Howdy, Names Stirling

Introduce yourself and your vehicles and post (or link to) photos
5988
Posts: 692
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:57 pm
Location: Lincolnshire

Post by 5988 »

migth it be worth looking at getting one shipped from the UK
we can get a clutch kit for about £120 (dont know what that is in $)
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

Kiwistage1V8 wrote: Stirling, out of interest I was wondering how much you are paying for your clutch, and what are you getting. I've got my motor at the machinists at the moment for a rebore, crank grind and balance, and although my clutch seemed fine, while it's out I am going to fit new stuff. However, the cheapest clutch kit (pressure plate, clutch plate, thrust bearing and spigot bush) I can find is a whopping NZ$600, so I am thinking of just doing the clutch plate and spigot bush now considering the price is so high.
To be honest I managed to get myself a deal. I got brand new AP driveline technologies clutch, pressure plate, bearing and spigot bush for AUD 222. I looked at importing from the UK, that would have been around the AUD 300 mark. Unfortunately it was a once off deal that a friend did for me, so I was lucky there.
Kiwistage1V8 wrote:Oh, and how goes the disco project...?
The disco project isn't going anywhere at the moment... I'm too busy trying to get this car back on the road. When it is done I'll move back on to the disco... it's never going to end...
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

Ok a bit of an update, I got a bit slack there but progress is moving along slowly.

Engine has been completely stripped down, on pulling the pistons out I found two with broken rings, cylinder 1 and 3, top ring. Not sure how long they would have been broken for... because on the 8th of June I had the following compression test results:

1- 157psi 2- 174psi
3- 174psi 4- 167psi
5- 148psi 6- 181psi
7- 162psi 8- 203psi!!!!

As I had mentioned before the bores were very glazed so all up it all needed to be done again. Hopefully this time I will run the engine in properly and the hone marks to glaze up.

Before pulling the pistons out, I CCed the cylinder piston and head of number 8 and I ended up working out I had a compression ratio of about 10.8, which is considerably lower than what I had expected considering I am running a block that was mashined down by 0.7mm, 10.5:1 pistons, tin gaskets and 35cc heads. It is highly likely that I did a mistake when trying to measure the volume of the dish on the pistons... it ended up being quite fiddley actually!

Anyway, Crank came out and some score marks were found on the bearings so the crank has been sent away for grinding and it will be refitted with new bearings.

Here is a photo of the engine after everything had been pulled out:
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I also took to cleaning all the pistons, as you can see a bit of oil had been getting in to the combustion chamber which I knew about since the engine consumed oil. Probably a result of the glazed bores.
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Piston after cleaning and marking:
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After spending a few hours cleaning the pistons:
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The next things on the list are cleaning up various components like the timing chain cover and what not in preparation to put everything back together. Also we will be hitting the bores briefly with a dunny brush hone to deglaze them.

I'll try to be a little more diligent with the photos next time.
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

Well, some progress today.

The bores of the engine were de glazed using a dunny brush hone. Obviously being done by hand the honing isn't perfect but it would be a hell of a lot better than the mirrors that they were originally (i'm going to have to make sure to run in the engine properly this time):

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The engine was pressure washed using a mix of the $1.99 cans of super cheap degreaser and some SCA heavy duty degreaser. I pressure washed the block about 4 times, each time giving it a coat of degreaser and waiting a few minutes. Cleaned it up quite nicely:

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The intake manifold also ended up cleaning up a treat using the same method:

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The crank and bearings are ready to be picked up from the machine shop, I just need to arrange to collect those pieces and I can start putting it all together!
disco2hse
Posts: 1637
Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2008 3:51 am
Location: Auckland NZ

Post by disco2hse »

hmmmmshinymotorhmmmm :D
Alan

1983 ex-army FFR 109 Stage 1
2005 Disco 2 HSE TD5
landdani
Posts: 274
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 12:40 pm
Location: damascus

Post by landdani »

Dear stirlsilver, when you are finished, can you take some photo to the diff lock pipes from the engine to the gearBox and the swich please?
wonderful sport!
1984 SeriesIII ex-melitary, 109 inch, V8 stage one
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
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Post by stirlsilver »

landdani wrote:Dear stirlsilver, when you are finished, can you take some photo to the diff lock pipes from the engine to the gearBox and the swich please?
Sure, but it will be a little while before I get to that point... I haven't started putting the engine back together yet.

Not a real exciting update, I tapped and sealed up one of the water ports on the new manifold (something I should have done before cleaning it up) I can't remember exactly what I tapped it with... I think it was an M12 fine thread. Anyway if you do that, just drill the hole out to what you need.

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I also tapped all the injector ports this time (last time they were welded). I found that a 7/16" UNF tap worked straight up without needing to drill out the holes from what they are as standard.

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I just need to go buy some more 7/16 UNF allen head bolts now...
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

So today the focus was on the heads.

First I needed to pull the valves out of the heads so they could be cleaned. I wasn't able to find a valve spring compressor in the workshop, I ended up needing to make a tool which would allow me to compress the springs and pull out the collets (if that is what they are called) by myself.

I was able to find a piece of bent steel which was basically the perfect shape and all that was required was to drill a hole in the right spot.

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By sitting the valve on a nut I was able to use this tool to compress the spring with one hand and use the other to pick out the collets.

With all the valves and springs out, the heads were washed again using a pressure washer, many coats of the supercheap degreaser and many coats of the SCA degreaser afterwards.

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So everything is now washed ready for assembly, I will be making arrangements so that the crank will hopefully be delivered next week!
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

Ok, so I got side tracked again... another trip to Thailand, camping trip over easter, road trip over to kangaroo Island and then another trip to QLD to see my grand mother... but I'm back and at this stage there isn't anything coming up so I should be able to get this engine done soon!!

So the disassembly is finished and now the reassembly commenced.

The ground crank came in with the necessary bearings, below is a shot of the engine with the top halves of the bearings in position:

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Dropped the crank in after giving it a final clean with some degreaser:

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And then the pistons went in, this took longer than I expected because the gaps on the rings were too small on the bores so I had to bring out a stone and file the ends of the rings down to get the minimum gap of 0.017" for thermal expansion. Anyway, I eventually got there:

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A couple of shots of each of the banks with the pistons in:

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I'll be back in the workshop tomorrow, cam is going to go in and I'll start getting the heads done, I'll get started on port matching the heads to the intake manifold and exhaust manifold before putting the valves back in and fitting them up. Will see how much I can get done.
disco2hse
Posts: 1637
Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2008 3:51 am
Location: Auckland NZ

Post by disco2hse »

Keep 'em coming Stirling. This is great :)
Alan

1983 ex-army FFR 109 Stage 1
2005 Disco 2 HSE TD5
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

Well, more progress today. But not as much as I had hoped.

Cam was reinstalled along with the timing chain and gears, sorry about the blurry photo!:

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Naturally, the timing chain cover and water pump followed:

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I then moved on to checking the alignment of the ports on the inlet manifold and the heads. It's a bit tricky and I had never done it before. The way I went about it is I got the original head gaskets cleaned them up and bolted the heads up onto the block with two bolts on each. I then placed the cardboard over the inlet ports on the heads held in by bolts on either side:

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Then, using a spanner I tapped the cardboard around the edges of the ports to cut the profiles:

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I used some spray paint and painted around the ports on the inlet manifold and then placed it on to the heads and bolted it up:

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I was hoping that the paint would transfer on to the cardboard and give the profile of the inlet manifold ports in relation to ports on the heads. When I pulled the inlet manifold off I found that the carboard stuck itself onto the inlet manifold (in hind sight it's not suprising!) but even then I found that it was another way of doing it because the cardboard templates were held in place on the inlet manifold:

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I started scribing what would need to be ground away, when I finished doing that, I checked how much movement there is when bolting up the inlet manifold to the heads... I found that because previously I had machined the block down by 0.7mm to raise the compression ratio, with the enlarged bolt holes there was some movement possible which means that dowels are really needed to hold the manifold in place and get the port alingment right.

I figured installing dowels was too hard and just gave up on the port matching idea and save it for when I get the 3.9L for the discovery ute.

So I moved on to cutting the allen head bolts so that they were more or less flush when screwed in, locktite was used to form a air tight seal between the bolts and the manifold:

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And that was all I got done. A lot of time was waisted dicking around with the templates for port matching... only to not use them!

Anyway, hoping to make it back in to the workshop next weekend for more progress.
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
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Post by stirlsilver »

I was back in the workshop this weekend, although for only a few hours so I wasn't able to get too much done...

I was never happy with the old plumbing system of the coolant lines to the LPG evaporator. Because the old route of the water used to take water from one of the outlets on the back of the water pump and then rejoin the coolant system down stream of the thermostat. It meant that the water to the evaporator used to be the temperature of the radiator... So when the engine was started from cold, the evaporator would not warm up until the thermostat opened and all the water in the radiator was warmed up.

I decided to fix this by taking water directly from the block by tapping directly into one of the water jacket openings which are covered by the inlet manifold at the back. This way the water would pass from the pump, in to the block, out to the LPG evaporator and then back to the pump through one of the tappings on the back of the pump. This way, the evaporator will warm up much faster.

Ok, for the photos.

This is the area I was referring to, left hand bank, at the back of the engine:

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There was various bosses which would get in the way when screwing in the brass elbow, these were carefully cut away. Then, I determined the center of the opening on the head from the gasket marks on the manifold and then drilled a pilot hole and then proceeded with the required hole for the tap and tapped the thread:

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I found an elbow which already had the barb cut down and it was the perfect length to allow it to be turned in without fouling on the webbing on the manifold:

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I trial fitted the manifold onto the block and inserted the bolt to work out what angle the fitting needed to be at to allow access to the bolt. A pipe was also put on to make sure there wasn't any fouling happening anywhere:

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After making sure everything fit, I pulled the fitting out, put some locktite on and screwed it back in to set.

One concern I have at this stage is that the fitting and pipes to the evaporator are quite large and that where I am taking water is at the entrance of the head (the water flows in from the back, through the head and exits at the front), if too much water passes through the fitting to the evaporator I worry that the amount of water flowing through the left hand head will reduce and increase its temperature.

So I am probably going to fit a restriction inside the pipe with a smaller hole to reduce the amount of water flowing to the evaporator to make sure enough water flows to keep it at temperature but not too much that excessive amount of flow is taken away from the left hand head. The size of the hole will need to be found through trial and error.

That's all at this stage, perhaps I'll be more productive next weekend.
5988
Posts: 692
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 8:57 pm
Location: Lincolnshire

Post by 5988 »

wouldnt it have been easier just to take the evaporator water from the heater circuit ? ...that's the way its normally done. Could have fitted T pieces before the heater valve. no risk of damage then
disco2hse
Posts: 1637
Joined: Sun Apr 27, 2008 3:51 am
Location: Auckland NZ

Post by disco2hse »

5988 wrote:wouldnt it have been easier just to take the evaporator water from the heater circuit ? ...that's the way its normally done. Could have fitted T pieces before the heater valve. no risk of damage then
Same thought I was having when reading too.

About the size of pipe, why not just step it down to an appropriate diameter? And, I would be concerned about creating an airlock in there which plumbing from the heater won't do.

Otherwise, some great engineering there :) You might find a job on the space station with that kind of preparation.
Alan

1983 ex-army FFR 109 Stage 1
2005 Disco 2 HSE TD5
stirlsilver
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:45 am
Location: Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Contact:

Post by stirlsilver »

On the pipe reduction - that is more work. The pipe I show in the photo is the actual pipe used to plumb in the evaporator. Plus by having a restriction inside the pipe the installation will look neater.

On the heater core circuit - When I orignally installed the LPG system on the car all those years ago, that is exactly what I did. I basically disconnected the heater core pipes and connected them to the LPG evaporator.

The problem I had was that the pressure head on those pipes was incredibly low. Since the evaporator sits above the engine, if there is an air lock in the pipes it is an absolute nightmare to get it out (made worse by the fact there is no bleeding point on the evaporator I have).

This is made much worse by the fact that the car is LPG only, I don't have the luxury of being able to start the engine on petrol after draining the coolant and spend time to purge the system completely with the engine idling. If there is an air bubble and water doesn't flow through the evaporator straight away it freezes up and the engine shuts down. I used to have to resort to using a hose and running water over the outside of the evaporator to prevent it freezing while having the engine running and getting the air bubble out (which could take about half an hour!).

Basically, there will be a greater amount of pressure available where I have put the fitting, even if there is air in the line it should be pushed out pretty quickly.
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