1991 Spirit R/T - flunked smog

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So . . . . my commuter car is a four door Spirit R/T, 2.2L 16 valve turbo. A year ago I had to pull the head as it was losing coolant; bad head gasket. Cometic went in, didn't think more of it. Came up for smog, the magic machine said "gross polluter." Then it hit me. The coolant killed the cat.

Ordered up a cat and an O2 sensor. Cat went in easy enough but the O2 sensor is a PITA.

A cheater bar on a 7/8 box wrench, angled toward the nut of the O2, rounded the corners off the O2 sensor's flats. OK, pull the swing valve. Two of the three studs were heat welded to their nuts so the studs, galled, squeaked their way out of the turbo housing while the third, a longer one twisted off at the nut, leaving me two inches to work with.

Drilled out the remains of the O2 sensor. Don't bother buying one of those $6 "O2 Sensor Chaser" dealios; just spring for the real thing - a 18/1.5 tap.

Letting the PB Blaster work for a couple days on the stud/turbo housing before I weld an 18mm nut onto what's left of the stud to see if I can break it off again.

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There's the broken stud.

[Brakelate]

Damn.

God Bless Arizona, and especially my area's awesome ADOT "Rural District" exemption policies.

I swear I could go 200 "worthless", non road-worthy vehicles (by CA standards), bring them out here, register them and drive them each another 20 years without issue.

What a joke.

[SonicVenum]

I hate it when a simple task turns complex! At least you've go the resources and time to get it sorted. Welding is a useful skill to have when you like working on your own stuff. One day, I'll possess it.

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Pics -


New studs installed. Ready for swingvalve installation.

Broken swingvalve stud with 19 mm lugnut welded on - after this and 4 or 5 days of 3 or 4X/day PB Blaster application - it came out, pretty easy too. Time and PB Blaster, and then a good bite on the stud did the trick.

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Pics -

New springs (rears), swing valve with O2 sensor installed, and cleaned up/ported swing valve.

A knowledgeable friend recommended just barely tightening the O2 sensor, not even so tight as to crush the crush washer. That's what I did. And of course, nickel based anti-seize on all the nuts/bolts/studs.

Now to see if she passes smog . . . .

[Brakelate]

Very good! All is well, that end's well.

But, why did you stuff newspaper in the head pipe, yet appear to have left the impeller side of the turbo exposed? Aren't all the "fragile" bits on the turbo side?

Were you afraid a mouse or other critter might have crawled up in there and made a nest during the wait, or that you might drop a nut down the open hole or something?

Serious. In the AV, I just checked the K&N filter on the V-10 Ford E350 Chassis Class C RV, and discovered that Mice had stuffed the airbox FULL of fun, colored cereal bits!!!

Luckily, it was a wire-mesh K&N element, and not the stock paper element filter in there. They likely would have chewed through that in the process of "tunneling" even deeper into the top end of the motor, before I unknowingly came out one day and fired it up - sucking the whole mess down into the cylinders. Cereal, Mice, straw matting, filter material and all!

Instead I just got to dump a big bowl full of the stock conical Ford Air Filter Lid out for the Dog's to gobble it all up. *Crazy thing is, the nearest "dry storage" location that they could have accessed this cereal was over 120' away, inside the closed up garage on the other side of the house. Beyond Two Dogs, Two Cats and everyone else in the home. Unless it came from the back of a neighbor's home, from inside their kitchen or something. Who knows!

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That 3" header pipe was directly under where I was working and I stuffed the wad of newspaper in there after I twice dropped a 1/4 inch wrench. I was using it to twist the tap to chase the threads that the studs screw into. Those threaded holes in the turbo body were galled a bit by the old studs as they came out.

As for the exducer blades, they were above where I was working and the exhaust blows out through those blades, not in, further those blades (being on the hot side) are made of Inconel, some of the toughest stuff known to man. The other side, the aluminum blades of the inducer - those are the fragile ones.

Buying new old stock has its downside. Although those Monroe Formula GP shocks were super cheap on RockAuto a year ago when I got the springs, the car went less than half a mile before the shock on the left side started rattling and then within another couple of miles both of the were making a heck of a racket. Upon pulling the wheels, I saw that the two lower polyurethane bushings (that were part of what people used to pay premium for) were flat gone and upon removal of the two shocks, I saw that the uppers were all cracked to heck, and about to disintegrate, too. So, off to the auto parts store to buy bushings, and of course the only ones they had were too large on the OD so I turned them down on the bench grinder by allowing them to spin on a piece of 1/2" copper pipe as I held the bushing up to the wheel at a bias/angle until I had the OD I needed. Then pressed them in with the vice and then pressed the inner steel bushings into the IDs of the new rubber bushings.

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Two lower bushings were old and brittle, so they blew out