Rep Power: 0

Upcoming B16a2 rebuild and upgrade plans

Hi everyone! My name is Aris and I'm from Greece.
I’m a proud EK4 hatch owner since 2007 and I have some questions about an upcoming engine rebuild that I’m planing to do in the near future. Before I begin I want to apologize for the long text but I’m in a serious dilemma and also I’m really worried about this process.

So, first things first. I’m the second owner of this car which I bought with 68.000km on its crank back in the day. Now it has 215.570! Maybe you will find this number extremely low comparing the 23 years that this car being in the streets, but it’s worth mentioning that it was my weekend car for a long time. I promoted to an almost everyday car the last 6 years. Back then and during all these years I’ve made some light mods such as:

- Bilstein B6 suspension
- HR springs
- Spoon torque damper- oem airbox with a k&n drop in filter- accel spark plug wires- 4-2-1 Custom headers (the 2 secondary pipes between the OEM 4 pipes and the catalytic converter, are resized to 48mm)
- 200 cpsi high flow cat
- 54mm handmade cat back exhaust
- CRV calipers and 282mm rotors
- Exedy Stage 1 clutch

The initial plan was to keep it light modded and after a while I was planning to change the ECU into an AEM or similar aftermarket kind of stuff (my oem ECU is an ODB2b so there is no room for programming here) but my budget was tight for a lot of years so I stayed with the set up that already mentioned. During quarantine I decided to invest some money and I bought some stuff in order to make a proper upgrade before I finally buy this ECU and put some magic into the mix. So I already have an OBD2b to OBD1 harness, a Skunk2 Pro series IM, and a set of Skunk2 double springs with retainers.

These are the good news but I also have some bad news as well! During the last 3 years I’ve noticed some unusual oil consumption. At the beginning I thought It was completely ok because there was a period of time that I used to travel a lot and sometimes I pushed the car really hard till redline (more than usual to be honest, because I ‘ve always redlined the motor throughout the years – never with cold engine though). To make long story short, from 300-400ml per 5000km that the motor used to burn at the begining, nowadays it reached the ridiculous number of 4500ml per 5000km. It’s obvious that I’ve fried my piston rings and definitely my valve seals. Also my engineer mentioned that there is a case of cylinder distortion due to the following odd behavior: when I drive the car to a low-mid rpm range (changing gears up to 3500rpm) the engine doesn’t burn oil at all. But if I push the engine hard to redline sometimes a cloud of white smoke comes out of the exhaust and also oil consumption increases dramatically. So if this scenario is true I have to increase the diameter of the cylinders as well...

So, all signs are leading to engine rebuild. Buying a new car is not an option because I love this chassis and I don’t want to change it and also I don’t have the extra cash for K swap. And even if I had the money, nowadays even K20’s need rebuild which means extra cost. And now is where the big dilemma kicks in: since I'm going to open the engine anyway, would it be the time for an upgrade or is a waste of money?

I’m thinking something like mild cams e.g.: Skunk2 tuner series stage 1, adjustable cam gears, high comp valves, (valve guides if needed), thinner head gasket with some head work, new piston rings of course and finally a dyno tuning. If I follow this scenario I’m expecting something like 170-175whp (maybe less, it depends… I want also your opinion about that).

So, kindly tell me your honest opinion on that dilemma. Is it worth the extra money considering that an engine rebuild is required once in car’s life or is this an overkill? Some people supports that if a rebuild is done properly and everything that needs replace is replaced, the engine gains some serious life expectancy because its components have already taken any tolerances they had to take through the years.

Thanks in advance for your time
Looking forward to your reply!

 
Rep Power: 367

if you end up needing a clutch, a stock one will do fine.
Only turboed cars would need a stage 1 clutch. (I have a stage1 clutch on my 7th gen car... Did not need to spend on it after all, even with my amateur autox racing)

 
Rep Power: 0

Hi sdaidoji!
There is definitely a misunderstanding here. I will never said that I'm gonna need a stage 1 clutch. If you read again my post, in my introduction I wrote about the upgrade that I've already done. Part of this upgrade is an Exedy stage 1 clutch. So, I've installed this clutch already! BTW Comparing the OEM clutch the feeling and the "bite" when your shifting gears is superb! Is a must have for someone who wants minimum power loss between gears. Even with an N/A build!

 
Rep Power: 367

again, if you ever need a new clutch...

 
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ok! Any other comment on the main question of the topic?
"Since I'm going to open the engine anyway, would it be the time for an upgrade or is a waste of money?"