The engine fired for the first time yesterday… whoohoo!

Unfortunately, while it runs very well, it also is good at spitting coolant out the exhaust, which is less than good. Big sad face.

The likely issue is that the engine overheated in the car it came from and damaged the head gaskets which will cause coolant to leak into the cylinders. This unfortunately means pulling the engine and taking the heads off. On a GT3 motor, only the heads are cooled, so hopefully I don’t need to tare it apart further than that, but I plan to do any sensible maintenance that I can while the motor is apart.

Although this is a big setback, I’m still pretty happy that I was able to get it running. All the wiring and setup was very complex and time consuming, so I’m pretty proud to have been able to accomplish it with zero prior experience. Now it’s on to the next learning-by-doing: rebuilding a GT3 motor.

Anyone wanna learn how to rebuild a Porsche GT3/Turbo engine with me?