Guess how much is left!

[Daviboy]

Wow your carnage makes my blown piston and cylinder look laughable.....

[JT912]

If this was the original engine, any thoughts of at least keeping the case for future resale and originality? Thanks for the photos.

[lindemans]

Cool thread,

I'm sure many parts are reusable and will sell fairly easily.

Regarding the oil coolers: I would not take any risk of debris left overs flushing back into your new engine. I would spend the extra few $$ for a new one, really.

I would also spend careful attention to the oil tank; I would remove if from the car and have it meticulously cleaned as well...

[ClickClickBoom]

Originally Posted by RichHawk

So I've been thinking about how to flush the cooler and lines... Removal of the cooler, and having it boiled out leaves it in someone elses hands (Which I don't like), but may provide the best result.
I also have been thinking on how to get the 1.5 year old gas out of the tank..
An a CRAZY!!! thought came to my head.
Since I'm not going to be using the gas for even my lawnmower, and I figure I have to use the fuel pump to pump it out anyway, Why not rig up the fuel line into the oil lines and cooler, and back flush all the crap out using the 5 gallons of Gas as a solvent at 40 PSI?

Then collect the gas and dispose of properly, and do a final clean flush of the lines and cooler with a gallon of Isopropol Alcohol, using a gravity flush (Hose and funnel)

I'd probably still take the cooler off after that and ensure that it came clean.

Good or bad idea?

Richard

Hey,
Couple of thoughts, Porsche engines are liquid cooled, oil is the medium, the air is secondary for cooling, learned this from my piston airplane days. The remaining parts might be ok, look for signs of heat distress(discoloring, scoring ect). Get your oil cooler cleaned by a professional outfit, there are a bunch of companies that specialize in aircraft oil coolers and can clean all debris out of the cooler(s), piece of mind and will be assured.
Nice car!
enjoy
eric

[RichHawk]

It's all been done for months.
Richard's 3.2L total rebuild

The car is back alive, my anal cleaning of every hard line and front mounted cooler paid off. I cut open the first oil filter, and found a few small pieces of what must have been debris from the original engine. By process of elimination I suspect the front mounted cooler still hung onto those. As the engine, and engine mounted cooler, and hard lines were all changed out. Leaving only the oil tank, external thermostat, and front mounted cooler as possible sources.
I cleaned the living hell out of those, with multiple solvents, then boiling hot water, as final rinse of the solvent. But must have missed a few flakes of bearing material.

2nd oil change is due. I'll look at that filter too.

As for the original cases and crank shaft, I still have those. They can be repaired, and for originality reasons could have a 100% original numbers matching engine. So I figure I'll hold onto them. I doubt I'll have a need to build another 3.2 anytime soon. But if I do, I know where to start.

Richard

[lindemans]

Quite daring to keep running with potentially contaminated coolers ...

Good you kept the other parts, in particular the case !

[RichHawk]

Daring? No.
Minimized risk? Yes.
But there is risk in sending you stuff out to other people too.
Lost / damaged in shipping
Accidentally damaged during pressure testing.
Residual contaminants left in after professional cleaning.
Oh and then there is the time and money part.

I scrapped my original "gas cleaning" idea.
What I did though was used three different types of virgin solvents/ cleaners with multiple cycles to back flush the cooler. I filtered the flow through a large diameter "fuel filter", and I captured samples of the solvent as it flowed through to check for contaminants before it hit the big filter.

I used low pressure high flow methods at elevated temperatures as well as high pressure on both hot and cold cycles.

I repeated this with hot oil based solvent, swapping out for virgin solvent as soon as it showed any dirty color. Repeat until clean. Switch to cold virgin kerosene, repeat. Switch to brand new water based cleaner solvent, repeat. Finish with high pressure boiling hot water.

Even still somewhere in the system were some metal flakes big enough to get caught in the oil filter. Maybe it was the oil tank. That was really challenging to get all the liquids and solvents out each time because of all the different ports on the thing. Maybe the flakes hid out in there.

Maybe the "professionally cleaned" engine mounted cooler was the culprit. I can assure you it wasn't anywhere inside the engine that these parts came from. Leaving only the oil lines and thermostat. The oil lines I cleaned using a fish tape and swatches of cotton rags like a big gun cleaning kit until the rags came out clean. the Thermostat got the same treatment as the cooler.

So are a couple flakes bad? Not if they all got caught in the oil filter. But if they got into the cam shaft spay bars, and were larger than the spray holes,yes. (How big are those holes?)

So what to do?
Well I went back to the oil filter to see how bad it really was. Surprisingly, the couple big "Flakes" I saw were not. I found they were really little pieces of Three Bond sealant that I used when putting the cases together. And that they were smaller than my memory of them.

Here's some shots. I collected all the debris that the oil filter caught into one little area. Yes there are some small (less than 2mm in width) things I think are still debris flakes from the old engine.




But the long thin gray thing to the left is largest of the Three bond. The black thing next to the three bond is unknown. It's not magnetic. But I guess it could be part of the shattered aluminum from the old cases, shattered piston.

Here's some scale with a 2mm spaced caliper



What's not shown is the sparkle of the metal that was new bearing "breakin" wear. I couldn't get the sparkle stuff to lift out of the fibers of the filter. But the sparkles are so small to be nearly impossible to measure. I expect there will be much less sparkle at each oil change.

All in all, I'm not worried. But I will pay attention.

Richard

[lindemans]

I just had another look at the diagram re the oil system.

That indeed shows that any oil coming from bearings get to the sump, to the external cooler and then to the filter first before going back under pressure to the engine components. So debris in the external oilcooler should get trapped in time in the filter anyway.

[RichHawk]

Originally Posted by lindemans

I just had another look at the diagram re the oil system.

That indeed shows that any oil coming from bearings get to the sump, to the external cooler and then to the filter first before going back under pressure to the engine components. So debris in the external oilcooler should get trapped in time in the filter anyway.

Yeah I studied that diagram for a while myself before deciding how much risk is too much. The only part of the oiling system external to the engine that is not first passed through the oil filter is the oil tank. If there is any crap in the tank, it can go straight into the engine.
But junk in the engine, even little things like the three bond sliver that came loose inside my engine, can't find it's way into the pressure side. Because the scavenge pump sucks it out of the bottom of the engine, and sends it to the oil filter before the pressure side of the oil pump picks up the now filtered oil and sends it to the bearings and cam spray bars.


Richard