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All Spark and No Bark


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On 10/8/2021 at 3:42 PM, FridgeFreezer said:

If you haven't seen it, look out Ian's ( @Bull Bar Cowboy ) meticulous V8 rebuild thread in the technical archive, he did a beautiful and meticulous job on that.

My laptop decided to die (I'm having a great month) so it's difficult to use the search function but I cannot bring up a thread on it... Can you easily get it? 

I did try!

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Shame about the photos on that one but the text serves as a checklist, at least.

 

I've done something stupid. I was bolting up the big ends last night doing the manuals instruction of 20nm and then 80 degrees further.

Got distracted by something ridiculous and tightened the same bolt, but realised about 20 degrees into the extra turn. So 20nm, 80 degrees and then 20.

I don't want to slacken it off as they're stretch bolts, the rod can move on the crank freely but nor do I want yet another potential time bomb on the car.

Is this likely to be an issue and I need to buy a new bolt?

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Just read this on Bad Obsession's Patreon page - if it can happen to them it can happen to the best of us!

Quote

We never thought it would be easy...

However we didn't reckon on the mini fighting us at every turn lately. The show we took it to threw up some issues that have been complicated and difficult to fix. The car is significantly less finished than it was two months ago.

The clutch actuation has been particularly problematic, we're now a couple of flat out weeks and five iterations into it. Think it's okay though, finally. There's no point in not doing the work now despite it putting the scheduled filming weeks behind. If the car is unusable, it's useless and we didn't want to pull the entire dash, HVAC and bulkhead apart once the interior had been installed to fix it.

Along with the clutch issues, it selected all the gears at Weston Park, but a week later it didn't. The alternator drive exploded before the event. The rear brake discs were the wrong size, and we only found out after drilling them both to the four stud fixing. The matching new gauges don't actually match and you can imagine how that makes Nik feel... Grr. It's been a battle.

Providing we haven't burnt it over the next few days, we hope to start filming the rest of episode 37 next week.

 

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It wasn't intentionally dramatic, at the time of posting I didn't know exactly how bad it was so wanted to wait until I knew more.

So you may recall I replaced some of the rear lifters to see if they were the cause of my top end noise (in desperation) before I could decide it was probably a slipped liner. At that time, the carefully run-in cam and lifters were all fine.

 

I received my block back and started cleaning everything up to re-assemble.

During cleaning, the 4th lobe from rear looked like this:

 

 

PXL_20211013_163211887.thumb.jpg.5d06e8d934116bae026a85fd36e51dc9.jpg

I hadn't checked it as it had only run for about 15 minutes before the full stripdown. It just never occured to me to look for damage.

The brand new lifter looked like this:

PXL_20211013_204901570.jpg.e5dd893f1d2b851b01b64f388f297ea6.jpg

That is a very pronounced groove dug into the middle. I knew this was trashed without question, the unknown part was if the cam could be polished or repaired in some way so I sent it to Turner's and they've confirmed the cam can't be salvaged. Their best guess is that the lifter got stuck and was unable to revolve as they are designed to, so it wore in the same place. Bear in mind how little time this took.

If I had even thought to look for cam damage before sending off the block I would be a week ahead by now, but I didn't because of how little time I'd put on it.

I now have a new cam on its way to me which is extremely annoying, but Turners have been great throughout this and I cannot speak highly enough of them.

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Glad to see you haven't given up.

So now you have a block you can be confident in and new cam and lifters coming. Did Turners give any comment or advice on the lifter housing where it stuck? If they gave the block a  bill of good health was it just grit or dirt that caused it? Possibly a bad lifter?

Anyway onwards and upwards looking forward to hearing good news.

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Quick question,

I was never quite sure when I was fitting the timing gear what was the best setup. In this photo it looks like the marks line up, but in reality the big cog is always 1/2 a tooth left or right of the crank mark. It cannot line up exactly. I remember Mark talking about this in a 4x4 Is Born...

image.png.d891ab52f462d955718009141a8696d4.png

I would assume a slight mechanical advance would be good? Which, unless I am very mistaken would be left of the crank mark.

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I'll do that then, it looks more lined up in the photo than it actually is. Or I should say, was. That is from the previous build-up of the engine as I haven't been able to get time to go out and do anything on it and frankly I don't have much motivation this week.

 

I had better get it done soon. Just to build a fake sense of drama, my MOT is booked for the 1st. If I don't get everything finished before then, I'm going to lose the shop!*

 

 

*or I'm going to phone to rebook it the Friday before.

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Thanks, that's what I've done.

Might have just made yet another mistake in a long line of mistakes. I've used Tiger Seal to seal the sump but having thought about it, I don't think it's oil resistant. Much of a risk?

I have about 4 hours of work before I put it in the car so it's now or never.

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