Good idea, 3 months from now ill probably get around to that, then another month after that ill get the dyno! ahah kidding... school is eating up a lot of my time right now. I feel bad because i havent even posted a picture in the past 2 months! Ahaha oh well.
I am 90% certain i figured out the rattling: The exhaust, and different points of it all colaborating to annoy me. The spring-bolts that bolt the muffler to the cats is one i can re-create. Also, i used these weird fastners that borla sells with their header-bolts, which is suppsoed to keep the bolts from loosing up. I noticed today i can make these rattle like crazy. This is what i figured the issue to be all along. Although...
At the moment, i wont be able to find out if i fixed the rattling! I've got everything torn-down to the lower intake removed. I am about one step from removing the heads.
Why?!!? you might be wondering?!
Well, ive been inconsistantly going through quite a bit of oil, and i have no explaination for it! A quart every 200-700 miles! not good!! I can go through two full tanks of gas without loosing a drop of oil, then boom 100 miles later im a quart low.
- Runs as good as ever
- All 6 plugs are in good shape, good tan color. They are a little glazed over, most likely from me running it hard. But no oil or anything else that would signal a problem.
- No oil in the coolent
- No oil on the ground
- No blue smoke on start up, or under heavy load. I even have my mirror pointed at the tail pipe so i can glance at it durning these times.
Then add in the recent pinging @ high RPM, but this can also be explained by the fact ive been running it high (plugs wearing out quick). The symptoms sounded much like problems others have had with the lower intake. I convinced myself enough to go head and dig that far into the motor.
The only thing i havent done is check the compression.
If it were the valve seals/guides or the rings that were causing a leak, would it not be obvious on the plugs? Also, if it were the valve seals i'd have excessive blue smoke on start up. If it were the rings, i would have excessive blue smoke under heavy accelleration.
That can be because my Cats are filtering out the blue smoke (?), which is what i read somewhere, my cats will wear out real soon if this is the case.
I just read that high-compression motors (even brand new) can produce a lot of blow-by, add in the fact the motor is in a heavy truck and that im revving the hell out of it equals even more blow-by. Maybe that pvc valve i put on there is a peice of trash... i didnt even realize to check this.
I went ahead and took the lower intake off. What i found is that my lower intake didnt appear to be leaking. All the bolts/nuts were still snug when i removed them, and there was no oil that appeared to have crossed the gasket. What i did notice, is that starting from the upper intake, all the way down into the heads is a film of brownish deposits. BLOW-BY?
I guess i could test this by removing the pvc valve all togeather... and see how much oil comes out. Otherwise im going to check the compression before digging further. I just had to convince myself it was not the lower intake.
Anyone got any thoughts on this situation? My rings toast?
Would a v8 swap been easier? Shee-ya.... but whats the fun in that!
EDIT(again): Compression 200-220lbs on all six cylinders. No problem there IMO. Heads not comming off, i just cleaned up the intake runners real good, got that flim off and looked real hard at the PVC valve. I went to the store and compared a few, found mine wasnt closing all the way. Interestingly enough, a found a couple brand new ones at the store also doing this. I almost got it all back togeather, im trying to find the source of the rattling now, We'll see!
haha that pvc thing got me, hehe opps, atleast i got to clean the intake/runners all out. Havent lost a drop of oil since I replaced it. That stupid rattling is still there, haha. I need some new tires and a good alignhment right now though. Removing the fastners did help a little, im convinced its exhaust related, its a few things rattling: in harmonics. So ill keep tinkering around and see what i find.