I decided to leave the track early Saturday afternoon. I made it about 3 miles before the oil pressure dropped off to below 3 bar at 2K RPM. I parked it, walked to a nearby camping ground and called the track. Watkins Glen was kind enough to send a security guard to pick me up. George Bukovsky was willing to trailer my car home, and I could drive his Carrera. Now that’s a club member!
When I got home I pulled the motor. Hmmn. Valves all seem to be in adjustment. Not good. I investigated further. It wasn’t until we pulled #6 cylinder that we discovered the rod bearing had spun. On close examination it turns out the crank had about a 6" long crack in it, and was only held in one piece by and area perhaps 1 / 4" square! Good thing I didn’t try to drive it home.
That was July. I spent the next few months trying to decide whether to go with a 3.6ltr. C2 motor or rebuild my 3.4. Finally I decided to stick with what I had, but to "breathe" on a few of the parts. Lyd bought me a crankshaft for Christmas. Due to an extreem stroke of luck, I ended up with a very tidy profit on the purchase and sale of an ’84 Carrera, initially bought for Lyd.
By March the parts had been sent to the four corners of the earth. The heads went to Werner at R&K for a valve job and checkup, as did the crank and rods, for check and reconditioning as needed. Heads and Pistons went to California to have valve pockets cut and twin-plug holes tapped. The cams went to Web Cam to be made into "Happy" cams. The headers went to Jet-Hot in Pennsylvania. Harry Hall, the local guru, was kind enough to balance the rods and pistons to within a tenth of a gram, and match them as needed.
All the bearings, gaskets, and replacement parts needed were
purchased. All was falling into place….except that the friend who had
agreed to help rebuild the motor was WAY too busy to deal with it. At
some point I called Harry and asked if he could be talked into doing
the rebuild. After some arm-bending he agreed to do the labor for a
specified amount if I could take care of cleaning and misc. non-skilled
labor. That was in April 1996, and I was trying to nail down my PhD
dissertation. harry helped me out but never woudld divulge the
compression ratio! The photo below was taken well after that but
i needed a photo! That was after the bumper was destroyed the first
time.