Sorry for the delay on any update but it has been alot of work trying to figure out what the problem is.
The good news is that I figured out what the noise was.
The bad news is that the noise was a piece of metal bashing around the inside of cyl 1 (and possibly others). Exactly where the noise was coming from. The top of the piston took a beating and its pitted all over. There is also a bit of damage on the head. I took it in to my machine shop and it looks like my car inhaled something hard and that's what caused the damage. There isn't any metal I could see in the oil pan but I still need to dissect the oil filter.
I should be able to get away with removing the valves in that cyl to make sure there isn't any damage to the valve seats and I will pull the other head off just to make sure that's ok as well. I might as well put in new rod and main bearings but I might need to find a 3L piston if my machine shop can't get it. Also it doesnt look like any scoring on the cyl walls, so I should be able to do all the work with the engine inside the car. Any experience with this guys?
Yesterday when I pulled everything apart was a year ago exactly from the swap. I would expect the damage to be from oil starvation during long turns or something like that but it really looks like the damage is only in the top of the engine. How am I going to find out if the damage came from something that broke inside the engine and got sucked into the intake or something that was sucked in from the outside?
As you can imagine I'm a little pissed but I knew there is always a risk when you race no matter how prepared you are. One thing is for sure is no more race track for this Contour.
