Problems with new short block

[christiane]

I have a new 6 bolt short block in my car. My 6 bolt has less than 200 miles on it and it has smoked since the first time I fired it up. The smoke is minimal to completely absent at idle. The smoke appears to be far worse after a pull (I am only running 4 lbs of boost as part of the engine break in procedure). In what may be a related issue if I drive the car for more than ten minutes it starts to miss terribly to the point that it will barely pull. When it does this I can turn the car off coast and then restart the car and it will be OK for a little while then it goes back to the same thing. The longer the car is off the longer the time between these occurrences.
The turbo does have some play in it. It does not feel as though there is any in and out play, but if the motor is not running there is a fair amount of up and down/ side to side movement.
Here is a summary of what I have done thus far:
First thing I did was perform a compression test below are the results of this rest.
cylinder compression
1 165
2 170
3 168
4 167
*These readings are the most recent after the rings have seated more.
I also performed a leak down test but the new gauge I purchased (Ebay POS) broke; however I was able to listen for air that was escaping the combustion chamber. I did hear some air coming out of the dip stick. Putting my finger over the dipstick diverted the air out of the valve cover to the catch can would be.
Does anyone have any insight they could offer as to the cause of this.

Thanks for the space,

 

[2muchboost4you]

any blow-by?

 

[crazy_quick]

your shortblock is new but is your head (valve stem seals) new?

 

[christiane]

The head is a rebuilt 1g head that was suppose to have new valve seals installed. However, I have since lost faith in the machine shop that reassembled the head (not SBR). As a result of some issues we had with our race motor for the dirt car.
I have checked for oil getting in the exhaust manifold by pulling my external WG off and examining the runner for oil and there was just carbon. Im hoping to pull the lower intercooler pipe off and check for oil in it tomorrow.

To my knowledge I am not getting any oil blow by; however, the valve cover is pressurized with air escaping out the valve cover breather port.

 

[christiane]

I just pulled the lower intercooler pipe off and there was no signs of oil in the lower intercooler piping.

 

[christiane]

Just as an update I just did a wet compression test. All of the numbers are within +20. From what I have read this should pretty well eliminate the rings as being the source of the oil entering the combustion chamber. I am going to try to find a local shop to run a leak down test on the car sometime this week. I will post the results back here so that anyone else having similar problems may have a procedure to follow. The steps I am following were outlined in this topic: http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174682

 

[01QuadDak]

Are you running a PCV Valve?
Try blocking off the port on the intake manifold, my PCV valve leaked like a son-of-a-gun, I blocked the port, and the engine ran like a champ.

 

[christiane]

I just tried plugging the PCV valve port on the intake manifold and this did not change the way the car ran at all. In addition I did not see any oil coming out of the PCV valve it's self.

 

[01QuadDak]

I guess the next step would be to pull off the exhaust manifold, and look at the valves for wetness.

On the crapping out after running for a bit, I might lean towards an ignition problem, possibly your coil pack is bad, when it gets heat soaked, it won't fire. When it cools down, it will run again.
Whats the condition of the wires?
I had a set of magnecores that looked new, but had a few pinholes in them, and were blasting out the sides, causing me to run like crap.

 

[KBasham03]

As far as the misfiring, its a very common problem with the 1g in a 2g. Its a random misfire code. I would suggest getting dsmlink. Or at least a hall effect cas (black lid)

 

[christiane]

I already have DSMlink. The miss FEELS like its running on two cylinders. I plan to pull the exhaust manifold and look at the turbo closely this weekend. If I cant find anything conclusive Im taking it to have a shop perform a leakdown test on it Monday. I will post results as soon as I have additional information.

Thanks for the space,

 

[BISHILVR]

Piston rings dont seal 100% so its okay to have a little air escaping from the dipstick/valve cover. With your compression numbers I would say that you are golden there. I think you might have a random misfire problem, do you have random misfire code disabled in dsmlink? Can you give us a data log of your car to look at when the problem occurs?

 

[christiane]

Yes, the random misfire is disabled as well as all of the other options for the 1gina2g stuff (invert cas signal). When I say the car misses it starts missing, throws a CEL and it will not stop missing until I turn the car off. Im not sure if this consistent with random misfire or not. If I turn the car off and let it coast, then restart it it will start up and run fine.

 

[BISHILVR]

Yeah, thats consistant with random misfire. Some guys just turn the key off and then back on while driving.

 

[christiane]

Just got the car back from having the leak down test performed. Losses on every cylinder were less than 1%. So with that being said that pretty well isolates the problem back to the turbo. Hello SBR GT3076R. Thanks for everyone's help with this.

 

[BISHILVR]

Yeah, like I said the compression results pretty much told that story.