My rebuild thread

[ianelvar]

Hello all! After all the work I put into getting my FD into shape to sell, she\'s turned round and bitten me. First of all the paint started peeling off like badly applied wall paper (that\'s no exaggeration either!) because some clown has clearly done a massive botch job on it, but now she\'s gone and blown a coolant seal.

The paint is being fixed by a local spray shop that\'s happy for me to prep the car myself. So far I\'ve peeled off a lot of the cruddy paint back to the primer that\'s been applied over the top of the original paint, then I\'m going to flat it all back, filling any little imperfections as I go. Unfortunately I forgot to renew my membership at the start of the year so I can\'t post pics just yet, but I\'ve signed up for six months and hopefully I\'ll be a full member again in the near future.

The big thing is the engine though. When I first bought the car it had an engine with zero compression, so I sourced a running engine from a crashed car. Supposedly this engine had only done 10K since begin rebuilt, but the guy had no documentation. More fool me, I hear you say, but I was young and naive, and didn\'t know what I know now. However, the new motor had good compression and pressure tested OK, so no sign of seal failure. As it happens the original motor is a total write off, with cracked plates, severely worn housings, and side seals welded into rotors.
After many trials and tribulations caused by a bent crank sensor plate I got her running really nicely, and she\'s been perfectly reliable for the last year. Last Saturday while I was up in Didcot working on a steam engine Laura took her out for a drive, and the whole cooling system erupted in a massive ball of steam. A couple of mates of mine were kind enough to tow her home, and having had a good look I\'m 100% sure she\'s suffering from seal failure. The symptoms are as follows:

Losing coolant. No external leaks.
Loads of white smoke on start. Starts fine and runs perfectly though.
Pipes do not pressurise before they should
No "Champagne"

I have a suspicion the seals have gone in the exhaust section, rather than the combustion area. While the CAS wasn\'t working right the timing was so out the turbos were running up at idle, and the exhaust was INSANELY hot. I think this may have contributed. It\'s only a theory - we\'ll find out when I pull the motor apart.

Over the next couple of weeks I\'ll be photographing and documenting every stage of pulling the engine out, taking that ancillaries off, stripping it, then putting it all back together again.

I\'ve cleared my garage and set up a bench just for tearing the motor down. I\'ve actually got 2 engines to do, as my silver FD also has seal failure. It was like that when I bought it though.

I\'ll be making some tools along the way too - A locking tool for the flywheel and a rotary adaptor for my engine stand.

Wish me luck! I hope you enjoy the thread :cheers

[shaunwil]

Good luck

Take plenty of photos.

Shaun

[SmbFD3S]

Look forward to seeing it progress mate, as i will be doing this soon myself so will be good to see how to get the engine out and ancillaries and all that.  The engine itself i\'m not worried about as have already done this on a test bench, but have yet to actually take one out of a car

[ianelvar]

Thanks for the support guys. I\'m actually going to be doing it a little bit backwards, and doing the rebuild first. I\'ve already pulled the engine from the silver one, so I\'m going to attack that and then pull the engine out the red one when I\'ve got an engine ready to go in. It only took me an afternoon working slowly to take the engine out last time - I couldn\'t believe it!
I\'ve been working on a mates BMW E30 over the past few months doing a megasquirt install, and helped him take the gearbox out when he had clutch trouble. I have to admit, the jap way of doing things wins hands down every time, and I appreciate the Nippon engineering goodness even more now!

[Matt_K]

I\'m doing this at the moment, documenting and almost blogging my rebuild on another forum. I\'ve just put the rotors and housings together this weekend gone.

Good luck with it! it\'s great fun!

[ianelvar]

Cheers :cheers Could you post a link to your thread?

[ianelvar]

I made some good progress today, and got the turbos, OMP, air pump, alternator, water pump, A/C and PS support bracket, E-shaft lock nut and flywheel off. I\'ve got pics for every single bit I\'ve removed, and hopefully I\'ve caught all the \'action shots\' of how to set the tools up for the trickier jobs, but the write up will have to wait till tomorrow - I need some sleep :Snoring

\'night all :guinness

[ianelvar]

Just the usual stuff I\'m afraid. This thread is intended as a supplement to the proceedures in the Factory Service Manual, based on my personal experience of carrying out the proceedures. As such, I will not accept any liability for loss, damage or injury caused by using information contained in this thread.
I will be making my best endeaviours to make it safe and error free, but I\'m only human, and i don\'t write technical documents for a living. If I\'ve missed something out, got something horrendously wrong, or you\'d like something clarifying I\'ll be more than happy to oblige or correct as appropriate. Please keep discussion on topic if you\'ve got something to add, as this will end up being a long one anyway.
I hope it doesn\'t cause a problem that I\'m about to upload a bunch of pictures - Mods, please tell me if there is an issue and I\'ll try and sort out some external hosting. Photos have all been resized to 1024x768 to keep the size down, but I\'ve got all the originals available from the 5mpx camera if anyone wants to see something more clearly.

The car being worked on is a \'93, UK spec FD with no modification. The engine I\'m initially working on is a \'92 Jap spec engine, so I\'ll try and point out the differences as I go along.

So, without further ado, on to my first actual post.

[ianelvar]

The inlet manifold, turbos etc do not need removing from the engine to pull it out of the vehicle. I\'ll be covering this more fully when I actually take the engine out of the car I\'m currently working on. Until then, this is what I\'ve got to work with:

[ianelvar]

Undo the six large bolts holding the mounts to the engine (3 each mount, left hand shown from underneath):

This gets the out of the way for when the motor is put on the bench. At this stage it\'s easiest to have the engine held in the air a little way on the engine crane.

[ianelvar]

Slacken off the alternator bolts as shown and remove them and slide the belt off now the tension is removed.

Remove the 2 bolts and 4 nuts that hold the A/C+PS bracket on to the side of the engine, and remove it along with the loom support bracket.

Undo the bolt that holds the alternator tension bracket to the front of the water pump, and remove it You will already have removed the nut that holds it to the A/C bracket when you removed that. The alternator can now easily be swung upwards and removed.

[ianelvar]

Move the hose clip down the outlet pipe so it no longer sits around the metal part, and free the pipe by gripping it gently from the side with pliers and twisting it around the metal pipe. This frees the rubber from being stuck to the pipe allowing easy removal.

Remove the two bolts supporting the air pump, and release the electrical conenctor. The air pump can now be removed from the engine.

[ianelvar]

Remove the rear turbo inlet pipe by taking off the two nuts that hold it to the turbo, and removing the bolt securing it half way along its length.

To remove the Y-pipe, start by taking off the small rubber pipes that attach to it at the points shown, then removing the 4 nuts that connect it to the two turbo outlet pipes.

[ianelvar]

Next is the turbo pack, but that will have to wait for later - I have a rats nest to remove!

[ianelvar]

Down to the bare block now, with sump and oil pump off. I\'ve had to stop because I need to build something to support the engine while I undo the bolts and take the layers off. More of the write up to come tomorrow.