1990 Plymouth laser turbo

[Mikey_Dsm]

This is the Build Thread for 1990 Plymouth laser turbo. Reply below.

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

Finally got the motor pulled out on April 3rd and haven’t had the time to get it on an engine stand quite yet. But hopefully this weekend I can start wrenching on it again and start to see the failure point on this thing after taking it all apart.
It was an all day project but it was definitely a learning experience for me.

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

So I got to work in the car last Friday and was able to start the process of taking it down to the bare block. Something I noticed was that when I tried putting it to tdc the oil pump gear was a spline or two off. Didn’t get a picture but definitely thought it was odd.
I was able to get the head off the block and saw that my head gasket was covered in oil. I took a couple pictures of the inside of the block but this Friday I’m gonna take the rods out and inspect the bearings and hope there isn’t any terrible damage. And get myself some micrometers to start measuring my clearances and see what it needs when I take it to a machine shop soon.
Don’t know if the pistons are oem so any thoughts of the condition of the cylinder walls and pistons would be helpful!

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

So I was able to remove the pistons and found out that a piston ring in clylinder 1 made contact because it want gapped properly and cracked the piston and popped a piece of material off of it. It caused a ton of crankcase pressure which was eventually going to destroy all my seals and eventually the motor.
looking at the bearing material, crankshaft, and cylinder walls everything looked pretty good. I checked my crankshaft play to see if it was walking anytime soon and it was in spec.
I was also able to see that my valve stem seals are bad so that was a big cause of my oil burning issue.
I’m going to measure everything using my micrometers and dial bore gauge to make sure nothing is out of round and in tolerance. Hopwfully all the engine needs is a hone, and polish with the crankshaft. Still tons of measuring is needed ensure nothing is out of spec but everything is looking good so far.

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

I’m really bad to keeping up with a build thread… but, I took the engine and head to the machine shop.
the block got new freeze plugs installed and and a resurface as-well as a hone in the cylinder walls and on the mains because I’m running main studs with a main girdle.

On the head it got new seals, and guides from GSC that are standard size. The valves I’m running are super tech black nitride valves that are standard size aswell on the exhaust and intake sides. I figured that since everything was super high mileage on the car (I’m talking 214,000 miles) I refreshed the head with some new parts.
I am keeping the stock cams and springs but will upgrade them in the future.

For the block I’m running wiseco .02” overbore pistons with a compression ratio of 8.2:1 with eagle rods with a cosmetic MLS head gasket with Arp head studs.
I’m running .019” on the top ring and .022” on the second ring.

My power goals for the car aren’t gonna be super crazy because this will be my daily driver so it will be around 300-400hp. It did come with a 13g turbo but it was blown so I replaced it with a 14b that is rebuilt.
do plan to upgrade more things in the future but for now it’s a mild rebuild/restoration project.

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

I keep forgetting to update the build thread as I work on the car

But so far I’ve had a lot done to it. I’ve added a mhi evo 3 big 16g, 2g maf, 550cc injectors, a catch can, ets street fmic, and most recently just finished re painting the car with a brighter blue. Can’t remember everything off the top of my head but plan to switch over to SD and further upgrade the fuel system of course for next spring for when it’ll get dyno tuned.

 

[Mikey_Dsm]

1,000 mile break in done
Things noted so far are that the valve stem seals are leaking in cylinder 2 and 3
Cylinder compression looks good, Slight variation in 2 and 3 due to oil stem seals leaking. And an oil leak around the timing belt cover.
I plan to sort these leaks out over the winter and add on some 3kgt vr4 brakes to the front.