17z's installed and plumed:


I had to cut and re-flare every brake hard line on the car, which was a real treat due to the fittings corroding onto the line.

Also got a vacuum bleeder which i was sooooo stoked about because i hate bleeding brakes but my little compressor just does not  have the oomph to keep it happy so gonna have to switch to the ol' fashion method.

ECU should be here today.

ecu in, weird implausible map/barometric codes gone, but still have misfires.

Lowered my stupidity level slightly and actually looked at boost gauge. only holding -10 at idle, obvious leak somewhere but cant seem to find it.

starting to lean towards smashed valves again. Going to try to build a smoke tester tomorrow. and do leak down again maybe i just did the test incorrectly.

pulled off fuel rail, found some fuel that seemed to be seeping out of the rail around where its brazed. Definitely not safe, but I doubt it was causing miss fires.

Pulled off intake manifold, found some potential vacuum leaks, though they held fine @ 22psi pressure test, ill be welding them shut this time to eliminate variable.

pulled off valve cover.

with crank at top dead center, cam notches line up with cap arrows. This is the cam chain timing I have. I checked it 1000000 times but if anyone could please verify it.



did leak down with valve cover off:
3: 6%                                                                   6:50% air coming out of intake valves
2: 6%                                                                   4:10% noticable out of intake
1: 20% air comming out of intake valves               3:10%

as the queen of hearts would say, off with their heads.
Half tempted to pull the block to and go 3.0L.

Can anyone confirm if you can put the heads back on the block with the block in the car with ARP head studs?

poor poor headless 2.7

Welp machine shop fessed up to botching the valve job. They will refund me the cost of the rebuild and a little extra for my time.

Don't know what to do now. On the one hand they seem to be willing to stand by their work and do right by customer. On the other hand I dont really want to do it all over again so I might find a shop that has build 5v heads before/a lot.

Pulled some 2.8 heads at the junkyard today.

The brown/white wire? (Or maybe brown/black?  I can't remember).  It's way up under the dash, right at the base of the A-pillar. It's in a tight loom and getting enough slack to work with is tough. There are actually two colored the same in the same vicinity, the one that's relatively easy to get to isn't the one you want.