings had a build up of hard carbon deposits. The images above are of one piston, which was the second to worst one. I believe that was out of cylinder 6. The worst piston, which I didn't take pics of before I cleaned them, had about a 2mm thick layer of this crap all the way around. Every oil return hole, clogged. I was going at it with a nail and hammer to clean those holes out, and scrapping it with what ever fit. It was bad. Not every piston was this bad, but I would say that over half of the oil return holes were clogged for every piston, and every oil control ring had carbon deposit build ups. I now understand why the intake manifold, runners, in/ex ports were so filthy when I was originally pulling it. This motor was burning oil like crazy.
To make matters worse, I tried using both my micrometer and calipers to measure the pistons to see if they were within the service limit. My tools only measure to the third decimal point, while the amount of material you can have worn down is only .0007mm. I tried measuring it, but the results weren't reassuring since I kept getting different results that would say it was within the service limit, and then it didn't. I figured it would be safe to just go ahead and order new pistons, especially since the skirts were so worn.




I started this morning, and so far, I have ever piston installed on the rods, along with this rings. Thankfully I had a heat gun from when me and my girl vinyl wrapped our cars, so that came in handy. I made sure that the rings were installed correctly, as per the instructions. I will be making sure they are oriented correctly upon installing them. Another good thing about these pistons is that even though my micrometer only measures to the third decimal point of an inch, I mic'd these, and they came out to a perfect 3.503in on the first try. So at least my tools work and are zeroed in correctly.
Cylinders have also been honed, and clean up very nicely. There are a couple of very slight scratches in each cylinder, but nothing that catches my nail. I don't even feel them with my nail at all, so I'm not worried. I imagine they'll dissapear when the rings break in. They're currently lathered in 10W-30 oil to prevent it from rusting.
I finished up by installing the new main bearings with some assembly lube on each side, and on the portion of the motor it inserts into, followed by cleaning up and lubing the crank shaft, and installing it along with it's lubed thrust washers, and putting the main bearing caps on. It's not bolted on currently, they're just sitting in their slots all the way down for now. The entire motor has been double wrapped in plastic to make sure no moisture gets inside of it.

I'm not a religious man, but I hope to God I don't mess this up, again. So far, everything has gone smoothly. I hope it continues to go smoothly, so I can enjoy what will feel like a new engine. I've already got other projects in mind that I want to start... any one a fan of Geo Metros?
​​​​​

zeta

iTrader: (1)

Over the years I've found that the Helms has some 'shortcomings'.
About all they give you, on page 6-52 is:

Thefireball

SHE LIVES!








I've cleaned so many parts, and painted them. Top plate I had to redo, and some of the paint leaked through tape that it shouldn't have and messed it up again. I'm just going to live with it, because it still looks good. Just don't look to hard at the messed up areas.
But the IM, valve covers, coolant thing on the side, oil pan, block, rail for the coil packs, timing covers, oil filter housing; all painted and clear coated. Don't know how well the paint will hold up to the heat, but I'm not concerned about it being damaged or flaking.

I let the motor run enough at idle for the rings to break in. She sounds good, now weird noises, no shaking, no CEL. However, when I put it into gear (while on jackstands with no wheels; not moving), the rotors would turn just fine, but would sometimes feel like it bumped into something. Caused the D5 light to flash. It went away after restarting the car. I have yet to road test the car, but for now, she feels good and healthy.
I did get a CEL for a Bank 1 O2 sensor & the AIT sensor, but they went away after having to pull the battery and haven't shown back up. Everything is good now, and revs great.

I'm honestly a little scared to drive the car in fear of something just breaking out of no where. I'm really scared to to rev it high even more so. I did rev it to 5500 RPMs just to test it, and all was fine.

Thefireball

Apparently what I thought was the break in procedure for new rings was actually for if you removed the rods for the crank or removed pistons from the rod. Ended up removing the expensive synthetic oil and putting in some cheap conventional oil for now. Synthetic will be put back in at 500 miles.
I'm having an issue currently, and it's related to the blinking D5 light. It's P0758, or shift solenoid B. I'm having an issue locating it, as there's a few.

I found this image in another thread, but the problem is that there are 2 groups of solenoids. If I go under the car and look at the front of the transmission, I see this:


Is one of these the solenoids I need to remove/check? I can't find the second set of individual solenoids anywhere on the transmission. I've already checked the screens on the other ones, and everything was clean. Perhaps a solenoid is faulty, or maybe something wasn't grounded when putting everything back together? What should I look or check for?

As for driving; motor feels great. It's stuck in limp, so to get it rolling in first gear, I have to get it up to 2k RPMs, but other wise, it drives perfectly fine. I don't even feel any shaking in the steering wheel like I do my TL. She starts right up immediately; no hesitations.

whitetiger5

Front of transmission is A & C, the top will be B and the torque converter clutch. They are hard to get to: on par with conventional open heart surgery.

Make sure the surrounding area on top of the trans is free of dirt/sand, you should be able to get to the bolt holding it with some extensions/swivels; I removed mine with a long handled screw driver.

Thefireball

I found them; right under the thermostat, correct? Which one is B? Black or brown? I'm guessing brown since it's the one of the left, like in the picture. I just want to be sure in case I need to replace it and I get the correct one.

Thefireball

Regardless of which one it is, I have them both removed now. Both were clean, and both click when given power. I'm hoping this isn't an issue regarding the new motor being a J35 and not the original J32 that's causing the ECU to freak out considering the J35 was from an AWD car? Surely it's not, because I'm not the only person with an automatic that has swapped in a J35A3.
Going to put everything back together and hope removing/cleaning them fixed it, but if it didn't, what should I be looking for? The transmission shifts just fine. No strange movements, shifting, shuddering, or slipping. I can't put it in sport shift mode to test which gears it's shifting into, but I definitely felt it shift when driving. Besides, it blinks the D5 light as soon as I put it in gear.

Thefireball

It still appears, and codes have been removed due to battery removal for this. I'm beginning to wonder if the transmission was ruined when the original motor grenaded. I did have to drive it like half a mile when it originally went, and the piston was repeatedly slamming into the head. Draining transmission fluid might tell me something.

Thefireball

Issue has been resolved. The wire for the solenoid came out of the plug housing. Just gave her a test drive, and just moves. Keeping the RPMs low for the first 500 miles though. Going to put her back in the garage until I can afford to get the tags renewed. For now, she rests. This story/thread is almost over. But modifications are not done yet.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

That's all that new found J35 torque!

Thefireball

So am I able to run lower octane considering the MDX is able to? Or does the J32 Cams + ECU cause me to use 91 still? I bought the OEM J35A3 lower compression pistons instead of the J32A2 ones. Gas prices are high, and if I can get away with lower octane, that'd be awesome right now.
​​​​​

zeta

iTrader: (1)

^
Interesting question.
Maybe when you get it 'legal' again, break it in properly for 500-1K miles with a tank of 91-93. Get it all sorted.
Then when the fuel indicator falls below the 'E', fill it up with 87 and document what 'differences' you encounter?
Base your future petrol purchasing decisions on that experience.
Post up your findings, here, of course. I will read it.
You'll be the trail blazer, as in your successful 'VSA resistor' thread.

whitetiger5

Glad that was sorted out. I had the same problem when I did the AV6 swap on my 3rd gear pressure sensor. Can be a scary moment when you've invested all that time replacing a huge component like the engine or trans.

Thefireball

Word of advice to anyone who fixes their car that had the insurance removed; don't tell the county clerk that your engine blew.
They won't register my car without proof of insurance and pics of fixing the motor with reciepts.

619rcr

Wow, haven't been on here in a while and just got caught up on the past few months of posts.

Congrats on wrapping up the project. Hope it lasts this time and good luck with the registration woes.

The coworker who bought my CLS shell had a hard time with getting emissions to ignore the mismatched dash vin vs body vin, but ended up talking with a supervisor and finally got it sorted out.

Also, I saw the snippet of the TL. Hope you enjoy it. To me they can look nice, but it never suited my driving style. So, I sold mine to fund some other buys.

Thefireball

New plate and tag are coming in the mail. They thought I was driving the car still after removing the insurance on it last year. Put a block on my car for registration, and wanted me to pay a fine. After showing them all they work. They removed it, and no fines. So I guess DO tell them your engine exploded, lol.

As for the TL, I like it, but I love the CL more. The CL looks better than the 3G to me, don't know why. Besides that, either my J32a3 has issues, but the motor is sooooo slow. Maybe I'm just used to a modified J from the CL. But I need to get it prepared for driving down from TN to Florida here soon. Sure hope it makes it, because I don't trust driving the CL down there.

Thefireball

Everything was going great. I even bought tickets to go to the slammedenuff event coming up here in TN. The exhaust sounded great, the motor ran terrific, only had issues with the IACV which I was planning on fixing.
131 miles, and now she's dead. It started when I was getting on the highway to go home. CEL & VSA came on. I was put into limp mode, and everything sounded fine. I got off the highway, and came to a stop, and she shut off. She hesitated to start back up, but she did, and then I heard it. A dreaded knocking noise. It got worse as I was driving home, only about a mile away, maybe less. Got into my driveway, and she shut off.
Codes P0301, P0305, P0306, P0300, P1399. The car struggles to idle, and has a very loud slapping sound. I measured the bore, and checked for taper. Everything was good, but I did notice one cylinder had measured to the service limit when it came to taper, but if I moved the bore gauge 1mm up or down, it was within the service limit. I'm guessing .03mm of taper is still too much, even when the service manual says .05mm of taper is the limit.

I'm again reliving the fear of my car breaking down, and now I have to redo everything. The new pistons might be salvageable, but I'll find out once I can measure them. Won't matter though if I have to rebore it. Really bummed out because I was hoping to show my car off at the event, and now I can't.

Thefireball

Slight update:
I haven't figured out what the issue is yet, but it's either one of two things.
1. Piston to wall clearance is too large and needs to be bored.
2. Spun a bearing.

I think it's a bearing, because admittedly, I got a little impatient and wanted to see what the motor could do against a 6th gen mustang GT that revved their exhaust at me. Redlined it through 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, and ended up winning, but at what cost. It was stupid, and now I'm paying the consequences for it.
But I think it's a bearing because I drained the oil, and while it's going to be normal to see some metal in the oil after a rebuild, it looked like there was bearing material in it. I'll have to remove the engine to remove the oil pan, but I'm hoping it's a bearing. You can hear it at idle. But revving the motor to 1500-2000 RPMs to move it into my garage made the sound go away, and I definitely didn't hear it on the highway. I have a spare J35 crank, and bearings are cheap. Might be able to get this fixed up in time for the event. However, would a spun bearing cause misfiring?

I under estimated the importance of breaking in a motor. I got too confident with the motor after slowly working my way up to 4k RPMs, then 5k, then 6k, then redlining it.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

^
Sorry to hear, brah.
Just keep at it until it's fixed.

Thefireball

Don't have anything else to do. It'd be nice if I could at least drop the J pipe and remove the oil pan to inspect the bearings at least, but I can't.
Let's just hope it's a spun bearing. Cheap and quick fix.

619rcr

Dang, i was just about to ask how its going... I occasionally hit redline in 1st because of my light fw, but 2nd, 3rd, 4th. wow.
​​​​
I'll have my stock j32a2 block out and hopefully torn down in the next week or so. pm me if you're int in parts or block.

Thefireball

That mustang wasn't having any of it. I really shouldn't have done it, but hind sight is 20/20. I should mention that the motor didn't die after the race. I had gotten to work after that, did my 8 hours, so the car cooled off. Drove about 3 miles to the entrance of the on ramp to the highway, and it was right as I was revving up to the 3k in 3rd gear that everything shit the bed.

I've got a spare J35A3 with the heads off of it sitting around for spare parts. I was planning on tearing it down to turn it into a J37, but that'll have to wait now. The block isn't useable due to the deep scratch in the cylinder wall so it'll need to be bored, hence the J37 plans.
The oil in the cylinder heads looked clean, no metal that I could see, but I didn't inspect it closely. Draining the oil, it wasn't see-through, but it wasn't black either. Kind of brown, and looooots of clumped up glitter. I tried putting my telescopic magnet into it to see if it would catch any metal, but it came out clean.

I'll have the motor out tonight, and I'll be pulling apart the bottom end to inspect the damage. I'm hoping it'll be as simple as swapping cranks and new bearings, but the fear of a shredded bearing and all the metal being in the oil makes me think the motor will need to be torn down completely and cleaned properly. It'll be $60 vs $200. I'll find out tonight, hopefully. Really don't want to spend money on head bolts & gaskets again.
That's hoping it's just a bearing(s). Don't want to spend money on a rebore and rebuying new pistons again.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

Stumbled upon these 'close-out' head gaskets on RA, if interested?
More Information for FEL-PRO 26260PT (rockauto.com)

Thefireball

I'll keep that in bookmarked in case heads need to come off. Thanks Zeta; helpful as always.

Thefireball

Well, it was a rod bearing. Haven't checked all the other yet, just felt all the rods to see which one was loose.






Last image is from me putting the magnet into the oil pan. That's an entire layer of metal about 2mm thick sticking on the end.
I guess I gotta take the heads off and clean everything. But hey, at least the cylinders are still holding compression. I was fighting it when trying to crank it over to remove the bolts that connect the motor to the torque converter, or whatever those parts are called. I had forgotten to remove the spark plugs and was too lazy to get back up and do it.
Also, other bad news, I spilled pretty much all of the coolant that was in the car all over my garage floor. So that's great. Used up all my bags of sawdust, and there's still more in the motor.

I'll post more pics tomorrow when (if) I find any more damage.

619rcr

Wow that bearing is toast. Skimmed over your last parts list and didn't see rod bearings. Was it an original?

Thefireball

Nope, they were brand new. Both main and rod bearings. They weren't even spun, they were sitting in their original spots unmoved. I don't know if this was actually caused by me redlining, but rather something to do with oil starvation. I know the VTEC is engaged with oil pressure, but would it really cause this to happen with only 130 miles on the new motor? Seems a little odd..
Maybe I should have changed the oil sooner? I don't know, but I'm half tempted to head down to the junkyard today and just pull a new motor.

619rcr

maybe your oil pump is weak or you have clogged galleys from previous debris? there's an oil passage in the main bearings. but i guess not rod bearings. I normally add a quart of break in oil with a rebuild and do the 1st change at 1k. 130miles is nothing.

Thefireball

Well we're in the process of pulling another motor, and then hopefully a B20 motor for my friend's del sol. Only 2 more motor mount bolts and then the engine to trans bolts left. Just going to swap that in for now and re-rebuild the same motor again later.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

Are you going with another J35A3 or back to a J32A2?

Thefireball

J35A3. Got it pulled, hand cranked it to check for compression; it's definitely got good compression. Pulled the spark plugs, drenched in oil. Spark plug gaskets were torn.
I'll be swapping over all my painted parts after cleaning the engine, and swapping over the cams and just throwing it in the CL.
I'll be rebuilding the destroyed J35 into a J37.

zeta

iTrader: (1)

Any known history on the new j35, as to why the MDX was in the salvage yard?