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Hmm. It seems everyone's been reloading this thread for updates too often and Imagecave has had a head-fit. No matter.

Turners have a £150 surcharge on their units and I'm pretty certain mine's not going to be acceptable for reworking, so I'll pick up a Paddock head as I'm passing on the way to the Maker Faire. In the meantime, I'll tidy up the wiring around the engine bay and maybe fit some bulkhead soundproofing.

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Hmm. It seems everyone's been reloading this thread for updates too often and Imagecave has had a head-fit. No matter.

Turners have a £150 surcharge on their units and I'm pretty certain mine's not going to be acceptable for reworking, so I'll pick up a Paddock head as I'm passing on the way to the Maker Faire. In the meantime, I'll tidy up the wiring around the engine bay and maybe fit some bulkhead soundproofing.

I brought one from john craddocks. Which i guess is the same supplier for paddocks. Looks okay, but i have yet to run it!

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Hmm. It seems everyone's been reloading this thread for updates too often and Imagecave has had a head-fit. No matter.

no help with the head, but this is what you get with a free photobucket account ;) ;) ...

Album Size 144 MB (14%) Max 1 GB

Monthly Bandwidth 1.2 GB (4%) Max 25 GB

Total Pictures and Videos 1319

Monthly Hits 15310

Steve

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I don't know what a Paddock or Craddock head look like inside but mine's <ruff>, like the dog! Big bits of casting flashing, incomplete machining and it's quite a porous casting around the rocker chest. None of it's bad enough to send it back (yet) but, after buying the cheapest head on the market, predictably I'm not impressed.

16032009070s.jpg

16032009072s.jpg

There will be some fettling and scooping with a Dremel before I can start lapping the valves in, that's for sure.

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Not a very nice finish. Having said that, with a turbocharger presurising the airflow, porting isnt going to make a big difference. The inside of a normal tdi turbocharger doesnt look much better. Still, show us the result when your done!

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I expect that improving the flow at all will have a very marginal difference, but if the rough edges are still in the casting, I'd know and that'd bug me. Anyone know how much material is behind the 'swirl' lumps before I find coolant?

Any clues how I get the dowel for this hole out of the old head? I cleaned it up with ether and heated it to expand the aluminium to grab it with pliers, but predictably that just gave me a cylinder head that was on fire.

16032009074s.jpg

(Note the lovely incomplete casting across the back face of the valve chest)

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Mine came with those pegs already fitted. They are an interference fit, so I imagine will be difficult to remove. If the old head is scrap, then drill down either side of it a couple or so times and it'll come out.

You can buy new ones - ETC8470 - Dowel ring.

Les.

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Mine came with those pegs already fitted. They are an interference fit, so I imagine will be difficult to remove. If the old head is scrap, then drill down either side of it a couple or so times and it'll come out.

You can buy new ones - ETC8470 - Dowel ring.

Les.

I just brought new ones. Its not worth the effort.. I'm pretty sure they were pennies

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I built the head up and fitted it today. I bought a number of small bits including the dowels above - seemed easier. I forgot to buy the dowels that locate the head into the block but one stayed in the block and I managed to delicately rescue the other from the old head - it seems to have gone together ok.

Some nasty bits of the casting:

21032009087s.jpg

Rather than get aggressive with porting for huge flows (and end up touching the water jacket and scrapping the head) I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and I mostly just tidied up rough edges, smoothed out the lumps and took out the flashing in the casting. I've left the valve guides at standard length and I've tried to leave the swirl ramps as they were. Here's an example of the pic above after my tidying:

21032009088s.jpg

In the same vein, I cleaned up the valves:

21032009089s.jpg

This is getting silly, it's only good for 4500rpm and I'm not going to open the pump up any more:

21032009091s.jpg

Next, two happy hours of this:

21032009092s.jpg

Then dressing the head with studs, thermostat housing, blanking plugs and heater bits.

22032009095s.jpg

I annealed all the copper washers that were going to be used in the build:

22032009097s.jpg

Heater plugs and injectors going in.

22032009099s.jpg

The injectors seal at the bottom with a copper washer - this should have the pointy bit upwards; slide them down a long screwdriver to make sure they don't flip over on their way down. Use the tapered end of a long wooden pencil to pull the old ones out if you have a used head.

22032009100s.jpg

and then I built up the valves, twice. Note at this intermediate stage, the new shiny valve stem seals which should be in the head now. :rolleyes: Don't put the rocker shaft in now either, you'll have to take it back out to get the pushrods in.

22032009102s.jpg

Then, some considerable torquing later, the head's in place.

22032009103s.jpg

I have to admit - while I was waiting for TroddenMasses to fetch me his torque wrench because I'm too lazy to buy one in the week, I had an attack of feminism and tarted up bits of the engine bay. Andy M won't be pleased, none of it's colour-coordinated but I like it. More photos to come.

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Lifting eyes are dead weight but I'd only lose them otherwise. I worked away for most of this week but finished it off today, including my tarty paint job:

23032009106s.jpg

but I'm not entirely pleased with the result. Just to recap, I had cracks in the head:

04032009002s.jpg

and evidence of water having got into the bore of #3 cylinder:

100_1027s.jpg

Now it's running but breathing heavily: see

. What've I done wrong? I can't see how the head could be contributing to heavy breathing (since I remembered to fit the valve stem seals anyway) so I guess it's coming past the rings on #3 and so the whole thing's got to come apart again... :(
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Good call Tony - I'll do a compression test and a blowby test. I had a grownup come and look at it today too, he reckons it might be within sensible limits for blowby (from the rings). It's hard to tell how much breather gas I have compared to a normal Tdi, since they normally vent into the inlet. If my test works I'll post up the method and results.

James - not bad for a three page thread, that's the first mention I think. :P

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Well, I checked the tappets and found they were all over the place. On closer inspection, I'm not sure how I missed number 1 screw adjuster being bent, so I've changed them all for good measure:

31032009123s.jpg

One needed cutting out, it wouldn't unscrew despite not being visibly bent, and the third one is included for interest - the lubricating hole down the middle is completely blocked.

Unfortunately I clumsily bent a pushrod when bolting the rocker shaft back in :wacko: so I'm going back to the parts shop.

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Right, it's back together and since all the tappets are set to 0.20mm instead a couple at 2mm, the nasty rattling noise has gone too :rolleyes: .

I wondered if the head gasket is venting into the pushrod holes, so I conducted a very scientific test of holding my hand over each. In an attempt to further quantify this, I held a rag over the rocker chest and ran the engine at tickover from cold. 10 secs of running gave the following two results:

01042009134s.jpg

01042009135s.jpg

Showing slightly more oil splash from the front end of the engine? But when I warm the engine up a bit more, not so much fog from the breather pipe, and no pressure when I block it with my finger. Not conclusive, but I think I've been worrying over nothing?

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