Wow. 12 hour shift today.
Many many thanks to John, Shug and Derek for their help, it would not have been posible without you!
The story so far:
Got to Johns at about 10 and things went ok on the dismantling apart form the damn flexi/mainfold joint. Took flipping ages. Few niggly things but nothing serious. Liner stand proud was between 4 and 5 thou we reckon, on all 4 so should *Touches wood!* be ok.
Rebuild went a little wrong however....
Timing marks all lined up, checked, cross checked, rechecked. Marks in the right place. Tensioner allen key hole shears off. Arse. Fudged it with a set of stilsons, seems ok. Turn engine over by hand, great. No problems. Torque up crank bolt... Can we get 210Nm? Can we bollocks. The only way we had for holding the crank was in gear on the handbrake. Great apart form the clutch springs fight you all the way and there is no way to get 210 Nm. So I set about buggering one of the cover plates for the flywheel so I can get a screw driver in. No problems except, while trying to torque the bolt up previously the tensioner was clicking and jumping about.. curious. We thought nothing of it. I eventually jam a screw driver in and it seems to do the trick. Happy until we look to beginning to sort the timing out when we discover a problem of biblical proportions.....
The clicking had been the timing belt jumping teeth, the cams were 30 deg out... The jamming was the valves meeting the piston
Oh dear oh dear. Very worried about bent valves, bent cam shafts, etc. we had just put 210 Nm through 2 valves FFS.
A bit of denial and mincing later, we decide that there is nothing for it, correct the timing and try again. Bit of fannying about with the cam belt and the cams are re-timed to the correct locations. Turn the engine over and.....
Nothing. Engine is smooth, valves all seem to close, no evidence of bent valves! Feck me, what a relief. Still not out of the woods yet.
Timing the cams, I had a bit of brass rod running in a wooden bock and john had a vernier caliper, a clutch slave cylinder bracket and a small bolt. Together this produced the most Heath Robinson cam timing gear known to man. Crude but after checking 3 times it seemed to be consistant enough. Time is now around 9pm. starting to get a bit dark...
Eventualy all the ancillarys are back on the car and everything is tight. Apiece of the cam belt cover is buggered and had burned being next to the zorts so is left off, along with another bit. But never mind. Boot lid chafes on the VVC manifold, but this will soon sort itself out....
It's time. Key in, power on, fuel pump struggles for moment and fills the fuel line. 5 throttle presses to reset the TPS. Turn on and crank.....
She's alive! Turns over frst time and after 5 or 6 revolutions fires into life! Steady idle at 1200 RPM (Fast idle remember!) get revs up to 2000 for the sake of the cam shafts, look in rear view mirror...
Smoke! Clouds and clouds of smoke! Hang on, Shug and John are not running away... Oh its the bleed nipple for the coolant (Runs above the manifold on old S1s) honking water everywhere. Well thats the coolant bled then...
The only problem that we have found is that the bloody tricky to get to flexi-manifold joint is blowing quite badly. The rest is fine. Oh apart formt he daft heat shield, that is not totally fooked.
What a relief. Hopefully John, Derek and Shug will have some pics of the day to follow....
John very kindly took me home and we start again on the zorst joint tomorrow for the sake of his neigbours...
Again big thanks to the team as well as Leslie for allowing us to play cars all day and the constant stream of tea and coffee!
Rich
Tired and emotional faction....
)
should be ok
and not scabby mk1 elise