I am writing a little 2.3L engine status update due to
the request of a couple people who are interested in
how it is going.

Well, so far, my first engine build is a moderate
success.  It has gotten me up to canada, which still
pleasantly surprises me.  Power is good, only dropping
to third gear when cresting pass around Mt. Shasta.
This is with a van literally loaded head to toe from
the drivers seat back.  Ask pensioner, he saw it (nice
guy, btw... good tomato farmer, too).  I still need to
totally clean up the wiring as i had a small grounding
problem causing some at-speed shuddering.  I also
developed an oil leak at (i'm pretty sure) the main
seal on the pulley end.  I also have yet to 100% tune
up the van for optimal running.

Running/coolant temperatures seem normal (usually
around .07-ish on the digitool), but i think oil
temperatures might be on the high side (i don't have a
gage yet to verify this).  Oil pressure never dropped
below about 3psi at idle (that was after steep
inclines like shasta)... and i was using a straight
30W dino for now.

I also discovered that i need to run 87 octane gas to
prevent the little bit of pinging i was getting at
WOT.  If i were to do this again, i would have had the
heads opened up to maintain CR instead of the pistons
getting shaved down, increasing deck height.

Looking at the O2 readings have shown that the ECU has
been surprisingly able to keep it about stoich -
consistently hovering around .5 regardless of load.
Tightening up the AFM spring a ton helped that out.

My only lagging problem has been a noisy lifter.  I've
set, and re-set, and had other people re-set my
lifters, have run MMO for the last 50 miles (half a
bottle), either mann or mahle filters since day one,
and still the ticking remains.  Any ideas on this
would be helpful, really...

Not quite sure what else to say besides i am holding
back my accolades until i get the engine tuned right
(ran out of time).  There are some minor hesitations
here and there, and i've noticed my temp2 sensor
giving erratic readings (even though it is brand new).
 My guess, however, would be that a person more
experienced with WBXers and engine building in general
would get better/more immediate results than myself.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have more
specific questions,

-Damon

=====
'84 Westy (Sparky) w/2.3L WBX (woo hoo! my first engine build works!)

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