My factory crate engine came with a -22 head. (That is the casting number. The orderable part number is 603-010-96-20 for the final revision of this head as explained above. If yours says 20, it is the next to the last revision but not necessarily in need of replacement. But read below.)

My engine which was installed a little over 4 years ago smoked a bit from the beginning. Not like a train. More like a steady wisp which was most visible when stopped on an off ramp with a tail wind. Power was down considerably from the prior engine but still very drivable. My indy-who installed it-kept notifying me that there seemed to be too much oil in the intake and that he suspected the turbo which was also new at the time of the engine installation. That did not fix the issue. The injectors were rebuilt with new nozzles added. Later, the IP was changed but the problem remained.

In November of last year-just prior to the warranty on the engine ran out-we took the car to the dealer from whom the engine had been purchased (the turbo and the IP also came from that source). We told them about the smoke and the oil. They did a compression test (500#) and a leakdown test and called it good-and forgot to put the gasket in the engine end of the crossover tube. The oil and smoke issues remained and we took it back and claimed that they had missed what we pointed out just at the end of the warranty validity. This time they took off the head and found a crack near the #5 pre-chamber. (Dave says that this is the first problem of this type that he has seen with a -22 head.) The dealer also said that there was evidence of some object beating the surface in cylinders 1-2-3 with increasing severity in 3. This was not on the valve surfaces or the top of the piston. He had no idea what caused it however both the crack and the foriegn object may have been in the engine from the start.

The dealer installed the new head and, though I have not yet gotten the car back or even seen it yet, I have been told that the car runs perfectly with normal power. The reason for the delay is that the IP has a leak at the bottom and needs a new seal-also under warranty. Only when that is completed can I determine whether both the smoke and oil in the intake issues have been addressed completely.

If you have a -20 head, it is a certainty that the head was replaced at some time (which also makes it unlikely that you have the fat, football shaped ceramic soot collector) indicating a prior problem. That causes me to remind you to check what is probably the most frequent cause of overheating-the 212 switch at the front of the engine which turns on the aux fan when the coolant get hotter than the normal fan can dissipate. Good luck.

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87 300D 265Kmi
Factory rebuilt crate 603.96x engine at 200K