Richard's 3.2L total rebuild

[RichHawk]

Just documenting the rebuild I've been doing. Just having a place to put it all down and tie all my threads leading up to this together is helpful.

This began 4.5 months ago when I brought home my 87 Targa with destroyed engine. Engine teardown is documented here.
Guess how much is left!

I found a replacement engine here on Pelican. It is a 3.2 out of an 86 911.
Carrera 3.2 Long block for sale

It was completely disassembled, cleaned and all machine work done and still in pieces.

I cleaned the already clean parts, I weighed and measured all the rotating pieces I matched the pistons pins and rods together.

I bought all of the typical rebuild parts from our host. and I began...

Weeks go by. and I finally just abandon all other responsibilities to put the cases back together.



Given I cleaned the corrosion off of the case bolts and nuts, and I wanted my engine to maintain that "freshly cleaned" look, I decided to clear coat the cases. (no don't worry, I'm not clear coating the cylinders or heads)

So I masked off all the sealing surfaces and holes and used VHT brand clear coat. VHT stands for Very High Temperature. This clear coat is rated for 1500 deg F.

Here's what it looks like now.



Next is deck height and valve to piston checks.
The New 9.5:1 JE Pistons and DC20 cams are next to be test fit together.


More to come,
Richard

[RichHawk]

Measuring cleaning and documenting took more time than actually assembling the cases together.

Here's an example of Excel finally doing something more interesting than charts.

Note that I got one oddball Mahlee cylinder with the 5 KS. These cylinders were all bored and re plated by US Chrome, and came with the engine. So I closely measured every detail to ensure that one Mahle would not yield different deck heights or bore issues. As you can see though different in name, the variances between Cylinders is inconsequential. All measurements of al lsix cylinders are within one half of one thousandths of an inch. Uh, definitely close enough.


The next bit of over anal-ness was torquing, loosening, torquing, loosening then torquing to the right stretch on the ARP Rod Bolts. This proved more time consuming that I would have expected. In retrospect I guess I didn't need to document the length of each bolt at every stage of the above. But I wanted to make sure that all of the bolts acted the same. If one of them had stretched differently than the others I probably would not have used it. Never fear. The ARP bolts were top quality. Even the feel of threading the nuts on by hand was Smooooothe. It made the stock threads feel like they were full of sand by comparison.
All of the ARP bolts stretched to the correct length with a final non static torque between 45 and 50 ft lbs. This matched to what Henry Schmidt said about them, so I'm happy knowing the stock 3.2 bolts won't be an issue. (It's only money right?)

[billybek]

I have been watching your other threads and it will be interesting to see this one go back together.
Subscribed!

[RichHawk]

On A side note, I bought a used El Cheapo Cummins tool Sand blast cabinet for $100
I wanted to do Soda blasting with it, as soda washes away with water hence no worries about left over sand or glass beads in my engine. ( the new engine already came with clean internal parts, so this was for cleaning the parts from my original 3.2L)

I spent a few hours cleaning every grain of sand out of the cabinet it that I could, hooked up a little vacuum to it for dust control, dumped in 40 lbs of soda, and began.
BLAH! Siphon type media nozzles don't get Soda up to the needed speeds to be effective.
I spent a full minute on this piece of sheet metal, for a spot smaller than my thumb, and the soda wasn't even touching the rust.



SO I commence with attempting different nozzle diameters. The soda guys use really small nozzles) I mess with probably a dozen different combinations of diameters and none had significant improvement. Further investigations show that soda blasting uses a presurized media tank to accelerate the soda under high pressure, and really increase it's speed.

I gave up, dumped out the soda, and bought 40 lbs of glass beads. Works like a charm!!!
So far I have only done the sheetmetal. I'm thinking of finding a used dishwasher, and making it be my "Hot tank" because I still can't bring myself to clean anything more than valve covers and timing chain covers with glass beads.

Really a better (and cheaper) investment was the used Harbor Freight "40" gallon parts washer. Add 2 gallons of Purple Power water based cleaner, and dilute with 2 gallons water has done a very good job of cleaning off all traces of grease and grime.

Do ya see the dust? my little "free" vacuum was going a good job of keeping negative pressure in the cabinet up to the point where it died an overheated death. The resulting mess is the last 5 minutes of blasting I did with no vaccum system. Cheap media cabinets LEAK! I did have enough forethought to wheel the half completed engine into a closed door room, and cover it with a sheet, so the dust could not find it's way into it.

[tom1394racing]

I bought a pressure blast unit from Harbor Freight and plumbed it into my Eastwood blast cabinet. I can switch back and forth between the soda blast and bead blast in about 10 minutes and can control the supply pressure to give the surface finish I want.

Works great for me.

[euro911sc]

Nice work! I have found that the glass bead does well for almost anything. I had to go to ALOx when I stripped enamel off some wheel centers. That was a pain, it went everywhere, and it is black... oh well. Now my cab is on wheels and I just move it outside when blasting.

Enjoy!

-m

[cgarr]

Just make sure that blast cabinet is no where near your engine shop!

[E Sully]

Media cabinets are messy. I keep mine in my shed away from the garage. I did get a little warpage using glass beads on my sheet metal, but not too bad. I don't use glass bead on any engine parts.
Good luck with the build, looks great so far.

[RichHawk]

I'm getting a bit smarter with my time.
I realized I could accomplish some tasks at home rather than trying to find the time to do it all at the shop.

Here's one of two things that usually win the competition for my time between them and the Porsche engine.


So I brought the pistons, rings and Cylinders home, measured all the ring gaps. All were within factory specs, and on the small gap side of the tolerance range. most of the compression rings had a gap of 0.2mm.
I was worried that the rig gaps were too close, and I was going to file the rings to be the middle of the range. But this thread comments from Charles at LN engineering changed my mind.

Correct ring end gap


Feel free to comment.

While sitting "watching" bad TV after the kids went to bed, I assembled all the rings onto the pistons, compressed the rings and tapped the pistons down into the cylinders.

There's a couple fewer hours I spend at the shop. Tonight I'm going to try and go get the cam carries, cams, rockers, shafts, and RSR O-rings and see If I can assemble those on the kitchen table too




Richard

[RichHawk]

SO I just couldn't bolt these on without at least a couple of shots on how pretty new parts are..

[euro911sc]

WARNING: Assembling your engine in the kitchen is not advised unless you want a divorce. Make sure all the parts disappear by morning or you will learn the hard lessons I learned

Also, red thread lok is hard to get out of white Corean counter tops... don't ask me how I know

Best regards,

Michael

[RichHawk]

the left side cylinders are on.

Deck height clearances are good. It's almost as if someone planned all of this.

I used the squish solder method, AND I measured the flat edge of the JE pistons too. I couldn't verify that the head and piston might or might not be able to touch at the flat outer edge of the JE pistons.

My "solder" was actually a bit of play dough stolen from my 4 year old. He just was amazed that I was going to fix the Porsche engine using his play dough I used a bit of gray silicone to stick the play dough in place. Worked like a champ.
Plenty of clearance in the curves of piston to head (2.1 to 2.4 mm)



and just the right amount in case that little flat spot on the pistons (red arrows) could touch the mating surface of the head.

[Hcarraro]

Richard,

Thanks for sharing your engine build. Nice work.

Henry

[gearheadgreg]

Nice job Rich! Hope my work is as good and clean. Not likely...

[RichHawk]

Hi Greg!
I've seen your work. It's pretty damn close to this quality of work, Plus you seem to manage it all within mere minutes of thinking of it.. Really how many time Have I heard you say: "I think I'll adapt this engine into this car it was never meant to fit." and then 2 weeks later it's done .

I can't claim the effort of all of these shiny clean parts. I bought them all this way.

Yes I've been doing the cursory cleaning with brakekleen, and then rubbing alcohol and kimwipes. But really the media tumbling and hot tanking done at Ollies for pretty much every external engine part gets the credit.

It truly is far far far nicer than anything I could have accomplished with my parts washer. Bit it wasn't cheap. For all external parts except P&C and Heads, the previous owner spent $650 (includes $150 S&H) last year at Ollie's for media tumbling , hot tanking, R&R of oil plugs, and cleaning the piston squirters. Ouch! But I'm glad in retrospect that it was done.

Certainly I have to publicly thank DrKidneyDr (Larry Greenberg) for doing such a thorough job at getting everything cleaned, machined, and ready for assemble. Then for selling it to me for less than the sum of those parts.
Thanks Larry!

Damn I'm on the verge of having a mental picture of how much I've spent on this engine. Stop! No!!! Don't do it! Depression will set it!!

Richard

[RichHawk]

Here's what it looks like right now.

I am dry assembling to check valve to piston clearance. (I guess I didn't need the air baffles quite yet eh?

So according to Wayne's book, I'm about 1/2 way done. Gah, could I go any slower??

Richard

[gearheadgreg]

Nice work!! That's much better progress than I have made!

[RichHawk]

First time at setting the cam timing, and it really wasn't difficult. This was for checking valve to piston clearance assembly, so it knew it was coming apart again.

I have new DC20 cams that are backdated to the old style "big 46mm nut".

I didn't have any special tools except for a dial indicator. I used a 1-13/16 socket to tighten the 46mm nut. Of course this means I can't hold the cam steady, with the giant socket covering the end of the cam. I snugged the nut up so that the washer was squished flat, but didn't torque it to the full 150 ft lbs.
Surprisingly everything was easy.
The cam did not rotate while tightening the big nut
When removing the big nut while setting the overlap, the cam did not try and spring around.
Holding the cam steady with just a17mm open end wrench on the flats allowed me to relocate the pin to the right spot.
and spinning it around 720 degrees, everything was right on target at 2.2-2.4mm intake valve lift on the dial indicator.

That was all just to find out if the valves were too close. I shouldn't have worried.
the reliefs in the JE pistons meant for plenty of clearances.

The closest either valve came was 3.1mm from the piston. That was intake at 30 deg after TDC starting the intake stroke.

Of course it's torn apart again, because now I get to do it all again, this time with sealants on the gaskets...

Richard

[RichHawk]

CCed the heads today.
Step by step procedure on how to cc your head volume

Whoopiee. You would need a time lapse camera set for 1 year to measure my progress of recent. Maybe if I worked instead of doing writeups...... Oh well gotta go buy a snow shovel and clean the driveway off (Where's my Global Warming!!!!). Maybe tomorrow I'll get the cylinders sealed down and heads re-attached.
Richard

[rgdtoo]

Good Stuff!