1990 Nissan Silvia S13 engine rebuild begins - Our Shed

By: Kian Heagney

Date: 16.11.2022

The world of hurt begins with Kian's Silvia as he pulls the engine out for a rebuild

In issue #470 of Unique Cars I introduced you to my 1990 Nissan Silvia S13, a dream car of mine I scored for $3500 in early 2020 that I thought I could easily turn into a club-plated cruiser with minimal fuss.

Those plans were quickly forced to change when we got the car back to my friend’s shed and realised the minor puff of oil smoke it had when I picked it up had quickly developed into a serious health hazard inside the shed within 30 seconds of startup. Either the 1.8-litre twin cam CA18 engine or the turbo was letting oil out of places it shouldn’t.

My first thought was piston rings, but a quick compression test came back with 160-170psi across all four (very good numbers for an engine like this), so we ruled them out.

Swapping the turbo didn’t affect the symptoms either, and because that process on this car requires the exhaust manifold to come off I got a good look at all four exhaust ports on the head which were caked in wet oil. Because of that, we determined either the head gasket or valve stem seals must’ve been buggered.

Couple that with the fact that I found a bunch of leaks and loose ends I wasn’t happy with as we were poking around the engine bay, and I made the executive decision to pull out the engine and fix everything properly.

The CA18 engine coming out for a needed refresh, still with the five-speed manual gearbox attached

At this point it really wasn’t surprising we found a bunch of loose or missing bolts as we lifted it out, which is much easier on these RWD Nissan’s with the gearbox still attached.

With the engine out we wasted no time whipping the head off, and found some bigger camshafts, aftermarket head studs, a multi-layer head gasket and oversized forged pistons! A quick inspection of the bores didn’t show any damage either, furthering our suspicions about the valve stem seals.

A compression test on the engine went surprisingly well, with 160-170psi across all four cylinders which is well above average for a turbo Nissan engine of this era

While the head was off getting tested and reconditioned I treated the block to a fresh coat of black paint, and then a week later we were ready for reassembly.

With everything nicely painted fresh gaskets throughout the entire engine and a refreshed head, we carefully dropped it back in and crossed our fingers we’d amended the oil haemorrhage.

Unfortunately, the curse of the S13 wasn’t done yet. Even with a rebuilt turbo, rebuilt cylinder head with new valve stem seals, brand new head gasket and plenty of skinned knuckles the car remained stubborn and was blowing just as much white smoke as ever.

Tearing down the engine we found ARP head studs, a multi-layer steel headgasket and oversized forged pistons

With roughly $3000 out of pocket on parts and reconditioning work and no better result, I decided I was done with this engine. Even with all the aftermarket goodies it was clear something more sinister was going on, and I was done chasing it.

The little CA18DET was treated to some fresh paint after it was all back together. Nothing beats the original colour scheme

I parked the car up for a few months and did some soul searching before we came to a solution which you can read about soon.

From Unique Cars #471, Oct/Nov 2022

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