Help, need some advice on next step

[tfaulk21]

alright to start you guys off. i purchased or what seemed to be a steal, a 96 eclipse gst. 156,000 on motor only thing that was wrong up front was that the water pump needed changing and the radio wasnt wired right.

went to look at the car turns out the shift cables were not hooked up right so the car wouldnt go into 5th or reverse. haha tricked the guy into thinking it had a bad transmission and lowered the price from 1800 to 1350. so far so good.

get it to the shop and turns out the headgasket was leaking oil. so we decided to pull the motor and replace all seals/gaskets. 750 for the work and 244 for the parts also had to have some motor mounts as well.

read from here down if you dont want to get the whole story

than when pulling the valve cover we noticed the cams were bad. bought some stock cams. went to put them in and the valves wont close. now im stuck should i buy rockers and lifters and continue piecing together this head or should just buy a new head

 

[greekgodchaos]

Buying a new head pre-assembled will be the fastest option and easiest, but will probably cost more than piecing it together yourself, getting machine work done on it, etc.

If its just rockers and lifters, then just get 3mm lifters and a new/used set of rockers.

 

[WES_393]

Pull the cams out and see if the valves close. If so, it's likely you just need to collapse the lifters. Or you could trash those noisy stock lifters for a set of 3g/revised lifters. Also check the bottom of the lifter hole for a washer since some aftermarket cams require the lifters to be raised this way.

If the valves don't close with the cams out, it's possible the valves are bent or not sitting flush in their seats. A good at-home test is to pour water or oil into the intake/exhaust ports and watch for any leaks into the cylinder dome.

 

[Mitsubishigst1999]

As you know these cars can be quite a pain so please make sure its worth your time and money or mabye pass on this one and look at another one in better shape good luck.

 

[bryanwheat]

It is possible that the cams that were in there were re-grinds and have shims under the lifters. I would pull the lifters and check to see if there is anything under them with a magnet. If not than you just need to bleed the lifters down.

As you know these cars can be quite a pain

Only to those without the know how and patience to work on them.

 

[mitsurage]

I agree, stop messing around with possibly broken parts and get a stock rebuilt head. They can be found for as little as $250, not worth the headache for so little since you are already around $1k into it after purchase.

 

[2GSXR]

Yeah, it's really a matter of time or money. If you're patient enough to spend the time it takes to fix possibly multiple individual parts, or spend a little more $ and just replace the head with a rebuilt one. However the last post also made a good point. You could end up spending more rebuilding the bad head if you end up needing extensive machine/shop work which can get expensive real quick.

 

[Deadpool]

Have you had the head checked for warp at all yet ? With the head gasket leak and these other random issues with it you might be just as well off ditching a problem head and getting a new one.

 

[LOLVTEC]

With the money you've spent you could have had a built head.

 

[josh408]

Are you doing the work yourself or having a shop do it?

 

[snowborder714]

Please try again with a more descriptive thread title. A generic thread title like this does not help me when browsing new threads to see if I can offer help or when searching old threads for info to help myself or others.