hows the project going? any new updates/pics?

So Adam, a new motor wont help you at auto cross, now that I am in your class...lol, I will see you on the 31'st, can't wait to see how my new tires run, I was thinking about doing a motor rebuild too but on an S2 or 3.0 968, to drop in latter on down the road...but then we wouldn't be in the same auto cross class.....hmmmmm
keep us posted as I maybe picking your brain when I do mine
see you at the Auto Cross
James

oh yeah this whole thing. Sorry about the lack of posts but, I've basically put this to the side. The motor ended up having too many problems and I decided not to spend a fortune on it. :rolleyes:

My plan now is to just put this motor to the side in case I need any spare parts and use the parts I ordered for it on the one that's in the car. So far I have basically all the gaskets, bearings, seals, and freeze plugs for it. I want to start by taking my engine out this winter and doing the clutch and some bottom end work but I'm not 100% sure just yet. If I do I'll need rod bearings (didn't get them with the other parts cause I wasn't sure if I would need undersized) a crank scraper and I'm thinking about getting raceware studs. Both of the last things aren't necessary I just want do them while i'm in there since I will be driving the ***** out of the car a lot and don't want a rod bearing failure. I also have to get a clutch kit.

So maybe I'll start with the engine in the car and do the head gasket/top end. I don't know I'll see how much money and time I want to spend.

Feel free to ask me questions though I learned a lot from just tearing that motor down.

I'm back at it
 

I'm sure most of you thought this thread was dead and I completely gave up in this project... well that's not too far from the truth. I did give up on the spare motor I bought but, I still had the problem of my engine burning oil and running quite rough.

So about a month and a half ago I decided to go through with my second plan that I came up with last October and rebuild the top end of the engine that's in the car. I figured I wouldn't have to spend much money on this since I had a Lindsey Racing engine rebuild kit just collecting dust in my basement.

I decided that the best time to start this project would be on my spring break from school since I would have a lot of free time when I wasn't at work. Once I was on spring break from school I started tearing into the engine. That was on March 19th. I kept saying that the whole thing would only take a couple weeks. But then a couple weeks turned into a couple more weeks and that turn into a couple more weeks and well here I am on May 3rd and my car is still sitting in the garage. :rolleyes:

I am getting very close though and hopefully it will be done soon. I'm sorry for not updating this thread sooner but I decided last minute that this was a good opportunity to bring some closer to this project thread and give some more info to anyone who was considering doing something like this themselves.

I'll post pictures and explain what I've been doing over the past month or so throughout the next few days. But to give you an idea of where I am right now I'm reassembling everything and I am finishing replacing the front seals. The cylinder head and cam housing are on and I'm waiting for my most recent order from Pelican Parts to come in so I can bring this project to an end.

Here's what It looks like right now:
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0428-00523.jpg
Check back soon for updatesSmileWavy

I'll start at the beginning in March... Here's what I found upon first inspection on my engine
Oil in the intake
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0314-00331.jpg
And oil on the spark plugs
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0320-00341.jpg
This was only the beginning of what I found wrong with the engine...

I started by taking the airbox, intake and fuel rail off. Since I had done this before it went very smoothly and didn't take me much time. I do have a recommendation to anyone who needs to take their fuel rail off though:
On Clark's Garage it says to just pull the rail straight up once the four bolts have been removed. However, I found that in all the three times I've taken a fuel rail off this doesn't always go quite as smoothly as the Clark's instructions make it sound. This is especially true if the injector seals are old and hard. The first time I did this one of the injector "hats" got pulled off the end of the injector and stuck in the intake manifold. Another time one of the clips came off the top where the injector goes into the rail. I figured out that a much easier way to take the rail off is to remove these clips at the top of the injectors and pull the fuel rail off with the injectors still in the intake manifold. Then you can leave the injectors in the manifold if you don't need to remove them for any reason or you can remove them in a more careful way one at a time once the intake is off.

Once I had the intake and fuel rail off I moved into some other familiar territory, removing the timing belt and water pump. I decided to remove the radiator too for a few reasons; 1) Since this was a semi long term project I decided the extra room would be worth it 2)My rad was really wobbly which I quickly realized was due to the fact that it was only held on by one of the four rubber mounts :eek: And 3) I may have accidentally lost part of the drain plug in the rad and I wanted to try and shake it out. oops

Anyways once I got the rad out and all the belts off I realized just how much a favor I was doing my engine by rebuilding it. Look what I found:
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0326-00342.jpg
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0326-00343.jpg
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0326-00348.jpg
http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0326-00350.jpg
There was oil leaking everywhere. Even on the timing belt! Needless to say that was scary to see.

Good to see you're back at it! Those are some oily pictures ;)

On my V70 2.5 TDI (Audi engine) I had a similar amount of oil leakage through to the whole front side of the engine. The leakage was only caused by the crankshaft seal.. I was really lucky to discover the tensioner pulley was completely shot and the belt wasn't under tension at all before it all came off unexpectedly... The engine still is a great runner after replacing all timing belt parts AND the crankshaft seal. (413k km = 258k statute miles.)

I keep on reading this topic!

Rudeboy - keep it coming. It's great to see this stuff.

I have a similar mess on the front of my 83. I'll be doing that crank green o-ring soon - parts are on order for it.

now with an oily belt would that keep it fresh longer?
sound like you are coming along nicely and should be out driving again soon, what do you have left to do? and let me know if you need any help

Thanks guys, I figured some of you would appreciate seeing what I'm doing.

AKCJ, good luck with doing the front seals. It isn't too hard especially if you've changed a timing belt before. Are you going to do all the seals while you're in there or just the crank shaft seal?

James, I should be done very soon. I just got my last order of parts in from Pelican today. They came a day early too! I was very excited when I found them in my garage today before school. Right now I mostly just need to put the intake back on and do a belt job. So nothing I have done before :D

I have a coffee run for 5/15/11, can you make that? after I run it with our group I will post it to CRV.
Open to any one in the south west CT area, PM me
James

thats one slippery eel!:eek: haha but seriously good stuff, i need to do this soon so im glad your putting the pictures up.

Thanks. I already did the other seals. I skipped the o-ring because I couldn't get the sleeve off. It turned out that the green o-ring was really the worst leak. I have a new sleeve on order so I won't have to worry about ruining the old one.

This will be my 3rd or 4th belt change - the Arnnworx tool is great.

Whats the prognosis on the entire engine. Worth the rebuild. I picked up a replacement engine that was supposed to be ready to install from a place here in Ontario called Whaletail. Did what i always do. With the intension of starting with all new belts, seals and bearing. Everything except the rings. Should have though! Pulled the head and the pistons were bear to rat crap. Looked like a severe belt break and all they did was replace the belt and go. The cylinder walls were destroyed. Should have heard me yell when i took it back. He gave me my money back though.

Oh man that's bad. At least you got your money back.

The other engine that I originally started this thread with needed way too much machine work. It would have cost me a couple grand to get it all done so I said screw it.

So where was I with my story time? Oh yeah, so after I realized how bad the oil leaks actually were I moved on to the cam housing and cylinder head.

I was as careful as I could be when I took the cam housing bolts out but I still managed to strip two of them. One of those I didn't realize until after I tried taking the housing off and wondered why it wouldn't come loose...oops. It turned out to be in the worst spot too right by the strut tower so it was nearly impossible to get the drill in there to drill it out. My advise to anyone taking any allen headed bolts off is to a) follow the "waking up" Procedure on clark's (It works wonders most of the time) and b) have a good drill and drill bit ready just in case.

Once I got the cam housing off I once again realized why I was doing this. The gasket was destroyed. It was very hard and brittle and came off in two pieces.

Here's what it looked like when I was done.

http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0327-00355.jpg

And here's the gasket

http://i698.photobucket.com/albums/v...0327-00359.jpg

Taking the cam housing off isn't very hard to do by yourself even if it's your first time. Just go slow and tilt it towards you so you don't loose any lifters. When I did it none of them fell out.

great info....how are you coming with it? it's been almost a year since.....would you be continuing?i will be getting a non running 85.4 and would attemp my first rebuild, your play by play 411 is really great.

Actually I finished the engine up sometime last May (I forgot exactly when) and it ran fine. I ended up buying another 944 last October since I wanted to move to something cleaner that needed less work. This red car was recently parted out but I'm still selling a lot of the parts from it including this engine.