Lewis7789 2002 Protege5 build thread (tons of pics)

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Well I might write "-ish" after the SLOW on the plate with a marker then...
 
Heh-heh, nah. I'm going to keep the SLOW P5 plate. I mean, when you think about it, it will only have about 170whp. That's still not "fast" in my book. Whenever I get cocky I get a ride in my friends MSM, MS3 or MS6 and it puts everything back into perspective. ;)

I believe it will be fast for a P5 though right? I also think that 170 is like double the power you have now.
 
Yeah. I'm at 115whp now... So I think I'll feel an extra 50whp and 60lbs of torque and my car is 2830lbs with a half a tank of fuel and me (175lbs) in it. Not too bad.
 
Well, since I'm always helping friends work on cars in the garage today was the first weekend I finally got to do some work on my own car in the garage, heh-heh.

I finally popped the front VC off. I removed the wiring harness, or what's left of it since it was hacked up pretty badly, from the motor and labelled everything on the harness and where it came from on the motor. I took lots of pics for future reference and picked up a Haynes manual for the Probe/MX-6/626 today too.

When i pulled the spark plugs, they were pretty bad. And there was rusty water in one of the spark plug cylinders. I am pretty worried.I popped the valve cover off and everything looks okay to my untrained eye. There is a little rust on the cam lobe but I could pretty much wipe it off with a towel. It looks like the valve cover gasket wasn't sealed around the spark plus cylinders. I'm trying not to freak out too much but I hope one of you cats can give me advice on the motor. I ran out of time to pop the intake manifold off and pop the other valve cover off and inspect that head but hopefully tomorrow after work. Then turn it over and pop the oil pan and pray for the best...

Front head;
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Nasty spark plugs...
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Slight rust on the cams;
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Now I'm an optimist. I've read some other cats have seen slight rust on their cams too and it's no big deal. I'm going to run the motor for 50 miles, then change the oil and filter, then 150 and another oil change and filter to make sure that rust isn't floating around in the motor. But the rusty, oily watery looking stuff has me worried. I know these are old motors and could have sat around in a warehouse for a few years so I'm just trying to be cool about it. But if it's a blown motor or something, I'm going to be bummed and will have to ship it back to the company I bought it from. Thankfully, it's not that big of a deal since I work in shipping and have a cool boss.
 
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It'll wake the car up for sure. I rode in a friend's Mercury Tracer wagon that had a KLDE swap in it. That car was silly. It's a little lighter than a P5, but what a difference.

Just think... you guys noticed a difference after tightening up the downpipe on the MSM for me. That may have only been a few hp lost. Just think of this one...
 
Dang hopefully everything turns out good for the engine!! Hopefully it runs! If it doesn't and you swap it in, are you going to have to take it out and ship it back?
 
If the stuff is it too bad of a shape but the motor runs, I'd consider sending the rusty or otherwise compromised bits to a machine shop to get them cleaned up. Think about the cars that sit in peoples yards for years at a time, and usually start up. I'm not sure how big of an issue the rust is. The water in the spark plug well I don't think is a big deal, it could have gotten wet at some point, but it doesn't look like it got into the threads. Hopefully you don't discover anything more serious than this stuff.
 
My B18C was bought on eBay and was just as clean as Evan's motor. It ran amazingly. Most sellers of engines like that don't wanna screw you over too badly or its their ass.
 
Well the company I bought the motor from has a 30 day warranty but has to be installed by an ASE certified tech and with 30 days of receiving the motor. So the worst case scenario the motor is trash then I'll just have to swap the FS-DE back in and get the KL-ZE repaired. But honestly, I'm not too worried about it. I've seen a lot of other KL-ZE's with light surface rust just like mine on ProbeTalk and all those cats said it's fine, no big deal. I also have to bare in mind this motor could be as old as 1993. Like I said, I'm an optimist. :)

And Phen, that's kinda the reason why I bought the motor from eBay too, because they wouldn't want to ship out bad motors and receive negative feedback whereas if I bought one direct they might sell me a more beat up motor.

I'm going to remove the intake manifold, the oil pan and the back valve cover tonight after work and put up more pics. I'm not expecting anything bad since the first head looks really clean. Just those nasty spark plugs scared me.

ps- Phen with the post count of 7,777
 
I'm going to remove the intake manifold, the oil pan and the back valve cover tonight after work and put up more pics. I'm not expecting anything bad since the first head looks really clean. Just those nasty spark plugs scared me.

It's heaps cleaner than my FS with 85k miles, but I think my dad squeezed all of the life out of the oil changes that he could when he had the car, and then some.. I've found it a hard lesson to learn in life that not everyone believes in preventive maintenance...
 
Well, I pulled the intake manifold and back valve cover off (pics of top of cover and head) and the oil pan. Everything looks pretty good, suprisingly very clean. The spark plugs on the back side were pretty nasty too but obviously I'm not going to be re-using them. heh-heh

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For the record, I didn't even clean anything. I just popped the VC and oil pan and took pics. Other than the spark plugs being so nasty I think it was taken care of and has pretty low miles.

Tomorrow I'll seal up the oil pan (my RTV is missing...) and prep the valve covers and intake mani for paint. Any suggestions for colour? I was thinking just gunmetal. I'm not a flashy kind of cat.
 
I'd say something subtle but clean. I have something in mind like that for mine. Black gloss valve covers, polished letters, and probably a silver IM.
 
I vote crinkle black valve covers with the raised lettering polished aluminum. Such a nice offset for a silver car.
 
Tomorrow I'll seal up the oil pan (my RTV is missing...) and prep the valve covers and intake mani for paint. Any suggestions for colour? I was thinking just gunmetal. I'm not a flashy kind of cat.

missing?! lol, the tube that i used for my valve cover was mine, it went with all of the other stuff that i brought back...sorry!
i can bring it back if you need it! ...but it won't be until the 4th of Dec.
 
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