Well, that joy lasted for about a 1000 kilometres. Luckily, the only problem with the car seems to be the engine. Might sound overly optimistic but bear in mind I've once taken the car a part and put back together, while modding just about everything. In my language there's an expression that loosely translates to "built again, up from the atomic level ".
First the good things. Car seems to handle well , suspension is "firm but not hard". The high profile tyres' compliance helps here I think. Noise level is surprisingly OK. No interior/dashboard squeaks, to which I've come accustomed owning a few E30s. Body reinforcements must be doing their job. Steering IS on the heavy side but even my wife manages to turn the wheel so no need for PS.
The engine feels/felt very, very strong even from low revs if I do say so myself. Well, take that in the context of an NA 8 valve
. I could drive it daily with an even racier cam than the current item. Pulls a lot better than say an M42-engined E30. Did not have the chance to dyno it.
So.. before I had a change to properly test it, deal out severe twisty road punishment, the engine developed an overheating problem at WOT. Bigger radiator and a new waterpump helped but didn't solve the problem. Plus it had a mysterious intermittent knocking sound a high revs at WOT. Finally decided to have a look through an endoscope:
That's a view of piston top land/cylinder head wall. All pistons have the egde bent at inlet valve cut out area. Difficult to explain.. I'm thinking that three things contributed to piston-head contact: 1) very tight piston-head clearance, 2) piston rocking (0,03 milllimeters larger than stock piston to cylinder clearance), 3) the very thin area aroud the valve cut out must've been hotter and hence more thermal expansion, tightening the gap further. -is thermal expansion a correct term
?
. Then, I've had a couple of set backs with the pistons and the block..
