My 3B Coupe project - Total rebuild

[Acidburn]

not coming to castle combe mate?

[AndyP]

No, I'm going to the Leeds meet. I'm going to Combe in Oct for Audi driver, it should be running by then!!

[Acidburn]

ok no worries, see you in october if not beforehand

[Jamo]

No, I'm going to the Leeds meet. I'm going to Combe in Oct for Audi driver, it should be running by then!!

See you then if not beforehand, really want to see what your power deliver is like with the 3071r.82 and the stroker, Went out in Pixaudisexs2 the other day and it was really streetable with his 3071 and 2.2 engine

[A80Avant]

from my experience with the 3071 and 2.2, on a stroker it may feel as a K24 on an ABY. starting off reaaaly soon. It may bring the boost so early that the 0.82AR will have no implications at all.

[AndyP]

Well it was almost ready for starting this weekend but it sprung a couple of leaks when I put the fluids in. The coolant return hose from the turbo was leaking badly, crappy 034 hoses, that's 3 out of the 4 in their kit I've had to change Pirtek have made me a new one today for £30 so I'll get that fitted tonight.

Then I've just got to order a new oil pressure sender, I tried one with a taper thread but it leaks even a 1bar.

Fingers crossed it'll be running for the weekend

[s2_bo]

Good luck Andy!!!!

[Error404]

can't you just use an adapter on the pressure sender thread? Did you manage to find a reasonably priced source for the right threaded one?

Looking forward to seeing this beast in action

[AndyP]

OK, here’s the update, brace yourself it’s a long one and there’s good news and bad news!

Finally got the lambda boss’s in the exhaust which finished that, dead pleased with it too, fits really nice and is a doddle to remove compared to std. I’ll try and get the car on a ramp soon so I can get some pics.

Made a mounting frame for the Pacet electric fan and got that mounted, still got to work on the wiring to getting it running at different speeds but it does run and leaves loads more room than the std fan.

So the time had come to start it, filled it with 15W40 mineral oil for the first few miles, pulled the ECU fuses and spun it over to get oil pressure, got 1bar on the starter and loads on oil present in the top end, so all good so far. I was expecting it to be a bit noisy the first time it fired because the tappets were all new and they had been stood for quite while. So I put the ECU fuses back in and spun it over, once the fuel system had primed it fired straight away and settled to a reasonable idle. It was quite noisy but I kept it revving and did quieten down a bit but not as much as I’d expected and it was after a couple of minutes that the power steering pump ( freshly re-built ) decided that it was going to die a horrible death so I switched it off. I also spotted that the new after run pump was leaking more coolant than it was pumping. So the all new parts I’d decided to replace as a precaution were now causing problems, great!

After replacing the power steering pump and after run pump with the old ones off my original engine I fired it up again. Once again it was a lot noisier than I would have liked but I kept it running and got it up to temp so the stat opened and I could bleed the cooling system, all seemed to be oil and water tight now and all temp/pressure/AFR/EGT readings were normal. After it had cooled down I took the cam cover off and re-torqued the ARP head studs, which took a surprisingly large amount of movement to re-torque.

As the engine seemed to be making more noise around number 5cyl I checked the distributor too, and there was quite a bit of movement in the gear. I bought an new Bosch distributor but when I came to fit it I found it was different, so re-used my old one with a new rotor arm and cap. It had a steel gear so I took it off and replaced with a new brass gear to see it would quieten it down a bit.
Changed the oil and filter for fresh 15W40 mineral oil and tried again. This time it was a bit quieter but still very tappety. I ran it up to temp and decided to do a compression check, perhaps a little premature given the running time but I was curious. All was good with cylinders 1-4 at 12bar but when it came to cyl5 it only had 9 bar, ********!

So my questions are:-
Have I run it long enough for the new lifters to prime and work properly?
If a lifter fails could it prop the valve open resulting in the lack of compression I’m seeing in no.5?

I’m going to try and get a video of it running tomorrow which I’ll post up and I’ve asked a few local forum members to come round and give me a second opinion. At the moment I’m thinking of pulling the new lifters and trying the set that came with the head.

Any advice would be welcomed at this stage

On the plus side, the exhaust sounds nice and ball bearing turbos rock

[AndyP]

After consulting a couple of forum mechanics the consensus was that I needed to get out and put some miles on it and the tappets would quieten down. So today I finished the induction side and fitted an air filter and took it out for a spin, sure enough after a couple of miles the tappets did quieten down. I did about 10miles, keeping to 3k revs and then came home to check for leaks. After I'd fixed a small oil leak ( cam cover gasket not seating correctly after I'd had it off the other day ) I started it again and the tappets were back to being noisey again

Is the one way valve in the side of the block supposed to stop this happening by stopping the oil in the head draining back to the sump?

I'll take it out again tomorrow and put some more miles on it and see what happens. Exhaust is still sounding good but I'm not keen on the dump valve noise you get with running an air filter and no airbox, sounds a bit chavvy

[AndyP]

Engine bay 99% finished



Next job is to work on isolating the air filter from the heat of the engine bay



I'll be fitting the exhaust blanket from Owen developments and wrap the down pipe too. Then I'll get some aluminium sheets and make an airbox similar to the one Vas has on his RS2.

[Acidburn]

Keep at it andy you bringing this down to adi in oct?

[Jamo]

Congrats Andy! I'm hoping to compare tall decks at ADI

You going to put a cambelt cover on the engine or is it off to adjust the camwheel?

[AndyP]

Carbon cambelt cover is on the 'to do' list

Yes I'll be a ADI.

[Jamo]

What's the plan, run it in and then map it before ADI or after?