Engine near death - oil analysis tells the tale
Oil pressure on the engine has been low since purchase. Despite some trips to Oregon and a full season of autocrossing the pressure has not seemed to drop much until very recently.
After an oil change and new filter it's above where it was when the car was purchased last year. One of the steps in any oil change I perform is sending a sample of the oil out for analysis. This is helpful for identifying potentional problems such as poorly performing air filters, excessive engine wear etc.
The analysis just came back on the Miata's 178,000 mile old engine and the news is not very good at all.
DAVID: Does this engine still have oil pressure? Unless you are using some sort of additive, the copper and lead are from bearings, and they show very poor wear. Universal averages show typical wear from this type of engine after a 3,685 mile oil use run. Copper and lead are clearly abnormal. The upper cylinder metals were at above average levels, but not too awfully high considering the maturity of the engine. Silicon was high so we suggest checking the air filtration. Running this engine at full throttle may cause a catastrophic failure.
I'm thinking I need to source a low mileage 1.6L engine for a swap. My co-driver is excited about performing an engine swap (neither of us have done one in decades) plus without any event commitments we can take our sweet time and do it all up just right.
For ref, there are the totals for copper and lead. It's beyond excessive, amazing to me that a connecting rod has not exited the block yet.
Copper Average: 4 Measured: 1287
Lead Average: 1 Measured: 913
I'm also running one of those ricer cone intakes so it looks like it's totally worthless too. That's a nice data point *shrug*. I guess I could find a K&N and slap it on there for a little improvement with another engine.
Once I am able to re-charge the racing budget I'll be purchasing another engine. Likely a good low-milage donor engine since decent 1.6L engines appear to be easier to source (and a lot cheaper) than trying to rebuild even a very good core.
More news as this develops, based on this brrreeeport.
Wow.. what a great racing season it's been! The weather was pretty nasty when I arrived on site at 7:30am. Not very surprising this time of year in Bremerton. Thankfuly it was not cold and the rain was not horizontal.
Must to my surprise there were already quite a few racers there swapping to the rain compounds despite the early hour. The upside of the rain is that it tends to reduce the advantage the big horsepower cars have over the little ones (such as mine). It's all good fun but there is always an air of competition even if it's not very serious for most of the participants.
Two friends of mine came by and ended up racing as well. Marc (basically my co-driver and mentor) was there along with our friend Mary, who brought a nice looking Acura RSX to play with. Both entered in the afernoon session.
It was Mary's first autocross and she looked a bit nervous getting her helmet on, studying her map (the one she drew of the course herself) and wondering what she was getting herself into. But, as you can see after the first run it looked like she was hooked!
Mark on the other hand has been doing this sort of thing for quite some time, and despite running in a low power (about 100 HP) car that is not quite on par with others in the class (such as the Corvette's, WRX's and other monster HP machines) he seems to really enjoy it and puts down some very impressive times (I can be assured he's at least 12 seconds faster than me in the same car on any given day). Here he is taking the 'Team Car' thought the course.
Here is a shot of the afternoon session grid. Small compared to most events but I'm sure the weather had a lot to do with that, and the fact the SCCA Solo 2 nationals were over and a fair number of drivers were done testing at the local autocrosses for the seaon.
Of course some of the regulars show rain or shine and give the cars (and themselves) a really good workout. Here is a club regular exiting the last half of the figure 8 heading for the finish line.
The complete set of photos can be seen here:
BSCC Round 7Final results are not in yet but it looks like I finished 3rd for the day and placed well for the season (I very well could be brining home a trophy). Waiting very impatiently for the final official results to be posted.
