Awesome man! All 5 of my boys are car guys!

 

Pretty soon you will be able to put them all to work and just sit back and relax! Once my kid is older, I am going to have him work on my car so I dont have to haha.

 

my oldest 10 and the baby are detail fanatics. They are always using my stuff to clean their bikes or the baby wants to clean his lambo. Its fun. Their first chew toy with me was always a wrench

 

Finally sent my last oil sample out to get analyzed. Hopefully it comes back with good results. That tis all for now. Now I need to get back to working on my Bug.

 

Not gonna lie, seeing posts about chain guides breaking and failing make me sweat a lil lol. 08 ss tc with 120k that's been pushing 23psi for 80kish. I got mine with 50k and have changed the oil every 3k religiously and only used top quality mobile 1 stuff. Still doesn't leak or burn a drop and no noise but I always keep a cautious ear out

 

I just did timing (main/balance/ water pump/ all sprockets) cobalt ss coupe 2008 175,xxx miles. Everything was fine no broken guides or guide bolts. 140,000 miles stock 35,000 miles zzp canned tune. Mainly highway miles. All mobil 1
156_162_158_163. Not burning any oil as well. Lots of blow by driving hard in Angeles Crest Forest. 6 hours of hard driving = 6 ounces of oil in catch can​​​​​​

 

It's good to see them holding up good to the miles. I use to daily mine everyday but now it gets moved once a month to get the rust off the rotors and recharge the battery. I still get no oil in the turbo charge pipes. I had the trans out 3 times and fixed every little dumb thing on mine. Full bolt ons and a stage 4 clutch and lowered on zzp springs

 

As long as you don't money shift it or bounce off the rev limiter the guides will likely be ok. They're easy to check without pulling the entire timing cover off, just remove the valve cover and take a look.

 

Will do, I have to replace the valve cover gasket soon anyway. This spring mine will be going under the knife at the body shop unfortunately. Bad body work coming through the paint from when the previous owner wiped out the driver side.

 

Late to the party it seems.... Dont get on here much over the weekends. All I have to say is that my car was owned by a 16 year old and dont think he ever changed the oil. I am not surprised at all that it did what it did. However, I have torn down a couple hundred Ecotecs and broken guides are not too common. Yes I have seen my fare share but its not like every engine I tore down had a broken guide.

 

Gotcha, lack of oil changes alone will do that. Oil loses its protection and lubrication properties and breaks down and the chains start stretching due to lack of lubrication and excessive heat. Combine that with the plastic getting brittle and then bam, broken guides. I'll never trust a oil life monitor either. Every 3000 miles on all my cars

 

For modern cars and oils, 3000 miles is excessive and overly expensive - and I've even read some "experts" say the constant high concentration of additives and detergents can actually be detrimental.

I've been using Amsoil for twelve years and just recently switched to Motul in my S5; I've been doing 10k change intervals for almost a decade now, 7500 miles before that (with Blackstone Labs Oil Analysis) and have not had any issues. Blackstone regularly tells me that my levels are good enough to even go to 12k or 15k. Modern oils can go the distance; if anything, change your filter more regularly.

If 10k to 20k change intervals are good enough for brands like Porsche and Ferrari, then there really shouldn't be any argument for doing much less.

 

While 100% true, it also goes about how you drive the car itself, especially the road/environmental conditions. I think the car is smart enough to know when the end of oil life is depending on the driving habits, but I usually change it before it goes <20%. Penzoil or Valvaline are my go-to brands, as long as it's SN (Plus).

 

I run Lucas synthetic in my Cobalt. Waiting to see what Blackstone has to say about my last oil change. Only had 2000ish miles on it though. Only reason I changed it so soon was cause its a new engine. This time around, I will go to 5000 miles. If that report goes good, then 7500 miles next time.

 

Of course, there are always multiple factors at play. Most of Europe is quite northern though, so I trust their ability to account for environmental conditions - Berlin and Edmonton are just about on the same Latitude. As far as how the car is driven, I've always driven my cars to the max, but I also tend to always do longer trips - people that constantly drive the car less than 5 miles or so are actually what is considered "severe duty" since the oil really doesn't get up to temp often enough.

And I'm not advocating for following the Cobalt's oil life indicator at all. They are very basic cars following a very simple algorithm. It has no idea what's actually going on in the engine.

Definitely. I think I did a 1000 mile run with "Break In Oil" when I put the Cobalt's second engine in. My plan was to do similar stretches... but it didn't quite make it to that 5000 mile mark. 😐

 

No doubt 3000k is overkill but I just always felt like with it being turbo and direct injection, the oil takes more abuse than a n/a motor. Oil is cheap, hard parts are not. I've used mobile 1 oil and filter everytime and now the oil gets done every 1-2k because i change it once a year and hardly put miles on it. Also helps that I am a tech at a dealership so I have anyways had a lift and a warm place to work on it.

 

Got my oil analysis back today. Turned out as expected.

 

Small update. I bought new spark plugs back when i built the engine. Then they went missing so I put the old ones back in. They seemed to works fine so I didn't care. Fast forward to last week. Found the plugs! Decided to put them in tonight. Also figured while they were out I would do a compression test. Just turned over 3000 miles on the new engine so why not. On my 10 year old China special compression tester, I got 142ish psi across the board. Pretty much the exact same for each cylinder. I'm good to with that. Time to keep driving it!

 

Another very small update. My wonderful china-bay exhaust only seemed to last somewhere between 4-5 months. Muffler blew out and was rattling like crazy. Ordered a magnaflow to replace it. Wasn't a bad job. Got it all done in about a hour and a half.

 

I like the way MF sounds on the ecotec motors!

 

Its pretty quiet now. I dont mind though, better than loud. At least it no longer sounds like marbles in a can.

 

Thats always nice

 

I hereby request you post a video of it in action.

 

Let me see what I can do. If the wind calms down and I get power back at the house tomorrow, it will happen.

 

Still windy and another day of no power so the video is on hold. But I do have to say, I think the car is actually too quiet now now that I have driven it a few times. I am guessing its a hair louder than a stock Cobalt. Might need to cut out the resonator next. The best part is that there are no more clunks and rattles (well besides all the ones up front ). I thought I had something clunking in the rear but it ended up just being the piece of junk China muffler flexing and hitting the bottom of the trunk. I dont think that I mentioned earlier that the China muffler had no packing in it. Literally just a paper thin shell with a perforated tube in the center.