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ok, so as a couple of you know, after giving the car a good fang at AHG the other week, my car started running on 5 cylinders..

Turned out i had a valve sticking open.. i thought it would be the usual lacquer build up on the stems.. but after the garage took the head off, they found 2 x 20 cent sized peices of metal which were slightly larger than the intake shafts to the valves.. but one of them had been forced into the shaft far enough to stop a valve in cylinder 1 from closing...

Both the garage i took it to, and the place they're getting to recon the head believe the metal is peices of a piston!! ... but not from a piston in my car!!?!

so who know's how the hell it got in there (and how long it's been in there) ...

weird sh!t..

good news is once it's recon'd it should be running much better than before this went wrong.

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i'll try and get pics next time i drop in at the garage.. They're curved bits or metal (like they came off a pipe) but one side is oil stained, which is why they think it's part of a piston..

my pistons are all in top condition... and even if it did come off them (which it didn't) .. there's no way it could get into the other side of the intake valves... :P

the edges of the pieces of metal are smooth, so i figure they didn't break off recently.. they've been there a while...

they could be from my piston... i have no idea what happen to my number 5 piston when my last 25 let go... i was left with jigsaw puzzle in my sump.

not part of the head/plenum or anything is it? find it hard for a bit of metal to lodge itself behind a valve, and not to have made any noises or indication there was shit flying around in there?

got the car back today (finally) ... $4500 later my car is driving great, but my wallet is completely empty.. someone wanna lend me $50 so i can put some petrol in it?

if i had knew it'd cost that much i'd have looked into buying an rb25...

metal was definitely not from my car, and best bet of the garage is still that it once came off a piston... must have been in there since before i bought the car... weird.

4500 was 24 new valves and valve seats, and a full recondition of the head. a few new hoses and bits n pieces while it as off.. new inlet and head gaskets.. new oil and a few other things i can't think of right now...

but yeah.. most of the $$ was labour..

going into the repairs i didn't know it was going to be this expensive (and neither did they) .. so it's not all the garage's fault..

i'm not going to name them because i don't want to seem to be spreading bad press. It was just a normal garage (not a specialist in jap imports or high performance cars)

Obviously in hindsight i would love to go back and just get an rb25 .. but what's done is done.

mmm that is odd, cant think of anything else that would have come loose unless yeah the inside of your inlet mani is flaking away but ive never heard of that happening

unless 25 heads have removeable valve seats and one of them came loose before being smashed about for a bit



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