Well it was a hell of a night. I finished putting the car together and it runs pretty decent. But I either have a bad seal on my passenger side axle or the axle isn’t all the way in. So the whole engine bay is covered in oil… ugh…
Which wouldn’t be that bad, but as I was backing the car into the garage all of a sudden gears stopped engaging, it still feels like it shifts fine, but when you let the clutch out the car doesn’t even try to go anywhere, it just stalls. If you try to push the car it won’t move unless you push in the clutch.
So a this point I’m really confused as to whats going on with the transmission. And I’m REALLY hoping its something simple.
If anyone has any ideas please feel free to school me! haha
Well I bolted all the covers back on the engine today, just to make it water tight again, and installed the stock suspension from my 04 in the car so I could roll it out of the garage.
After I found 3 aluminum metal chips blocking a lifter oil galley I realized I was going to have to tear the whole engine down again and clean it out, just to make sure there weren’t any other chips hiding. All signs point to lifter knock on the exhaust tower, it looks like I caught it before it did any damage to the lifters or tower, but I haven’t pulled the head off to find out if a piston touched a valve yet.
The car is probably going to sit until I graduate in March, I just won’t have time to do much with it until then. I might pull the engine and start tearing it down at some point this winter, but I’m not sure yet. Right now I’m just worried about getting my daily to a point where I don’t mind driving it every day.
It will live again, I just need a break from it, for several reasons, haha
Very nice thread with great attention to detail. Im not really a fan of caviliers but I can respect all the work youve put into it. Dont give up on just keep going and keep updating this thread.
I finally finished school, so on to the build! Today we pushed my car back into the garage, and got it up on the lift. After a brief inspection it seems that I have a fuel line that rusted through… yay… time to switch to plastic lines and throw the plastic ECO fuel tank in I guess.
But I got all the fluids drained, the front suspension, axles and subframe out of the car, and the engine is mostly unhooked. Tomorrow morning I’ll be dropping the engine and transmission if all goes well.
All the gaskets I need showed up today, I’ve got a Dynomax Super Turbo muffler, a phenolic spacer for my aluminum HO intake manifold, ARP head studs, flywheel and pressure plate bolts, and a SPEC Stage 2 clutch and aluminum flywheel on the way. I think I’ve found the right Geo Storm tranny to get myself a 4.11 FDR (3.94:1 stock) gear set down towards Corning as well.
