No Oil To Cams

[jerseypug 1]

after fitting the new head gasket on the mi16, i started it up and heard a lot of ratteling from the top end. i turned it off and removed the cam cover to find it was bone dry. no oil has got up there. there is oil pressure in the engine. the cam carrier at the pully end is no.5 which has the hole in it for the spray bar, and even with turning the engine over without the oil spray bar in no oil appears. does anyoun have any idea what it could be?

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

there is a small gauze oil filter in the main oil way to the head . it sits in the hole in the head only accessible with the head off (iirc) maybe this is blocked or you've managed to fit the gasket on the wrong way and blocked the oil way(which i dont think is possible)?

 

did all the holes line up when you laid the gasket onto the head?

 

sounds like you're head needs to come off again

 

dont take my word for it though.....second opinion anyone?

[jerseypug 1]

in the haynes manual it sais that the tab with the indetification marks on is on the left hand side of the engine which is the way i put it in but the original one appeared to be on the right. does anyone know which part of the head the oil rises in and which side the sticking out tab goes to?

[jerseypug 1]

i cleaned the small oil filter but did not check the holes on the head gasket after reading the haynes manual and the side the tab goes on. looking more like i have put it the wrong way around.

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

sorry to be the bearer of bad news but i just popped out to the garage and laid my new hg onto my bare block . the tab goes to the right . the gasket fits fine the other way except the oil feed is blocked off.

 

the oil feed enters the head at the front left hand side of the engine

[jerseypug 1]

i was expecting the worst. cheers for your help. i hadbest get back into the garage.

[Sandy 189]

This is a common mistake on TU engines, i've known three cases of it by friends of mine, one trashed a brand new set of cams and the head which he'd just had worked, the belt slipped as a result and did all the valves in too, bad news.

[littlemike 0]

It's the confusion between left and right when stood looking into the engine bay compared to the left and right of the car when sat in the drivers seat.

 

If you look properly at the gasket when you lay it on the block you can't go wrong though.

[jerseypug 1]

thanks for everyones help. i have taken the head off and put the gasket in the right way. i hope the cams are allright. i had plenty of oil on them when i fitted them and only ran it for a few minuits.

[jerseypug 1]

just started it up and it sounds like a diesel! i ran it for a bit and it sounds bad. im gutted. my first special stage rally is in 4 days.

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

was it just ticking over ? yuo need full oil pressure to fill up the tappets which is at least around 2500rpm i think. they do take a while to settle down

[jerseypug 1]

you might have just made my day. i hope you are right and i will keep my fingers crossed and try it again tomorrow.

[jerseypug 1]

not looking good. just driven about a mile at 2500 revs and still sounding like a bag of spanners.

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

so, you've got good oil pressure , oil going to the head . are the spray bars in properly ? there was no damage done when you run it the other day with no oil ?

 

probably irrelevant but is the cam timing ok and the belt tensioned correctly .

 

 

these can be noisy engines though and noisy tappets can take a while to quiten down.

[PumaRacing 1]

Is there a "Darwin Award" equivalent for killing your engine rather than yourself I wonder. Not quite as good as trying to port it by pouring grit into the intake manifold while it's running if that in fact turns out to be true but putting the head gasket on the wrong way round must be up there somewhere.

 

I've seen some crackers in my time though. A guy who tried to build a Cosworth engine by himself without realising the block had been line bored so the standard crank bearings gave 20 thou bearing clearance instead of 3. He tried three different oil pumps without getting any oil pressure before finding out what was wrong.

 

Then there was a customer of mine from many years ago who tried to save money by replacing his long standing and top notch race mechanic with a lad who didn't know his arse from his elbow. He killed one of my engines by taking the head off for a refurb but leaving the spilled water in the bores for three weeks by which time it was rusted into oblivion and another by not realising that oil pumps need to be primed before first start up on new CVH engines.

 

He flattened two fully charged batteries cranking it over for an hour trying to get oil pressure up by which time the crank bearings were knackered and the crank was scored.

 

Then there have been several cases of people trying to use solid lifters with hydraulic camshafts in CVHs because they think solid lifters are "race" or better than stock and turning the whole top end into swarf.

 

Oh yes, the customer who didn't want to spend out on a rolling road session so he guessed the ignition timing on his new race engine and melted a hole right through one piston crown.

 

I'm sure there must be many more but memory eludes me just now.

[jackherer 543]

i have taken the head off and put the gasket in the right way.

 

you reused the gasket?

[Sandy 189]

Let's hear some of your personals Dave, every engine builder has something he'd rather forget!!

 

Recently I was setting up a friends cams by dial gauge and, I don't know how or why, did them 180 degrees out and wondered why it wouldn't start for a minute until I realised, but it got worse after I sorted them out. I tensioned the belt and didn't turn it over by hand before trying to start it, somehow I must have got the belt dog-dog on the crank or waterpump because it went loose immediately and the inevitable happened. It can happen to anyone!

[boombang 2]

I've personally seen two cases of premature engine wear resulting from people having engine components blasted.

 

1. Inlet manifold shot blasted before painting but neither runner ports or throttle end were covered. When the rings failed shortly after the whole engine was full of grit, and some of the beads were still stuck to the inside of the greasy inlet.

 

2. Head + block were sand blasted, not cleaned out and obviously it died very quickly.

 

My worst blunder was during the current rallycar build - It had been running but after some re-wiring it would no longer start.

 

I checked all my wiring, checked all the fuelling setup, checked for spark, checked the timing a few times, tried plugs, leads, cap, arm, another dizzy, another AFM, temp sensor - hours and hour worth of work.

 

Finally found that when cranking there was no signal to the injectors. As you let the key go back to 2nd position it sprayed a few bursts of fuel - these had left the plugs wet and mistaken me into thinking there was fuel.

 

Turned out that the blue wire that sends the live signal from 3rd position had an "immobiliser" type switch in that a previous owners fitted and the push fitting on the back of the switch had simply fallen off.

 

Suppose it was better to find that out then than on a rally stage!

[jerseypug 1]

so, you've got good oil pressure , oil going to the head . are the spray bars in properly ? there was no damage done when you run it the other day with no oil ?

 

probably irrelevant but is the cam timing ok and the belt tensioned correctly .

these can be noisy engines though and noisy tappets can take a while to quiten down.

 

loads of oil pressure, cam timeing spot on, cams and housings look ok, spray bars in ok. loads of oil comeing out of them now, belt tension is fine. drives ok. i have replaced the oil but is still like custard. my mate is comeing over who knows what he is doing and is going to look at it. the hydrolic tappets are all firm so i presume they have filled with oil.

i did reuse the gasket as it had only been in for a day or so.

water temp is fine

as for the darwin award, i am a carpenter who is trying to get my car ready for a rally in 4 days. i am getting about 3 hours sleep each night and getting desperate. i know i made a big mistake and am trying to see if there is any way i havent completly shagged my engine.i have got 6 marshalls, a co driver and service crew comeing from overseas. The pressure is on.

dave, if you were having a go at putting a pitched hip roof on your house and had problems i like to think i would help you out rather than laugh at you.

[Pugnut 9 1 Cars]

i have replaced the oil but is still like custard.

 

i did reuse the gasket as it had only been in for a day or so.

water temp is fine.

 

1, the oil is like custard after being replaced ? what oil are you using ? have you tried a flushing oil?

 

2,doesnt really matter if the gaskets been tightened down for 30 seconds, its still been compressed into shape and shouldn't be reused. Personaly if i had done what you had done i would have replaced the headgasket and the stretchbolts as peice of mind.

[jerseypug 1]

i didnt think they are stretch bolts on the mi

the ones i used were well under the maximun length.

the oil is still like custard and is comeing out the top of the dip stick. i didnt change the filter as it was just cheap oil to flush everything through and was going to change it when i put the decent oil in. the oil level is showing double what it should but it is hard to get a level off it as it is such a mess in there. it was 5 litres i put in from empty.

living in jersey it takes 4 days for parts to arrive so a new head gasket would be too late.

i do have a gallon of petrol and a match which i might use if i miss the rally!

i am more concerned with the noise comeing out of it. even if the head gasket isnt sealing i doubt it would make the noise it is making.

its not using any water, temp is just right and it runs ok. it just sounds like a daf truck.

sick of the sight and smell of it so am having a pint and hopefully wont wake up at 4.00am thinking about why i put the head gasket in the wrong way.

i am going to flush it through again tomorrow, put some decent oil in it, change the filter, give it a run and hopefully my fairy godmother would have fixed whatever the problem was and all will be ok.

beer is kicking in now so time to dream of a sweet sounding mi16 engine purring away.

[PumaRacing 1]

Let's hear some of your personals Dave, every engine builder has something he'd rather forget!!

 

I'm trying to think but the only things that have ever gone wrong in 15 years are bought in components failing. I'm so anally retentive I check everything about 10 times before sending anything out. So far, touch wood, not a single comeback.

 

I had a valve spring failure on an MGB engine I built 10 years ago due to Piper Cams not heat treating their springs properly. They didn't break but they sagged by 3mm and the engine then wouldn't rev over 5,500. Looks like one of Smackowen's might have broken but it never came back to me for examination so I can't really say what caused what. Again nothing much I could have done to prevent it.

 

The only time I've ever gone out to fix something was when a friend asked me to rebuild his Renault 25 V6 engine that someone else had already stripped down. Never have seen one before or stripped this one down myself I relied on the Haynes manual he gave me to set the cam timing up. However the marks on the components didn't match up to the pictures in the book. He turned up late afternoon to collect it while I was deep in thought trying to work things out. I told him it didn't look right and I really needed to set up a dial gauge and work things out from first principles to make sure. "How long's that going to take?" he asked. "Best you come back tomorrow" I said.

 

"Nah, it needs to be fitted tonight. I'm sure it's ok, I trust you."

 

I tried to explain it was nothing to do with trust. I was sure it was wrong and it was easier to fix now than when it was installed in the car but he loaded it up and took it away anyway. Sure enough it didn't run properly. Turns out it was the wrong bloody Haynes manual he'd given me and the engine had changed for later models. His timing was ok on one bank but 180 cam degrees out on the other. Took me about 4 hours to remove the rad and timing covers and move the timing on one bank by 180 degrees but it was his own fault really.

 

Funny end to that story though. The garage he used to fit the engine back into the car was a big pukka garage full of time served mechanics who reckoned they knew a bit about engines. So I turn up with my Draper tools compared to their Snap-On ones and they think here's the clueless twat who cocked it up in the first place. The guy who had done the compression test to work out it only had pressure on one bank wandered up.

 

"Be a bugger to fix now it's in the car mate" he goes "cos it's the bank with the rear timing chain that's wrong so you have to remove the front chain and pulleys first to even get at that." (Renault V6's have two timing chains driving the cam in each head off the same crank pulley, one behind the other)

 

"No sweat" I said, "I'll just move the front chain by 360 crank degrees instead and then they'll both be right."

 

"Don't be so fecking stupid" he goes, "then you'll end up with both banks 360 degrees out instead of just one wrong"

 

I tried to explain the 4 stroke engine cycle to him but all I got was glassy eyed stares. You can't have both banks of a V engine wrong if you move either of them by one crank revolution when one is 180 cam degrees out to start with. Same principle as you can move a straight 4 engine by 360 crank degrees and it ends up exactly where it started from.

 

He wanders off shaking his head at my stupidity and then made himself scarce when the engine fired up first turn of the key sometime later.

 

I know most people on here won't even know what I'm on about but I'll try and explain. When you fit a cam to a 4 pot engine you just get No1 piston to TDC and then line the marks up. The engine doesn't care if that's an induction stroke or an exhaust one. Whichever it is the next crank revolution will be the alternative stroke. On a V engine you have two banks which operate 360 crank degrees apart from each other. In this case they were both on an induction stroke (or both on an exhaust stroke) at the same time. I moved the easier to get to and 'wrong' bank by 360 degrees to correct this which just turned the bank which had been correctly on an induction stroke into an exhaust stroke and left the other bank on the properly opposed induction stroke. Yeah I know it's hard but think about it. Draw some diagrams or summat.

 

Anyone who actually gets this let me know because they actually understand the 4 stroke engine cycle.

[yeti-dj 7]

i managed a similar thing on a 16 valve polo that we had as a track car, managed to get both cams opening all the valves at the same time, some how though we repositioned the belt and sorted the cams and it ran fine, amazing no bent valves but it did throw the cam belt and kill the engine but this was about 5000 miles later by the next owner so maybe not my fault???

[max0 5]

Anyone who actually gets this let me know because they actually understand the 4 stroke engine cycle.

 

I think i understand this as the crank has to rotate 360 degrees for each stroke (be it a induction or exuast) So 720 degrees for a full cycle (sorry dont know the corret term for a inuction and exuast stroke)

 

So if both banks where the same, by rotating the crank 360 degrees with the timing undone (just on one bank) would change it from say an induction stoke to exuast or vice versa.

 

Is this correct or am i pissing in the wind?

Edited October 9, 2006 by max0

[smckeown 1]

Looks like one of Smackowen's might have broken but it never came back to me for examination so I can't really say what caused what.

 

Erm there's no 'might' about it. The spring you provided broke into 3 pieces

 

 

Again nothing much I could have done to prevent it.

 

No, but people might be shocked to know you charged me (via QEP) for the 2 new Puma Big Valves I needed to replace as result of the breakage after appox 4 hours of engine on time Great after service