Aaaand just like that, *snaps fingers*, after hard work (not mine), freezing, blowtorching, smashing, and a lot of annoying knuckle-scrapes later, Gunther is (sort of) alive again!
Tecnicomoto is pretty damn awesome.
To recap: One of the valves in Gunther smashed. Despite all the badd stuff that a chunk of pinky-nail-sized metal could do inside an engine, there wasn’t much damage to the motor internals. Then we discovered that the shattered valve had also broken its valve guide, which is a really strange piece to break. To quote Wikipedia,
A valve guide is a cylindrical piece of metal, pressed or integrally cast into the cylinder head, with the valve reciprocating inside it. Guides also serve to conduct heat from the combustion process out from the exhaust valve and into the cylinder head where it may be taken up by the cooling system.
After all the parts & tools arrived (fancy valve guide hand-reamer that looks like a simple drill bit but costs $60, I’m looking at you), he managed to get Gunther fully together and running in a single day.
To clarify:
* He worked on Gunther before work, removing the existing valve guides and prepping new valve guides by freezing them to make the metal contract.
* He worked on Gunther during lunch, torching the block to make the metal expand and then smashing the valve guides into the engine block with a valve guide tool and a hammer.
* He stayed late at work reassembling EVERYTHING.
Now we just need to put the motor back in the frame.
And clean up the wiring.
And safety wire everything.
Oh, and stickers. I bought some more visible race numbers, so I’m putting those on also.
Mayyyybe returning the fuel injector back to stock? We’ll see how it goes.
We leave for Talladega in 8 days…