757 replies to this topic

[lawrence]

Little update
Lower arm pin replaced and suspension all back together and torqued up
20180702_095834 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Trigger wheel all ready to weld on
20180702_110229 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

It is welded in now but forgot to get a pic
I also bought the fuel for her and charged the battery.
Tried to start and I'm getting huge backfires through my inlet which is blowing the itbs off the manifold

Now I'm suspecting ignition timing or cam timing, so have bought a timing gun that will hopefully arrive soon so I can check EDIS is timing itself right on default settings.

Also fitted my electric window kit! It's well awesome! Took a bit of tinkering to get it to fit right but works wellish now. I need new window seals as mine are really rigid and breaking up in places!
20180704_164718 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr
20180704_165514 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Need some new door cards also and some tasty DSN alloy door furniture but that can wait till the engine starts! Might make the cards myself, not sure yet!

More soon

Lawrence

[lawrence]

Little bugger,

Timing light arrived today, doesn't work at idle, lame.
Played with the ignition via tunerstudios. More backfires and even worse.
Then I sprayed easy start down all the plug and got backfires from both 1 and 4 and then 2 and 3.
Flames in pairs? Had to be something wrong with the timing.
Cam cover off. All fine cams fine, nothing 180 out.
Compression tested. 0, 0, 0, 0
!!!
I blew air down all the sparkplug holes.
Every inlet valve is open whether they are open because of cams or not.
Measured. All inlet valves are open about 2mm

Grr.

Looks like the heads coming off. Bet all the valves are bent. Not even looked at the exhaust. Stupid boy
All for now. Good I've got spare heads. Hope the heads ok if not I'll get another skimmed.

Annoyed at myself. This engine better be amazing when it works.
Lawrence

[lawrence]

Well yesterday was very enlightening!

 

Bit of stripping

20180707_195050 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

ah

20180707_200616 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180707_200620 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

So. Yh I laughed hahah. Had to really. Think I should stop making engines yet?!!

 

As always with me. Things don’t go great!

 

Close ups.

20180707_201124 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180707_201919 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

minimal bends there!

 

Where they kissed the seats

20180707_201941 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

hahahah

20180707_203144 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

But its not all bad. I can see no cracks at all. All this damage has been done at cranking or manually turning the engine. 

 

Head first. 

 

Exhaust valves are all perfectly fine and undamaged. It appears that there is zero damage to the head itself. I trial fitted some spare inlet valves. No damage to any of the valve guides and the valve seats look perfect still. 

20180707_201840 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

No leaks on cylinder 4. Valves sealing fine. Ill clean up the rest of my spare valves and trial fit them. If none of them leak or minially leak without lapping then I would say this head is good to go again!

 

And back to the block

20180707_201124 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

The marks on all the pistons are very superficial, it appears the valves hit the piston and then were all forced backwards into the cylinder wall. This has pushed the aluminium up. The pockparks were on the crown already if people are interested. But, where the rings run haven’t been touched. Theres no marks on the cylinder walls.

 

So ive not damaged the liners but have come very very close. 

 

Plan – Test the valves. Assess block and maybe gently dress the bent aluminium down to level it again.

 

Sure there’s a risk it might not work when its all back together but for the cost of a headgasket which I already have im happy to risk it. And buy some breakdown cover.

 

All for now. Updates tommorow

Lawrence

[lawrence]

So time to catch up with a few days work

 

Yesterday I had a little supervisor to keep occupied so couldn’t do as much as I liked

20180709_103415 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

So I lapped the valves in. 

20180709_110815 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

all sealed nicely

received_10214498095878085 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

dressed the marks down on the block gently

20180709_110046 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180709_110051 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

ordered the headgasket kit

and made a little plane out of various bits lying about.

20180709_170009 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Might make a few more and sell them. Think it took me an hour or so to make it. Im going to make a few more and if I can get it made in less than half an hour see if I can sell them for £15 or so. Ill sort some stainless steel out too. 

 

Then onwards to today

Gasket set arrived

20180710_111007 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

compression tested – all about 250 again which is awesome!

20180710_130658 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180710_130939 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

modified and improved alternator mount fitted, I cut my hand badly on the rough one. This has nicely smoothed edges and the outer bar has stiffened it up more

20180710_173606 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

Then I attacked the battery and started her up.

20180710_193808 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Oil pressure at idle is nice and solid, fast idle 35 ish. No rev counter so not sure how high, just done by ear. 

 

Drove her back and fourth a few times. 

20180710_194607 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

So that’s that. Engine works. Bit smokey at first start but soon went away. Bought up to temp and kept at a high idle to bed the rings in best I could.

 

Few issues still

>Alternator is not charging the engine still!

>Quite a large oil leak  the clutch side of the engine, had a look underneath and the end seal on the sump is misplaced a little and is weeping from there – not something I can fix without sump off so that’s something to do. 

 

All for now.

Glad the engine runs nicely

 

Lawrence

[l_jonez]

Keep at it. If it was easy everyone would do it 

[lawrence]

Cheers Lawson, she might work one day!

So then, update time

 

Last time the engine was running and the issues were

>Oil leak + no alternator charging

 

Ive skipped the alternator problem for now mainly because I can get her mot’d and up and running and then deal with that. Everything on my car is LED bar the indicators and my overall running battery draw is low.

 

But there's a starting problem. On the bench my starter is fine. On the engine, my starter is fine off jump leads and a spare battery. 

 

But the current power cable just isn’t man enough. I did voltage drop test and its not dropping voltage it just doesn’t have the capacity to crank the new high compression engine fast enough to start. I also cant cleanly solder a connection on to it due to being very thin copper coated steel wire. Car starts fine off the current battery using jump leads in series to act as the main battery cable.

 

So ive purchased some 170amp battery cable that’s purely copper so I can solder some connections on it at the starter. 

 

Photo showing rubbish quality and corrosion

20180714_143132 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

>Then I had an engine problem

The ceramic on the spark plug cracked. Heard a weird popping noise when she was running for her to then drop to running on 3

20180714_154322 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

The bit of ceramic then bounced about until it closed the electrode off on the plug. I used my endoscope and spotted it in the cylinder. 

 

So I put a spare plug in hoping the bit of ceramic would bounce out the exhaust. Well the flipping thing didn’t, it smushed another plug. Tried one more time and heard a lovely tinkling noise as it left the cylinder and made its way down the exhaust. When I took the exhaust off. I found it, went to take a photo, kicked the mat I put it on and it flew away into the gravel. Shame. 

 

But least it was out.

 

Pressure checked cylinder 

No change. They are all about 225ish.

20180714_154640 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

put down the scope and bar a few marks on the piston crown it looks ok. No scratched bores etc. 

 

did a bit of wiring- fan was running the wrong way. Also wired it to a switch in the cabin for now. 

20180717_163723 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

Squirt has an output for the fan but my coolent numbers etc are all wrong.

 

So today

Ø  Sort oil leak

 

Problem found

20180718_124639 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

nice and tidy work area – bit of shade too from the trees

20180718_155746 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

and all back together

20180718_155811 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

seal no longer touching the flywheel.

 

So that’s all for now. Next update will be next week.

 

To do list for mot

Ø  Run new battery power cable. – ordered. Map gas bought to solder connector on also.

Ø  General checkup and put dash back in.

 

Deadline for the MOT is before the 3^rdAugust as that’s when I move to my first house!!!

 

I expect her to fail the Mot, probably on emissions – will take laptop so can tune her to pass ;)

 

Lawrence

 

[McMini 22]

I bought some ridiculously thick battery cable but it will not fit in the channel under the car without a bit of modifying. Also getting battery terminals to fit will not be easy but I think I found some on eBay that will fit.
I'm currently (sorry!) Running everything off a set of jump leads to the starter motor at the moment so another job to tackle.
And by the way the reason you had an oil leak is it looks like you left a set of mole grips in there!?

[l_jonez]

170 amp cable probably won't be man enough. Most starters use between 100-150A so ideal you want the cable to handle double. I've gone for 300A on mine.
On my high compression engine the starter does occasionally stall, I've found feathering the throttle helps a bit.

[thelegg]

Hey mate if you can't get the terminals to solder on have you thought about using the ones that crimp? I made up a new battery cable years ago using some big hydraulic crimps and there still looking and working perfectly :) drop me a pm if you like maybe you could post the cable down to me with the terminals n I could make it up and send it back

[lawrence]

Little update.

Oil leak is sorted. Ran the engine up to temperature and no leaks onto the mat underneath!

Secondly the 170amp battery cable isnt man enough. Should have read these posts before i soldered the end on today!! Battery cable anyone?
300amp one ordered and new ends for it ordered!

Lastly. When i started the engine today the jump battery terminal fell off the starter motor. But the engine continued to run!! At idle the engine made 12.5v. Rev her and as far as she went was 13.5v. So the alternator kinda works?!

More friday
Lawrence

[lawrence]

Little update.

 

Thankyou for the offer of crimping the cables. Luckily ive soldered them nicely, I bought some high quality copper connections so that should help with the conduction! 300amp cable arrive yesterday.

 

Nicely soldered

20180724_110840 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180726_110238 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

300amp next to the 170

 

I decided to make another battery earth

20180726_153523 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180726_153528 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

And ive also made another engine earth, left the old one on as it wont be doing any harm. This one goes straight from the starter motor to the body so should conduct nicely. The original was engine to subframe (subframe is solid mounted so does conduct)

20180726_153511 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180726_154942 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

Just waiting on my battery terminals now, Battery is on charge too, hopefully i can avoid getting a new one! 

Side note, she starts and idles nicely!

 

Lawrence

Edited by lawrence, 26 July 2018 - 04:10 PM.

[lawrence]

So,
Today's update
Terminals arrived. Fitted
20180728_141715 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Ready for the road test
20180728_142957 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr
20180728_143004 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Up the road
20180728_143714 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Alternator defo working!
20180728_143952 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

So yh she moves.
Brakes work
Alternator works
Engine works
Cooling works

Plan- Rinse out coolant system and refill (currently water and it looks grim!), adjust rear brakes, Book mot!

Getting there!

[l_jonez]

Love the ghetto battery tie down

[lawrence]

Time for an update.

Both good and bad things to report as normal!

 

Firstly, battery secured, just for you Lawson! I was happy with the string personally!

20180730_113313 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

So my previous plan was swop the coolant, adjust the brake and book the mot!

Well I stuffed some coolent flush in the scummy water to allow it to clean and scour the system.

Then adjusted the rear brakes to spot on.

 

Then drove to the mot! (With a support car with my dad in I will add and all the tools I could think of should she break down!!!)

20180730_141239 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

cooling system did well

20180730_143112 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

had a good look underneath

20180730_143144 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

 

bit grot. 

20180730_143154 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

20180730_143206 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

Some jobs for another day that. Alright for now.

 

And a nice photo on the way home!

20180730_150051 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

stuck it on my insta

 

She failed. 

 

But I got the emissions checked before the mot was started and she passed on then, 

No point doing the rest if she had failed emissions and considering she only had been road tuned on the way to the mot I was well happy!

 

Passed on bodywork

Passed on brakes

Passed on suspension

Nothing exploded

Nothing broke

Nothing fell off (I don’t think)

 

20180730_182406 by Lawrence Balls, on Flickr

flipping seatbelts!!!

 

Rear belts arnt fitted. Why. No-one can get in the back even if they have no legs, my seats don’t move enough to let them even climb past!- I leave the seats there just to tidy up the back

 

And passengers front seatbelt wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t go in or come back out! 

 

So I ordered one off ebay but had a look when I got home.

 

Basically the rear bin was pushing on the seatbelt retraction mechanism. Bent the rear bin out of the way- fixed – got a spare on the way too just incase. 

 

And took out the rear seats. 

 

Sorted.

 

Going to call tomorrow morning to get her in for the recheck if possible!

 

All for now! Oh and the acceleration enrichment needs a hell of a tweak!

Lawrence

[Bat]

Hi,

Wow looks like the last leg of an epic journey is in sight!

Cheers