I built my first engine and it actually works

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]If everything goes good today, which let's face it, it never does. But, if everything does go good today, today could be the day that we actually start the S13 for the first [snorts] time since rebuilding this entire engine.

[00:00:12]Over the past, what, two, three, four weeks now, we've been rebuilding this engine from the ground up. This is the deepest I've ever ventured into any I I'm not like experienced in this. This is a first for me. We replaced just about everything there is to replace.

[00:00:28]Bearings, rod bolts, all the timing stuff, piston rings. Like, we got in there, which is why I'm absolutely terrified to start this engine. And to be honest, I'm not very hopeful, but I will take a pleasant surprise. This is just about where we left off in the last video. I replaced just about every hose in our intake manifold cuz all of this stuff in here, like where my hand is right now, this is such a pain to get to when the engine's actually in the car, obviously. Every single hose on both the lower intake manifold and the upper intake manifold was replaced if it was just a little bit brittle. So, we have all of these nice fresh hoses now. I went ahead and torqued the upper intake manifold on, so that's fully on the block or on the head now. Pretty much, just that little pile right there is all we need to install to have this thing ready to go in, I think. And then we have all like the accessories and whatnot that's for after the engine's in, but one step at a time. Another thing I'd like to not forget is right in there. That is where the the knock sensor bolts up to. Over here, we have our old knock sensor, which to be honest, I don't remember if it was throwing a knock sensor code. I know my S14 was. Whenever I get into an engine like this and I have the manifold apart, I like to just replace it anyway, especially with an engine like this if we have no idea how many miles are on it. Plus, I mean, this thing has a has seen better days, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was throwing a knock sensor code. But, that is why we got this. We got a new knock sensor.

[00:01:59]Come on.

[00:02:00]There we go.

[00:02:02]Old knock sensor. It's just so much prettier the new one cuz I mean, so many people are going to be looking at my knock sensor. Also, my hands are disgusting already.

[00:02:13]Boom.

[00:02:15]Cool. Looks like that is not in there. Sick. Why is that not clamping?

[00:02:24]There we go. Okay, that's locked in. I almost should have done this before I put the upper intake manifold on, but we can still squeeze it in there.

[00:02:34]Perfect. I don't know, I know on some cars, if it's throwing a knock sensor code, it'll like [ __ ] the timing a little bit, which can actually cost you power. I don't know if KAs or 240s do that, but definitely not something I want to forget.

[00:02:50]All right, knock sensor's in. Another just better safe than sorry thing to replace is our PCV valve here. Again, it's just so easy to access. It's literally a $4 part, so I'm just going to swap that in.

[00:03:06]Oh, it's all so I didn't clean that very well at all. Maybe I forgot to clean that one, who knows. Remember when we did this on the S14 on this channel?

[00:03:13]You're supposed to hear a shake in here.

[00:03:16]So, we have a shake. Realistically, this is probably fine. I'd just rather safe than sorry. Sometimes they do get stuck as we found out with the S14. And then when you shake them, they won't rattle like that cuz that little ball valve or check valve or whatever it's called is stuck.

[00:03:33]Boom, there we go. If you remember from last video, we tried to make that 90° bend in the hose for the PCV system. I assumed that it was the same inner diameter as these, and I assumed wrong.

[00:03:47]I went to the store and just picked up I think it's 3/8, and I think I'm just using fuel hose, which should work.

[00:03:53]Yeah, that's actually the the right size. But, that means that we got to bend this into a nice little 90°, which yes, means we have to bust out the oven again.

[00:04:16]It's not the most practical piece of shop equipment, but it works. I use it for my my powder coating, so it's never to be used with human food ever again, but it's perfect for putting toxic stuff into. And for being completely honest, I don't think I have to do any of this. I think the hose has enough flex and it's already sort of bent in in that direction. If I really wanted to, yeah, I mean, dude, that would that would work as is. I'm already got the oven preheating, so I'm just going to bend it just to get some practice in cuz this one held its shape really well.

[00:04:47]It has that whole little S to it and it bends without without kinking. I want to try to overbend this one and see if we can get a good 90. So, all we're doing I found that using TIG rods work really well.

[00:05:00]So, all we do, we stuff them on in here.

[00:05:03]Pretty much, we just bend it into the rough shape that we want. And again, I I'm overbending it. I'm bending it more than 90° to account for some bend back, which is very similar to like bending tubing for bash bars and roll cages. The last time we tried bending hoses, the same thing happened. It sprung back a lot, so we're going to try that. Then we toss our nutritious dinner into the oven, and we give it 30 minutes. Okay, so the last thing that we are waiting on before we can get that lower intake manifold bolted up. We have to Well, we don't have They sell them, but I actually wanted to try making one. I bought it when I refreshed the S14 KA, so I know how it's very simple. This is our EGR tube, which a ton of people delete for track cars and whatnot. It's all emissions related. You can see this one was cut, but they never like you're supposed to plug that. There's not supposed to be a massive leak there. And this bolts up right there onto the the lower intake manifold. So, now that we deleted that, we have to plug that hole somehow. They're super cheap, but they sell just like I think it's called a squid plate. That's just really a plate that has bolt holes, and you use some RTV and just slap it on there essentially. Obviously, you can weld it if you can weld aluminum. I want to try to make my own with the plasma table. I hit up the local steel yard where I buy all my metal for bash bars and skate rails and all that good stuff, and asked if they had I I Originally, I was going to do steel cuz I have a bunch of steel plate. Then I got to thinking, I was like, well, the intake manifold's aluminum, right?

[00:06:40]Now, I think the intake manifold's aluminum.

[00:06:43]Yeah, it has to be aluminum, right?

[00:06:44]Yeah, okay. Anyway, FedEx.

[00:06:49]Yeah, I think he has he has the last thing that we need. Yes, okay. Sorry, I have squirrel brain. I get distracted too easily. Is he coming to my house? I hear him, I think. He's coming.

[00:07:01]Sick. Okay, so that's what I needed.

[00:07:03]Aside from that though, the steel yard gave me this for free. I don't think the like texture or whatever you call that is going to affect anything. It's not going to be seen. It's strictly a block off plate. I've never plasma cut aluminum though, but I think it can handle I think it does it fine. So, I did what any logical person would do, and I made a prototype out of cardboard.

[00:07:24]It was a quite an art project. Stop asking questions. Okay, in theory, this is going to be made out of aluminum, and that goes right there. You know what?

[00:07:34]Might as well actually bolt it up. Okay, we have a little problem. See how that bolt goes all the way through, and it's able to, you know, pinch that cardboard flat? The other ones are actually bottoming out cuz you got to think that before, that was pinching this whole, what, like half-inch assembly. So, now that we're using, I mean, cardboard in this case, but thin aluminum in the real world, I'm going to have to get new hardware, and the hardware store is closed until tomorrow morning. But, we'll just test fit it. Also, it looks like dinner is almost served. I got to turn on a fan, bro, to blow all that stuff out.

[00:08:14]Oh, that's perfect. See how our squid plate perfectly mounts in the in the manifold there? And also, see how much of a pain that is to get to with the manifold together? All right, so now, I just have to make that on my laptop. All right, dinner is done.

[00:08:33]Oh, yes, that is so good to inhale. Love that.

[00:08:38]>> [sighs] >> Oh, yeah.

[00:08:46]Let that cool, and hopefully it forms to be a nice 90. I got to turn on every single fan in here and open every single door so I don't die. I'm actually really curious to see if this worked. I'm going to have to unbend it to get the the rods out.

[00:09:05]Okay, there we go.

[00:09:08]Aha, dude, that is a 90. That is a solid 90° bend right there. No kink, no nothing. That worked great. I'm actually I'm like unnecessarily hyped on bending a fuel hose 90°. Cool, that's nice to know that works.

[00:09:27]Beautiful.

[00:09:30]Wow, cool.

[00:09:35]Hell yeah. Look at that, custom 90° bend. Perfect. Super hyped on that. So, now pretty much everything in the intake manifold is new. Uh, what was I working on? Oh, yeah. Do you like Do you like my office space just sitting against the rail? I was following the manual here cuz again, this is my first time cutting aluminum, so I followed the uh cut chart. I was able to trace it. So, what is blue right now is going to be our squid plate. It's not pretty. No one's ever going to see it. I oversized the holes a little bit cuz I'm assuming that I'll have to like move it a bit, but I mean I think we're good to try cutting this. I just had an interesting thought as I was getting this prepped. So, the pattern is raised.

[00:10:20]Like you can see it the metal is technically thicker there. And when I enter the cut parameters on the laptop, that the material thickness matters. I was going to have it flipped over so the smooth side is what's getting cut, but it has a torch height controller that I don't actually know how it works. It uses electricity somehow to sense how far away it is from the material that it's cutting. So, if there's like waves or warps in that material, the torch height adjusts. I just don't know how precise that is. So, I want to try cutting it with the uh the textured side up and see if the torch height actually moves to accommodate that. I guess we're doing multiple experiments here. First time cutting aluminum and first time cutting something like textured like that. Okay, I actually have no idea what to expect with this. For some reason I don't think it's going to work perfectly, but we'll find out.

[00:11:12]Oh, mate, look at that. It's it's cutting.

[00:11:16]Okay, wait.

[00:11:25]Aw, okay. We lost it halfway through. Uh voltage lost. Interesting. Okay. I just tried flipping the piece over. So, now we do have the smooth side and I want to see if we get a different result.

[00:11:48]Come on, baby. Come on, give it to me.

[00:11:53]Oh, it's the same. It's right there every time. That's really weird. Let me try retrying and just going from where it left off.

[00:12:05]Oh, wait. Did that give it to us? Okay, it didn't cut all the way through or it didn't cut very cleanly, but that might actually work.

[00:12:20]Where'd it go? Let me get this cleaned up.

[00:12:31]Moment of truth.

[00:12:35]Oh, wait. Uh it has to go Oh, you know what I didn't think about though? Depending on which way I cut it is which way it faces. And right now the the textured face has to go down, which isn't going to give me a clean mating surface. Okay, so I have one little divot. I might be able to grind that down and get away with it.

[00:12:57]Let me try that.

[00:13:09]I mean, that looks pretty smooth to me.

[00:13:14]Let's see if the holes line up. I think within reason. Quick test fit time.

[00:13:24]Oh, dude, we are so in there. Look at that, dude. That fits perfectly inside the manifold there. It's just rough fit right now. I haven't RTV'd it yet. I'm pretty confident that with some RTV, that'll be that'll be A-okay. And I found hardware that fits too, which is nice.

[00:13:48]All right, here goes nothing. I know that some squid plates use RTV, others use a gasket. End of the day, whatever gets it to seal works.

[00:14:05]Okay, I think that'll be fine, dude. I think it's time to get that gasket on.

[00:14:21]Ladies and gentlemen, the intake manifold is now on both upper and lower. Can't see anything cuz it's too dark, but all of the hoses are attached. Anything that has blue tape is currently an open vacuum line. I'm still going to have to route the fuel cuz I deleted what the fuel pressure regulator routed to. It just needs a vacuum source. So, I'm either going to here or to here. I'm not too sure yet. I'm just making sure I mark those. We got our knock sensor in the right spot up there.

[00:14:53]I went ahead and cleaned off our oil pan from all the old gaskets and whatnot.

[00:14:59]You might remember that we were waiting on that silly little gasket, which somehow I lost both of the ones I had.

[00:15:05]So, we got a new one for that oil pickup. Upside down we go.

[00:15:12]This one's pretty self-explanatory.

[00:15:16]We have that gasket in there. Well, sorry. You can't see anything at all besides my dirty arm. There we go.

[00:15:23]Okay.

[00:15:27]Hehehe, there it is. Cleaned up the mating surface for the oil pan and that is clean. I think this is it, guys. Let me do a quick sanity check. Dude, when I refreshed the S14 KA, I think it was the timing covers. It was my first time doing it, so it was overly stressful. I had put the timing covers on, I'd RTV'd them, I torqued everything down, and then I looked on the table of engine parts and I had all of the timing chain guides still out and I was like, "Oh my god." Try to take everything off and do it again. On our table though, we have nothing except for our oil pan bolt, which we're about to use. These are the old head studs. I will say that >> [laughter] >> I don't know where this came from, okay?

[00:16:11]It was on the upper timing cover paper, but I've checked the upper timing cover.

[00:16:16]It was this ground that this now like something I got the car, this had been severed. I have no idea what this ever grounded, but like I've checked the upper intake manifold and the lower intake manifold. I can't find out where that went. You know what they say though, I'm just smarter than the engineers that made the car in the first place because I used less of hardware than they did.

[00:16:35]>> [laughter] >> Right?

[00:16:36]Okay. Let's bring this thing home, man.

[00:16:46]There we go. That's everything.

[00:16:49]Well, almost everything. Let's flip this right side up one more time. Two Dude, my hands are disgusting. Two final things. Obviously, the valve cover has to go on. I have the gasket over there.

[00:17:02]You're supposed to RTV the little corners of these crescent half moon things. That's super simple though. And then down here, we still have that oil filter bracket thing. That's actually what the the FedEx guy just delivered today.

[00:17:17]Aha, [screaming] hold on. I knew I was just missing it, but look at that.

[00:17:24]There's a hole right there for a bolt.

[00:17:27]That's probably that one over there.

[00:17:30]Yeah.

[00:17:31]100%. Okay, well, let's hope that it's okay that it sealed without it. I'm still going to toss it in there. I'm honestly going to put some RTV on the on the bolt too and get that torqued down.

[00:17:48]We're done. With the exception of like we don't have the the belts on yet or anything, but with the exception of that, I believe everything is done. The only thing we don't have are the the headers and I do have to put a stud in there. We don't have the the stock exhaust manifold. I'm actually going to toss that in after the engine's in the car. Oil pan's on. I even put the dipstick back in. I got the valve cover on. Oh my god, dude. I'm like I'm so I even put a a new oil filter in just cuz why not? But I mean, dude, I'm just kind of doing a sanity check walk-through. Oh yeah, I put the fuel pressure regulator vacuum line, just ran it to right here. There was an open port. So, we're good to go there. Fuel pressure regulator has a vacuum source now. That's a heater hose to the firewall that I have right there.

[00:18:42]That's the other heater hose to the firewall. This is our brake booster.

[00:18:47]Checking to make sure I uh I connected everything. We got that hose on. Yeah, dude. I I really think we did it. When I say did it, I mean we we put the engine back together. We have absolutely zero knowledge if it's going to start or if it's going to blow up the second we crank it.

[00:19:04]It's dark. It like the sun is gone. It's it's the night time now.

[00:19:08]>> [laughter] >> That took a little bit of time.

[00:19:09]Honestly, I mean the engine bay is ready. Suspensions all done and ready.

[00:19:15]Engine is done and ready.

[00:19:18]>> [laughter] >> I really think all we have we just have to put the engine in. And unfortunately, I can't do it tonight. I got to I have something to do early in the morning tomorrow, actually. So, I'm going to go inside and shower and I guess the next time I pick up the camera, we're going to be putting this bad boy back into where she belongs. I'm so excited. Like so nervous, but so excited. Okay.

[00:19:40]It's time. Today's the day. I got this thing fully buttoned up. We have the distributor in. We have all the wires going to where they got to go. Went through and tossed on the GK Tech poly engine mounts and funny enough I didn't realize you're supposed to buy a heat shield with them and I actually didn't do that on the S14 and I've heard without them they're going to disintegrate and blow up. So I did get the heat shield this time around. I mean and now it's literally 100% drop in ready. Got the engine bay ready. Got the cherry picker out. I'm beyond nervous.

[00:20:24]>> [music] >> Ah, we are free.

[00:20:59]I think we're in.

[00:21:04]I'm learning there's a lot more workable space in an S13 engine bay especially after the the ABS delete than there was in the S14 cuz even doing oil changes on the S14 sucks. Like there's just not room down here. So it's definitely a bit more bit more spacious, but I went ahead and tightened the engine mounts on both sides both that that upper nut there as well as the lower nut. Made sure the little dowel pin was aligned. So engine is roughly in there and now it's really just hooking everything up, getting the the harness back on, the lower harness as well. So let's start with the upper harness.

[00:21:50]Baby steps. I don't know why I always don't wear gloves when I need them. We have that upper harness ran, injectors plugged in, got that all This actually wasn't even mounted. I don't know if you remember that. This was just floating around down there. So I found some hardware and actually bolted that up.

[00:22:05]Got everything wired and then again it didn't have an O2 sensor. It was still the headers were plugged for whatever reason. So I went ahead and got an O2 sensor for it. We got that wired up. I'm going to add some heat wrap around that so it doesn't burn on the headers. Got all of our grounds mounted. Oh, speaking of the headers, I got the headers bolted on and torqued and everything. So that's all good. Still no belts. That's up next. Actually maybe before belts cuz I still got to That's not torqued. That's why that blue tape is there. Maybe we get under the car and I mount the the flywheel and everything so I can torque that down. But dude, it's looking a whole lot like an engine in a car all of a sudden.

[00:22:55]So let me mount this up and then I want to show you guys something.

[00:23:01]The flywheel doesn't look great. I actually took it to the machine shop to get it resurfaced cuz that's usually what I do. But this is as you can see it's a aftermarket Jim Wolf Technology flywheel that apparently you can see it like bolts on or like screws on so you don't resurface it. Apparently that's what the machine shop told me.

[00:23:22]Apparently I just have to hit up Jim Wolf Technology and like get a new plate that I bolt on. Not too sure honestly, but if that's the case I can actually bolt the flywheel up and get it torqued and then remove that later I think. Kind of an interesting interesting concept.

[00:23:41]Time to torque down that crank pulley bolt. The flywheel's torqued.

[00:23:49]That was right. That wasn't going to happen. Usually I have a second person holding it for me.

[00:23:55]Ah, I don't have the strength to do that.

[00:24:01]There it is.

[00:24:02]Oh, we can remove our not torqued tape.

[00:24:07]>> [applause] >> Getting there. If we're being completely honest, there is a very very high probability that I try to crank this engine over and it blows up or something bad happens. It's my first time ever doing this. I've said that a million times by now. But like my I I give it a Let me think realistically for a second.

[00:24:24]Of a flawless the completely flawless it it cranks, it runs, no leaks, nothing. I give that a 15% chance. It cranks, it runs, but we have some leaks whether it's oil, coolant, whatever. That I'm saying 50%. I don't know like I did everything by the books. I followed the FSM for everything. It's just like knowing that I touched every single piece of that engine. Every single nut and bolt. Every single bearing in like the piston rings. Like the fact that I was in there and I've never done that before. Like that it feels like it's going to blow up. We can't have that attitude though. 50% chance it runs but leaks somewhere. What did I say for the first one? I don't even remember.

[00:25:04]Whatever percentage is left with the math that I did, that's the percentage of it blowing up. But because of that where I was going with that, I don't want to bolt up our transmission and deal with all that if something bad happens and we have to pull the engine again. With KAs you can actually just bolt the starter in. We have the flywheel mounted so we can just bolt the bolt the starter up in there as long as it's secure to the the block there and then it's really just a matter of the belts, fan, hoses, all of that and then I think we can give it a a test start.

[00:25:43]Oh, yeah.

[00:25:44]All right, so we've just got to bolt that up there. I've never just bolted the starter up without having the transmission on. I just found some hardware that fits, but in theory it should do the same thing, right? Oh, you know what? I think I forgot. I mean it doesn't matter right now, but I always forget the the dust shield that goes behind the flywheel. So we'll have to pull that again, but we'll do that later.

[00:26:08]Okay, starter's on.

[00:26:22]We did it, ladies and gentlemen. Well, I can't say we did it cuz we have no idea if it runs. But we did it in the sense that we took everything apart and then we put it back together. So that's at least something. To my knowledge everything is back in position and good for first start. I mean aside from we don't have any oil in the engine yet.

[00:26:42]That's going to be important. We're going to put oil in. No coolant. You know no fluids. There's no There's no brake fluid, there's no power steering fluid, there's no oil and there's no coolant. And there's no There's nothing in the the slave cylinder for the clutch either. We don't need the clutch yet cuz we're we don't have a transmission. We don't need brakes cuz we're not driving.

[00:26:58]We need oil and maybe we just start it without coolant just to see if it actually like starts.

[00:27:06]Oh, man. I'm like I'm so excited but so nervous. All right. And I said maybe I don't do like something stupid now. This is the right oil 10W-30. All right. We're putting four quarts in and then we got to prime the engine, build up some oil pressure and then we start it or try to start it.

[00:27:24]Dude, my heart rate is so high. I'm checking my watch to check my heart rate. I'm like painfully nervous.

[00:27:30]All right, that's four quarts. Our engine has oil in it. No oil is coming out of our engine which is good. All right, let me unplug the distributor and I'm going to pull the the fuse pump plug. I can't even talk. The fuse pump plug plug I'm going to unplug the fuel pump fuse. That's what I meant to say.

[00:27:51]Okay, fuel pump is the 10 amp right here. Using only the proper fuse pulling pliers. Fuel pump fuse is out.

[00:28:00]Distributor's out or the it's unplugged.

[00:28:03]I just want to make sure we don't actually get spark. It's time to give her life.

[00:28:14]Okay, I'm just going to loosely put them on real quick. Okay, unplugged.

[00:28:21]Fuses out. Good. There's probably a million things I could be forgetting to do right now. Okay. [sighs] Oh, I forgot I don't even have a seat.

[00:28:32]Spidy. So I don't know if my oil pressure light works or I mean I guess my oil pressure sensor. I have to prime the engine cuz everything's been dry. It hasn't had oil for weeks.

[00:28:44]So you have to build up oil pressure which normally what you do is you disable fuel and spark and you just crank it for like five or 10 seconds and then let it chill and then crank it for five or 10 seconds and let it chill and you do that until your oil pressure light goes off and that indicates you have enough oil pressure. I just don't know if I if my oil pressure light works. Usually it takes like five five sets of 10 second cranks similar to myself. All right, let's Oh my god.

[00:29:09]Okay, we're we're in neutral. Also this car was an automatic so there I don't have to push the clutch down or anything. It was manual swap so it bypassed that.

[00:29:19]Okay.

[00:29:21]So far all is well. We'll do like three, two, one. Stop. Let it chill for a sec.

[00:29:27]I'm just going to set the camera up on a tripod and crank it some more. That's that's a crazy sentence. That's for MY OTHER PLATFORMS.

[00:29:42]ALL RIGHT, THE DASH LIGHT WENT OUT SO we're good. So we have oil pressure now and it's also a good sign that we still don't see oil dripping. Obviously not ruling it out, but that means there's no like major leaks or anything cuz the oil is pressurized. You can see on the dash when I crank it now, the oil pressure light is off.

[00:30:01]So, we're good. And now, it's actually time It's time for the first start. I am stressing out right now. Plug the distributor in, make sure nothing's in the way of the fan, put our fuel pump fuse back in.

[00:30:16]Okay, here we go. We have no coolant in the car at all and no power steering fluid ATF. I don't want to run it long at all. I'm going to turn it on. I'm going to see if the car starts, and if it does and idles for like 10 15 seconds, shut it off and throw some coolant in there. You're going to be a good car?

[00:30:43]Okay.

[00:30:44]It starts. Our timing is probably severely off. I haven't messed with the distributor at all yet. I'm going to try it again.

[00:30:59]Oh, it started.

[00:31:06]And then it dies. So, it's starting and then dying. I'm hoping that it's our distributor cuz you can adjust the timing by turning this, you know, clockwise or counterclockwise. I forget which way retards timing and which way advances it, but I'm just going to put it all the way one way and try it again.

[00:31:32]Yeah.

[00:31:35]Okay.

[00:31:42]Yes.

[00:31:44]Oh, WE DID IT.

[00:31:45]WE HAVE AN OIL LEAK. ABOUT what I expected to happen. The only downside is it's not an oil leak that I want to fix Well, I'm going to fix it, but it's in like the worst place it could be. It's in the It's the front timing cover. It's a pretty big oil leak, too. I've been trying to troubleshoot it. You can see all of that is wet. All of that is wet.

[00:32:06]All of that is wet. I had the car running just for a sec while I was under it, and it's like legit a It's a pretty steady flow. Like you can see it dripping down in real time. So, it's not a small leak.

[00:32:20]Yeah, all of that's wet up there. So, I did the only logical thing to do, and thankfully my friend Gavin pulled up at the best time for me, but the worst time for him. So, we pulled the engine again, which was somewhat of a painful experience after you spending so much time and effort putting the engine back in, but we pulled it, didn't even bother putting it on the engine stand. We had to drop the oil pan, remove the valve cover, pull both timing covers, deep clean everything, but sure enough, I found the issue. Problem found. And Dude, I thought I wiped that off. I honestly had a feeling this was going to be the case. Not exactly what happened.

[00:32:57]Do you guys remember me telling you about that little What is it? The oil galley gasket or whatever it is that goes into the timing cover right there and how bad things happen if you forget it. I made a whole point to talk about it in a video cuz if you don't put that in, bad things happen. After I assembled it, I had this just nagging thought in the back of my head where it's like cuz I I had to hammer the timing cover on lightly, and I was thinking like what if that O-ring kind of popped out? And I put a dab of silicone on it when I did it to avoid that. But it's been in the back of my head since I since I've been putting this engine back together. Sure enough, you can see See how bent and deformed that is? You will never guess what happened. That is supposed to be there, and when I took the timing cover off, it was right there. Literally crushed and sandwiched between the timing cover and the block.

[00:33:52]So, I guess what happened is when I hammered it, this popped off and just so happened to get caught in the RTV right there as I tightened it down and got stuck there. So, there was literally a gap in between the timing cover, and that's right where it was leaking. And luckily, I actually have another one of those, so we're going to put that back in and put everything back together.

[00:34:12]Aside from that though, I mean everything's looking great. We really went back to square one almost. We've been looking everything over and haven't found any other leaks. It was really just that just that timing cover leak.

[00:34:24]So, time to put this thing back together and put it back in the car for the second time today. And then began the journey of putting everything back together again, which I will admit, it was easier the second time around, but it was a whole lot more fun the first time. This is now my second time assembling this motor today alone. I've been in the for what? 13, 14 hours at this point.

[00:34:48]Thankfully, Gavin was able to help this time around, so it did speed things up.

[00:34:51]Reassembled the entire engine again, dropped it back into the car, waited for the RTV to cure, and that leaves us off here.

[00:35:01]You guys want to see something cool?

[00:35:04]Ladies and gentlemen, there she is for the second time.

[00:35:15]I built that.

[00:35:17]I did that. Wow, that's crazy. A couple things worth noting. The first one is listen.

[00:35:25]Hear that?

[00:35:26]Yep.

[00:35:31]Hear that?

[00:35:35]So, there is a slight misfire. It very, very well could be my old cuz I'm using the old fuel injectors from the S14 that were old when they were on the S14. Very old fuel injectors. I also I left the manifold sitting for a while. There could have been some debris built up in the injectors. I haven't smoke tested anything yet, so I haven't checked for vacuum leaks. I'm just going to cut myself off there cuz I would I think I was just so tired from doing everything I did in this video. I totally forgot that the the Let me just show you. I completely forgot that this intake is a bit of a placeholder for now. As you can tell from that, there's all of these uncapped ports on this uh this intake that I very haphazardly capped. This one doesn't matter because it's before the MAF, but these both matter. That is just painter's tape. Again, this was temporary to see if my engine ran. I would not be surprised if that is a leak letting in unmetered air. That little vacuum cap, I actually do trust that one. I don't trust that. And you know what else I don't trust? That, being the fact that that is literally just letting unmetered air in. So, that alone could be our vacuum leak. Okay, back to the video. Look at all that grease burning off the headers.

[00:36:48]Probably so much stuff on there.

[00:36:51]So, yeah, there's a There's a slight misfire. I haven't adjusted the distributor yet, either.

[00:36:56]Let me turn this off.

[00:36:58]Ah, so another reason that I'm turning that off, we still don't have any coolant in the engine, and I actually can't put coolant in the engine right now. I showed you guys that hose clamp right there, right? Part of the whole Chase Bays power or power steering reservoir relocation thing. Well, you see that hose clamp is actually supposed to be an AN fitting similar to how it is over here and on the rest of the kit.

[00:37:21]And there's supposed to be a little adapter on your power steering pump that this car didn't come with. It came like this, and it came empty of power steering fluid, and I now know why. I tried just clamping that thing on, and when I started the car, just projectile sprayed ATF everywhere.

[00:37:37]If we take the car up here, you'll notice that the power steering pump does not have a belt on it right now. But because the power steering pump doesn't have a belt on it right now, that means the water pump also doesn't have a belt on it right now. That belt goes from this to the water pump to the power steering pump. So, if I don't want power steering, I don't get cooling, either.

[00:38:00]Also, just looking around, I've let it run I haven't let it get hot, obviously, but I'll let it run for a little bit, like just as much as I did last time, and I've been checking for uh for leaks.

[00:38:09]That was from the power steering mishap.

[00:38:11]It took me so long. Dude, it projectile power steering fluid everywhere. Like Like that was all power steering fluid.

[00:38:19]Oil leak-wise though, we look good, and I'm not going to jinx it yet. You know, we have not driven it hard or gotten it up to temp or anything. Very well could still leak oil at some point. It's also a very big possibility that it leaks coolant, and we'll have no way of testing that until we can actually get the car up to temp and have the thermostat open. So, we're not in the clear yet. We have misfire, we have no coolant, we have I mean, no no transmission. We're still just raw dogging the flywheel right now. I still have some wiring that I got to deal with and reroute and all that. So, we are not in the clear yet, and the car is not drivable yet. We are getting very, very close though. That being said, I am physically and mentally exhausted. This was a a milestone of a video, and I want to thank you guys for watching and supporting this YouTube channel. Seeing this channel grow and seeing the community that we're slowly building here is really cool as a content creator. So, thank you guys. It's my relatively unrealistic pipe dream is one day I want this to be like my my job, man. Like I want to do this and make a living from it. Cuz right now I'm doing the opposite of that. It's taking every cent of my money that I earn.

[00:39:28]I love it though. Thank you guys for watching. Next up, we're going to get this thing ready for the road. Peace out.