Broken Motor... Need Some Advice (long)

Matt MA MA at legacypartners.com
Mon May 24 13:36:02 CDT 2004


Background: 1992 SE-R; 192k miles; daily commuter/occaisonal track day
use

At Thunderhill, I was approaching turn 14 in 4th gear. I brake,
downshift to 2nd gear, and apparently over-revved the engine. I thought
that I had slowed down enough so that I could skip a gear, but I was
obviously wrong.

After pulling off the valve cover, I find a jigsaw puzzle of broken
rocker arm pieces. Some of the cam lobes are slightly scored. All the
valve springs seem to be undamaged.

Some questions:
1. Could there be some unseen damage, such as valves and/or piston
damage? Is there any way of checking this without pulling the head off?

2. What should I do now? I think these are options:
  a) SR20DET swap
  b) SR20VE swap
  c) JDM 10:1 compression SR20DE swap
  d) buy a used head (complete w/ cams, rockers, valves, etc.) and swap
it in
  e) keep the head, replace the cams and rocker arms, and hope the
valves are ok

a) and b) are not real options, as an SR20VE is too expensive, and I
don't want to deal with all the extra work and money involved with doing
a turbo.

c) is only an option if d) and e) are not feasible.

d) seems to be the most affordable and possibly the least amount of
labor.

e) might be feasible, but it seems that new cams and rocker arms could
costs more than a used head, plus be more labor, plus there is the issue
of whether or not the valves are ok.

I guess I also need to decide what I want this car to do, and I'm not
really sure yet. I was hoping that you guys could be my sounding board
to help me think this through. I'm not interested in building a monster
SE-R. I like the idea of the SE-R as a daily driver that is also fun to
drive at the track. But now I am starting to think that my SE-R may be
too old to be a reliable daily driver anymore. I'ved toyed around with
the idea of buying another car. Not sure yet whether that car would
replace the SE-R or just be added to the stable.

Any thoughts?

matt ma . 92 SE-R (R I P?)


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