Welp. S50B32 Rebuild Time...

[Nick M3]

The yellow car started making a rather unpleasant noise that I really, really, really wanted to tell myself was related to the new clutch I put in. Alas, when I pulled the transmission, it was clearly not the issue.

Once I drained the oil, it was concerningly sparkly, which pushed me straight to "drop the engine out." (I considered pulling the pan in the car, but decided that it wasn't worth the double work.)

At this point, I've got the engine out, dropped into the basement shop, and have pulled the pan to diagnose.

It turns out that the #3 rod bearing spun. The good news is that the crank looks pretty clean. I'm hopeful that it can be saved. Yes, there's some marking in the journal, but no apparent gouging. It all looks like it can either be polished or cut, so as long as there isn't any hidden cracking or other damage, I think it can be reused.

The real question at this point is how extensive a rebuild I want to do on this motor, assuming that the crank can be saved? Given that I have to deal with a machine shop, my current thoughts are:

1) Repair crankshaft, if possible. (This is a go / no go gating question.)
2) Head rebuild. The scope of this is the biggest question for me. The motor has about 100k on it, so I guess we'll see what it looks like once I get the valves out.
3) Piston Re-Ring? This is pretty cheap, but is the thing that I've no experience with. With the head coming off and the crankshaft coming out, this seems like a no brainer, though. Plus, while it's apparently technically possible to pull a rod without pulling the piston, at a minimum, rod #3 needs to be checked.