Is the 4G63 a zero clearance motor?

This might sound stupid but I need to know. You see I bought my car as is. The number 1 piston had hit a valve and it was laying on the piston top in the cylinder.

I have removed the head and posted pics of the damage on here as of a couple months ago and all that stuff.

I havent worked on it much because I live in Ohio and its dead of winter. I also have no garage, only a patio im using.

Today while watching 4x4 power or something like that on Spike TV they were working on a motor from a 95 Nissan Pathfinder V6.

They showed a piston that had very similer damage to mine. The guy explained that the piston had hit a valve causing failure. He also said it was because something was wrong with the crank that had caused time to move up a notch or something.

Anyways I was just going to replace the valve and piston in my car and run it as a daily driver. However I am now worried that something could be wrong with my crank and that this problem may happen again if I just fix the piston and valve.

So is the 4G63 a zero clearance (as the one in the pathfinder was or so he said)

Please let me know and thanks!

Yes it is an interference engine.

Jessi Combs is hawt...

God I totally agree ^^

I love the sound of her voice to >_>

Anyways back to my beater. Should I not worry about the crank and just replace the piston and valve then dead time it. The guy put a new timing belt on it at 90000 and its only currently at 96000?

Im not looking for a race car, just a nice looking daily driver that has a little kick, I used to own the 1.8's and loved them to death. Figured this time around I would try the deluxe model.

Your crank is fine. Depending on the damage to the piston you may be able to reuse it.

I'd also get the head rebuilt while it's off, and have it checked for cracked guides. The belt would be reusable based on it's mileage, but I'd be curious why it crashed the valves in the first place... Check the tensioner, if that failed, the belt is probably ok. But it would be best to replace everything while you're in there. I never trust what previous owners said they did when it comes to the critical stuff.

The weird thing is only 1 valve was damaged in the whole head, and that valve was snapped completely off and laying on top of the piston when I pulled the head.

See this thread for pics I took a couple months ago. Some of the images will come up as icons for pixfarm, just click those to see the images.