[engine_work] Mad's - Supercharged Pug Project

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Just a quick up date... I've set up self the task of engine out in 3hrs.... so far after 90mins.... working on my own in the dark with only a lead light, I have:

 

- put the car on stands

- removed both drive shafts

- removed the charger cooler

- removed main rad

- removed all coolant hoses

- removed oil cooler

- removed slam panel

- removed bumper

- disconnected loom

- disconnected clutch cable

- disconnected exhaust

 

Still to go...

- speedo cable

- oil feed and return hoses

- battery platform / gearbox mount

- top engine mount

- lower engine mount

- Engine out!!!

 

See what happens over the next couple of days when I can fit the car in once the baby is sleeping!!

 

Mad.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Hello Supercharging friends! I've finally managed to sneak back into the garage to start stripping down the engine. One of cylinders stripped down, had a really low compression, but can see any problems, other than the rings being quite loose.

 

Here are some pics:

 

Note: The cylinder head, the face has 'honing' marks, never seen this before. There is also a mark going out from the cylinder in the picture towards the water jacket, conerned about this.

 

Note: the bearings were down to the copper!

 

Note: No sure if the crank will need regrinding.

 

Comments please, as I have never pulled an engine part like this before.

 

Mad.

Edited January 24, 2009 by madspikes

[welshpug 1,622]

marks on the head = its been off and skimmed before.

 

 

whereabouts is the mark? that sounds like the point of failure.

 

as for the crank I'd take it to an engineers for them to check over for you

[M@tt 77]

most engineering places will check your crank for free and tell you whether it just needs a polish or a grind

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

My XU5t thread may help you as it has lots of pics of the engine in bits. If you have a suitable micrometer you can measure the journals yourself, otherwise take it to a machine shop. From the pic I think you may get away with a polish, but you'll need to either measure it or get it measured to know for sure.

 

Also have a look at the head gasket in particular the fire rings, these can often tell you a lot if the gasket has failed, although from reading your posts above there is no mention of water system being pressurised excessively and I thought you had pulled the engine for the rings?

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

It’s been a while since my last up date, as progress has been slow.

 

Strip down day..

 

A friend came over for the day, with the idea that we would strip my 3 pug engines and try to collect enough good parts to rebuild one good engine. It all started badly, we finished stripping the first engine (the one last in the car). The engine was all junk. The liners had really bad scoring, which looked too bad to be machined out sensibly. The pistons also looked really badly warn and scuffed, which again had deep scoring. The crank was just as knackered, and looked to be too far past machining. Indeed the only good thing to come out of that engine was the block itself!

The second engine, which was supposed to be the good’en, bar the broken head bolt, looked to be able to provide a crank and pistons. The third engine (a 1.6) had fantastic pistons, crank, liners and a new looking oil pump. But with it being a 1.6 only the liners and pump were useable, so maybe prime ebay fodder!

 

By the time we had disassembled and assessed the collection of parts it was time for my mate to go home. As he works for an automotive engineering company I sent him off with the crank, liners, pistons, pump and a pair of cylinder heads to be fully assessed (I have 5 in stock). He left me with 3 benches of parts all lined up all around the garage needing to be filed away in such a way that we knew where everything came from.

 

Parts Assessment.

 

The full assessment of parts wasn’t too good. The pistons once cleaned revealed a large (deeper than expected) dent where a valve had impacted - the reason why this particular engine was being torn down. The diagnosis was that the pistons could be used, but not ideally. There was better news on the crank (well for the moment) when measured it looked to be within spec. The news on the liners was even better, all they need was a quick honing, which was duly done. There was equally good news on the cylinder heads, one was defo good, all it needed was a good clean and quick skim, oh and new valve guides.

 

 

MAd.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Engine Cleaning and painting.

 

While the rest of the engine was away I got on with the cleaning and painting of the block. The bare block was cleaned using a mixture of WD40, brake cleaner and some parts cleaner stuff, oh and a stiff brush and tooth brush. After a couple of hours of scrubbing and a quick jet washing, the block was ready for painting. After reading many threads on cleaning and painting engines I decided that I’d just spray hammersite the block stain black, and given the nice weather I’d do it outside. Looks great but will it last - have to wait and see!

With the outside of the block looking so good, the inside of the block needed some attention. So it was back to the brake cleaner, parts cleaner liquid stuff and a sotch pad to clean up the inside of the block.

 

From this:

 

To this:

 

To this:

 

 

Dry Build.

 

My mate was back over to assist in a dry build of engine, now that a large box of new 205 parts had arrived. We decided that we’d go for standard bearings as the crank was still in spec or just within spec for standard bearings. The mains and crank were installed along with the some plaster gauge to measure the bearing crank clearance. The bad news on removing the crank was that the gap was a minimum of 3 tho on each of mains, where as the spec is 2 tho! Bugger!! Ok, lets make it worse, lets crack open the big ends and try them! Yep, they are the same if not worse on the clearance front. So this left me with an issue, an opened set of standard bearings and a crank that needed grinding and oversized bearings!! I hatched a plan, get another crank of standard size and use that, instead of getting new bearings and a grind. Enter engine number four in the rebuild.

 

Mad.

Edited May 5, 2009 by madspikes

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Engine number four!

 

I picked up engine number four while up visiting the in-laws in that there London, it was as described being in good condition. On strip down there was only slight scoring on one bearing shell, and some light pitting on another couple. The pistons look are also good, but need a good clean before this can be confirmed! The liners, there in better nick than the ones I was planning to use!! It was looking to be a good result all round, and as sold.

 

Now right up to date...

 

This evening dry assembled the bottom end, using the ‘new’ crank and existing painted block and to my surprise the bearing crank gap was the same, 3 bloody tho, on the old paster guage! Using my verners that only measure to 0.01mm the crank looked to be in spec, the new bearings are also right... So, not quite sure whats going on. Might try the new bearings in the ‘new’ block with the ‘new’ crank tomorrow and see where that gets me! Nowhere I expect!!

 

 

Anyone want to buy and a supercharged 205 in kit form – I need a new hobby.

 

Mad.

 

Ps. I will post more pictures when I find the lead to connect the phone.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

A bad workman blames his tools...

 

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been having issues the running clearance (bearing to crank gap) of the engine I’m rebuilding. Nothing made sense, when measured everything was in spec, but when assembiled it was out of spec. I tried everything I could think of, different cranks, blocks bearings, everything amounted to same out of spec’ness. While doing the main bearing caps up for the last time, I commented how surprised I was at how not very tight the main caps were when torqued up. So there it was, the only thing we hadn’t changed was the torque wench.

 

After further investigation, turns out mine is total pants! I borrowed another one, did a random bolt up to 50nm with it, then adjusted mine until it reached the torque of the bolt. In the end mine needed a setting of 90nm to register the same torque as the other wrench, so it’s just slightly out!

 

Once the bearing caps were done up with the borrowed wrench suddenly everything was back into tolerance!! All that messing around, stress getting new blocks and it was just down to a f@*ked torque wrench!

 

Now the engine build should be able to get back on track, lets hope anyway!

 

 

Mad.

[fast_eddie 0]

That really is unfair--at least you have found the problem and no longer need sratch your head, plus it will never beat you again!!

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

Buggeration, at least you've found the problem though.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Long time, no update... Once again progress has been slow due to having a family, house and other cars that all need attention! However, I have managed to a mass a large box of new engine parts most of which came from qep, top service I may add. Any failing of such parts will be totally down to my incompetence! I have also started redoing the wiring loom, as I have some sexy need connectors to use, pictures will follow.

 

The real progress however, is in the rebuilding of the head. The head has had new valve stems, and a very very minimal skim, oh and a good couple days in the degreasing tank. The head now look fantastic, I will post pictures once I have finished building it, or during the final assembly of it, but for now I will leave you with a short guide on how I lapped my valves in.

 

All the valves I used were either new (exhaust) or best of old valve from other heads (inlets), so some needed more work than others.

 

 

Pre-Lapped in surface of the valve seat, I’m going to doing an Inlet valve.

 

 

 

I smeared some coarse grinding paste around the matting face, using a screwdriver so I didn’t get any on the gloves, trying to keep paste transfer to a minimum. I attached the lapping stick to valve before doing this. I found just pushing it on seemed to make it stick, but on the net someone people recommended using a glue gun!

 

 

Carefully placed valve into its port, while attached to lapping stick and the commenced lapping (nothing to do with lap dancing). The method seems to be to roll the stick between both hands, just like rubbing you hands together. At first you hear a really gritty sanding noise, but as you lap more, the less gritty it becomes. As the sounds quietens off, pick the valve up slightly, and place back down and lap some more. Picking up the valve just a couple cm’s brings some fresh grinding paste into play. I did this for a minute or so.

 

 

 

Valve seat after being wiped off. If properly lapped in, there should be a clear, uniform coloured band around the valve seat, but here you can still see a dark unbroken area. So a little more lapping is required.

 

 

After a little more lapping you can see this band has now gone.

 

 

Using a washable marker pen I coloured in the valve seat.

 

 

I then inserted the valve (once cleaned) and without any grinding paste did a couple lapping rotations of the valve. This will really highlight any areas where the valve and the seat aren’t matching, but in this case the blue pen seems uniformly warn.

 

 

Checking on the valve. The transfer also looks consistent, great so job done.

 

 

 

Mad.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

The project has finally moved on, and heres a pictorial update.

 

The inside of the block was cleaned out, mainly using brake cleaner!

 

 

The head finally built up and ready to be installed.

 

 

The head attached to freshly built up block.

 

 

The newly built up engine with attached supercharger dropped into the engine bay.

 

 

Just reminds me how tight the install is... Pictures is the gap between the modified starter motor and charger...

yes its about 2mm!

 

 

The new oil cooler had to be attached to the charger cooler rad as there was no where else to put it. We didnt want to do, but we couldnt see what else to do.

 

 

The loom is coming along... using these sexy connectors, well as sexy as connectors get...

 

 

The connector is mounted to a allay plate for ready for mounting into the firewall. The allay plate was tapped accept the bolts.

 

 

The connector mounted to the firewall, not quite how I planned it, but it works.

 

 

How the car looks... Look very sorry for its self!

 

 

Mad.

Edited June 28, 2009 by madspikes

[James_R 3]

Looking good Mad, glad the engine you picked up has proved useful for you

 

Good luck with the rest of the build

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Yea thanks, I used the crank from it as it was in slightly better kick than the other i was going to use. It would have needed a rebuild as a couple of bearing werent too happy, but the crank still looked fine. The pistons are liners were in good nick, but didnt use them in the end as decided to keep the compression ratio up... and already had the other liners honned.

 

I do however have plans for the pistons, block and liners.... but thats another project for another day!

 

Mad.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Good progress has been made on the old supercharged pug. The inlet manifold and one of link pipes have returned from being modified.

 

 

The inlet manifold has had an extra plate welded so that some hose tails can be added.

 

 

I drilled and tapped the inlet manifold to take the 4 new hose tails, one for the idle valve, and 3 for various vacuum take offs.

 

The main link pipe has been modified to accept a hose for the idle valve. I do wish I could weld like this! The other take off in the picture is the connection for the re-circ valve.

 

 

This is how the planned inlet manifold idle valve will look, but with a 90deg silicone connecting the idle valve to the link pipe.

[taylorspug 7]

Nice work, well thought out.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

I didn’t get around to adding all of the current progress in yesterdays post...

 

 

Friday was a bit full on, I had a friend over to help with the aim in getting the car started by the end of day. Before the day started I was already behind where I wanted to be due to various family things over the past week. While I cracked on with finishing up the loom, my friend got the nice job of removing sworf from the inlet manifold, which took quite some time. Once we were happy it was all gone, we set about installing the inlet manifold... which isn’t an easy job as the charger outlet pipe run through the centre of it! I would normally complain about crappy French design, but as I designed everything, I can only blame myself... Its all big puzzle and everything needs to go on in a set order, an order which I had forgotten since last time! Then it was time to fit the charger cooler which was cleaned and fitted simply, bar one support that picks on the dip stick mount. We couldn’t get it to fit, it’s been on before, so I guess the bracket got bent of the winter. We decided to leave for today, and fix it later. The rest of bits went ok, bar the fuel rail....

 

 

I had to pop out, and left my mate fitting the injectors and fuel rail... when I come back, my mate said theres bad news! Oh right, what have you broken? He’d snapped off one fuel rail bolts, ok not so bad, we can live without that one. With everything installed we thought we go for a systems check, without running the engine. We did this by connecting everything mechanically and electrically, bar the crank sensor. Instead of the using the crank sensor, we connected a signal generator, and put MS ECU into ‘crank sim’ mode. The rev counter jumped up, the fuel pump grumbled into life... but wait.. fuel spraying out from somewhere! ALL STOP!!!! Turns out two of the injectors were clipped in wrong. After mopping up all the fuel, we tried to get the injectors back into rail, but just couldn’t, so the rail needed to come off. I went off to do something, and when I returned, my mate had snapped another bolt removing the fuel rail, this time we needed that bolt! Its not down to him, its more down the duff bolts I gave him! So we then had to drill out the bolt stud before continuing. It turned out to be quite simple, it drilled nicely and then ran a tap into create some new threads. A set of ‘new’ bolts were then used to attach the fuel rail, and this time no leaks! This was a good step towards getting the engine started...

 

 

Next we disconnected the injector, coil and fuel pump power, so we could crank for oil pressure. This had already done this a month ago when we fitted the oil system, but we thought we do it again today. After a nice long crank, no oil pressure! AH... Odd, but low pressure warning light was going out! Grounded the wire connecting the sensor, and yes the gauge moves! Ok, so its either no oil pressure or a duff sender. To investigate further, we removed one of the oil fitting to see if oil was flowing when we cranked, and it was, so we decided that the sender / sensor unit had failed. With everything assembled again we went for a start!

 

 

With everything crossed we went for a start... after a few rotations the engine sparked into life and settled down to a smooth 1000rpm idle! Sweet! Still no oil pressure, but warning light was going out... Then I had an idea.. I dug out an old senor checked the resistance of that, then the resistance of the sensor on the car... Sensor on the car was open circuit, where as the other sensor wasn’t, so the sensor unit was knacked. We started the car again a left it to idle for 10 minutes... It idled fine, with no leaks. I’m really, happy. The only down side is that its going to take a couple of hours to change the oil pressure sensor unit... I do really need a working pressure gauge. We also decided that we’re going to get an aftermarket one to connect into the ecu, so we can log the pressure.

 

 

What a day!

[EdCherry 34 1 Cars]

You got more finger issues than sarty!

 

Sounds like it was an eventful day but atleast its getting there! Whats left to do before it can go on a trip out?

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

Welding does look lovely and neat, bit late now but I found there was enough meat in the inlet manifold to just directly drill and tap it, that welded plate looks a nice neat solution though.

I also wish I could TIG weld as neatly as that! Mine is coming on but nowhere near as neat as that!

[DrSarty 90 1 Cars]

Brilliant work and good write up.

 

You got more finger issues than sarty!

 

Gotta love them fingers dude. Girls do!

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Gotta love them fingers dude. Girls do!

 

Not with the state my fingers are in after working on the pug on friday... Someone ran out of gloves!

 

More pictures than words this time around!

 

 

The engine bay as finished up yesterday! It looks a mess, but gives an overal idea of how everything fits together. Note that the brake servo take off is now on the other side to OE.

 

 

 

One of my fav parts of the install... shame the writing isnt the other way around!

 

 

Oh, and by little black box... Other wise known as my home made remote MAP sensor. Its just the MS sensor removed from the MS board and put into a box. I know the D-type connector isnt ideal, but I'm working on a better replacement! The sensor box uses the +5v and 0v from the throttle sensor to enable the sensor.

 

Mad.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Whats left to do before it can go on a trip out?

 

There isnt a great deal left to do:

Change the oil pressure sensor - means inlet and alternator off again.

Run the engine up to temp for a while and then change the oil and check the cam belt.

Connect up the charge cooler to the pump

Fit the odd electrical connector

De-Rust the brake discs where the cars been sat for a year

Fix the bumper on and odd bits of trim

Tune a good MOT pass-able idle.

 

 

Then its MOT time, where the nice man will generate me a new list!

 

 

Should be a days work to get the car ready for an MOT, but not sure when I'll get the time, so dont expect it being on the road before end of Aug. Before the old engine let go, we had made good progress with the mapping, so there should be anything major to do on this front. I'm going to try and get the car on a rolling road to finish up the map and get some number out as doing the high end rpm v load tuning on the road is a little hairy!

[Tom Fenton 1,525]

On the MAP sensor front, I used the standard sensor from a Cosworth- available cheap on ebay as all the Ford boys remove them to fit one to allow higher boost. The standard Cosworth sensor is 2 bar absolute- so can cope with up to 1 bar boost pressure.

[madspikes 41 1 Cars]

Good point that man, I now remember about that in your build thread. How did you sort out calibrating it, is there a spec around for them somewhere?

 

Mad.