Another project I don't need

Retested with a squirt of oil in the cylinders and they were definitely all improved.



So off came the head. Bores look ok. No lip at the top so it should get away with just a hone.



There was a few bits of metal in the oil when I drained it so I will have to cut the filter open and have a look whats in there.

Need to wait for my friend to bring my engine crane back to take the block out and continue the strip down. Anyone have the specs for piston ring gaps and bearing clearances on this engine? AGU.

Probably gonna go with forged rods for the rebuild. Was being naughty and looking at bigger turbos too.

 

Take the sump off and remove Pistons

 

Gonna take it out and strip it down completely. Should have done it the first time really.

 

So I think I will just be getting another bottom end. Not very pretty inside

All of the piston rings are seized in the pistons. I picked one of them out and it sounded very gritty. And you can see that the pistons have taken a beating. Gaps all look very closed up on them too. Anyone clued up as to why the hell this would happen?




Cylinders are all pitted with a couple of lines too. Can't feel any of them though.




Cylinder 3 has a couple of very weird marks too.



Can see where the combustion was getting through



Lots of stuff in the oil





On the plus side I don't think it looks like the bits got through to the bearings, so the head should still be good. Will be checking the bearing surfaces in the head though.
Still look ok for such a high miler.




Not sure what's up with this either? A sign it was overheating maybe?

 

Had the engine been sitting for a while?
Could be partially seized, lack of oil changes etc

What's the tops of the Pistons like? det marks?

 

Looking at the tops of the pistons you wouldnt know anything was wrong. Wouldn't really say it's been sat as I started it every so often and drove it around a little since I've built it about a year ago. I had it mostly apart before I put it in the mk2. Rebuilt the head and all new service parts and gaskets on the bottom end but I didnt touch the crank or pistons as it all looked ok and sounded fine when it was running in the donor car.

 

Haven't really had much time to go down and investigate more but I managed to quickly measure the wear in the cylinders and it doesn't seem too bad. Might try and hone it and see where it gets too. But considering they sell 0.25mm oversized pistons, there isn't much tolerance I'm working with.

Managed to find another engine cheap enough that I just bought it incase the other one turns out to need oversized pistons, I dont really want to do that because of the cost at the moment.



I am considering just degreasing the new engine, swapping my clean parts on to it and dropping it in. I measured the compression before I paid for it and it seems very healthy, so why bother rebuilding it all and swapping my old head onto the new block if this one is good as it is?And keep the damaged engine to build into something tasty later on. With new rods and pistons etc.

And a bonus it came with another desirable ratioed gearbox, ENJ code. The same ratios as the one I have atm. But it looks like its good to have spares for this car.

 

Stripped the bits off of the engine that I'm gonna replace with my cleaned ones so I could jet wash it off. I have a problem. I can't fit dirty parts.




Cleaned up quite nice. Gonna replace gaskets and seals while I'm in there of course.




Also got a wideband to hopefully prevent this happening again. Although I still don't know what happened. Gauge looks cool though.

 

Been slacking and not working on this. But here is a small update.

Opened up the old oil pump and it's pretty scored. But I think the filter caught the all of the bits as there is no debris in the head anywhere, so all good. Decided to just swap the old head onto the new block in the end as I did go through all the effort to rebuild it before. And i would of had to swap the cam chain tensioner etc into the new head anyway if I had just left the new engine together.





Took some measurements of the new block bores while the head is off and it all seems good. 80.95mm +/- 0.02mm. The workshop manual allows up to +/- 0.08mm.



Pinned the new crank pulley (excuse the poor quality photos, they are screenshots of an instagram story video. Lukeybabes if you want to follow)




Can't wait to tidy up this mess.



I also tested out the coolant and oil temp gauges to see if they were reading correctly as I wasn't really sure if it was overheating on the day the old engine died or not. The mk2 coolant temp gauge was 3/4 and the oil temp was at about 120c which even then isnt too bad. But vag com was showing 95c and my infrared thermometer on the block was showing about 90c. This was pre the car not running anymore as I was concerned with the high readings on the gauges before.
I put both sensors in a freshly boiled kettle, so about 100c. And the coolant gauge was at 3/4 and the oil gauge was at 120c. So I guess that means they are reading high. So I have no clue what caused the old engine to fail like that now.

 

Boom. Built back up now. Hopefully this one lasts longer than 9 miles. Just need to pull the downpipe out to weld in the bung for the wideband. And then i'm gonna reinforce the clutch fork while its out.

 

major bad luck buddy! best of luck with the new lump

 

Thanks. Well if the same thing happens again I will have to investigate it more. lol

Did the last couple of bits before I could drop the engine back in. Which should happen this weekend.

I welded in the bung for the new wideband lambda sensor. And reinforced the clutch fork.

 

Engine is in a running lovely. Will be a nervous first event though.



Also got the windband gauge installed, Don't want a repeat of the first engine. Still no real ideas of what the cause of that was though.



And after test driving the car today, I think my old clutch fork may have been a bit bent. As the clutch feels so much better and that's the only thing I changed for the clutch. Felt like it needed a bit more push before but now its perfect.

 

http://s44.photobucket.com/user/Jon_Olds/media/caterham 1_zpskmdnvsxi.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

 

good news

 

Yeah I can finally tidy up the unit!

 

Been tinkering. Made an a cold air feed for the intake. Looks pretty cool

 

Odyssey battery mate same as mine in the audi

 

Odyssey pc680. Works surprisingly well so far.