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that sucks about the louvres, I hope you find an acceptable solution because they are way too cool not to have. You sure do have a lot of cool projects on the go at once!
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Jan 21, 2019 04:29
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slothrop posted:that sucks about the louvres, I hope you find an acceptable solution because they are way too cool not to have. You sure do have a lot of cool projects on the go at once! Thanks. The louvres are definitely going to happen one way or another, I've got my heart set on them and after watching a couple of B is for Build's videos I definitely think I'm capable of throwing together some acceptable ones if my other options fall through. As for the number of projects, yeah, it all kinda got away from me.. I was planning on selling the Mercedes last year but my girlfriend's unexpected move to a new country for a job and me moving with her (i work from home, outside of business trips) made that harder, and then me destroying the rear parking brake at the beginning of spring and then being unable to go back and fix them until autumn basically killed that plan completely. Luckily, my situation is changing and I should be moving back home soon, at which point I'll sell either the Mercedes or the Audi (or maybe both and buy something fancier, I've been eyeing an Alfa Spider S2 and a Lancia Montecarlo). Similarly, the GTi I bought locally to my gf was supposed to be a quick fix and then a daily I keep here, but that devolved into a constant uphill battle, with the mechanic taking months to fix it unsuccessfully, then it taking several more months to get it back to my shop to fix it myself. With any luck, it'll be fixed in the next couple of weeks, taxed and on the road, at which point I can refocus on the Fulvia. Finally.
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Jan 22, 2019 14:30
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So I got back last night and spent the day today fitting the second spring to the Mercedes. It was once again a gruelling ordeal and I hugely regret my choice to use an aftermarket spring compressor instead of the Mercedes one; I have no idea how much easier it would be with the Mercedes compressor but if it makes compressing a fresh spring even slightly easier it would be worth the extra money. I got the old spring out and the compressor free by myself in the morning in a mere hour or so(!), but compressing, fitting and decompressing the new spring and then removing the tool took another four hours with my cousin helping me. And as the icing on the cake, I'm incredibly dissatisfied with the end results. After extensive research online, I chose OEM springs with one size smaller spring shim which would give me a 1cm total drop in height from fully stock. This is a photo of a stock coupe:  And this is what I ended up with:   (embarrassingly messy workspace but towards the end I just didn't have the energy to be tidy any more)  I know it'll drop a bit as it settles, but something tells me it isn't going to drop by 3 inches.. I'm pretty disappointed but there's also no way in hell I'm going through that again. Someone said it might drop a little during the alignment as well, is that a thing that happens? Either way, it's coming out of the shop and into my storage garage and work on the GTi starts tomorrow.  Come into the warmth, you poor frozen bastard.
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Jan 25, 2019 01:02
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Rattle it over some cobbled streets, that'll settle it down properly. Saw this the other day and thought of this thread 
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Jan 25, 2019 02:03
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Warms my heart to see BXs used as dailies. I still haven't seen one in the wild myself (other than my own)! Though I have to say, I'm really glad the St. Tropez has proper white bumpers, the off colour ones most white and red BXes don't appeal to me much.. It's been snowing all day today, of course, so the plan to run the Mercedes a little while it's dry and then move it to storage is pretty much done for. I'll just put it under a cover in the driveway for now.
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Jan 25, 2019 17:31
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Got the GTi into the garage last night and left it to thaw, there was lots and lots of frozen condensation everywhere (hence the rags at the bottom of the windscreen)  Didn't have time to work on it during the day today, but this evening I wanted to get it up on stands and drained of fluids in preparation for disassembly tomorrow, but when I went to turn it on to raise the suspension, it caught, ran for a few seconds then spluttered and died. Since then it cranks, occasionally almost catches, but never actually starts. Yesterday it ran beautifully and the only difference between then and now was that I put into a 10°C garage rather than it being outside in -10°. Starter fluid has no effect. After fiddling with it for an hour or so I called a night, will start again early tomorrow morning. My current theory/hope is all the melting condensation has gotten into something electrical and that it will dry out by tomorrow, today there was still a fair amount of water on various surfaces.
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Jan 27, 2019 01:14
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Electrical problems in a French car?  Funnily enough of the French cars I've owned my bx had no electrical problems despite having electrical everything.
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Jan 27, 2019 11:33
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This morning it fired up, it ran a little rich at the start but cleared up after a little while. I've ordered a new distributor cap as the old one is looking a little worse for wear - there was also a weird oily donut-shaped thing made of a papery substance between the rotor and the distributor body, I guess some sort of oil trap thing? All the distributors I've tinkered with before don't have this, the Mercedes has a plastic shield but that's it. I'd order a new one but "oily paper donut" doesn't give me any results on parts sites  I'll throw up a picture asap, maybe someone will recognise it.
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Jan 27, 2019 15:13
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Day one of disassembly proper. There's extremely little information anywhere about BX GTis, so I've been reading Peugeot 205 GTi forums as they are a collectors car and are much more documented, while having the same engine as the BX. I found out that my starting problems were likely due to a dirty, aptly-named SAD valve (supplementary air device). It's supposed to send additional air into the engine during cold starts, if it malfunctions the engine overfuels and quickly floods. I found and cleaned the filthy electrical connector for it, and the car was happier starting after that, but the valve is coming off during disassembly and I'll clean it properly. I also found a 205 distributor rebuild video and discovered that my oily paper donut was once a little plastic shield of sorts. I suppose 30 years of UV, ozone and heat haven't been kind to it:  It honestly has the texture and properties of oily, waxy paper at this point. They also aren't for sale anywhere. I'm torn between cleaning it up and putting it back in and just leaving it out. It seems to act as a barrier to stop oil spattering into the cap if the o-ring seal fails (which it has). I'm leaning towards replacing the o-ring, then finding some way of reproducing the donut and just trusting the o-ring for the time being. Oil is added to this engine via a separate plastic cylinder that seems to double as a filler neck and oil catch can. It's filled with a tangle of small plastic fibres that have done a great job of catching the ugly mess that the oil has become. It's the black thing next to the intake manifold in this picture:  Horrible mess:   Coolant was also not in great shape, no oil though:  I think you can see where the leak is:  Lastly, this is probably a stupid question (and is definitely going into the stupid questions thread), but how do I detach the throttle cable here?  The tiny screw seems to do nothing..
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Jan 28, 2019 14:20
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A couple of days in, and I've managed to get the head off without destroying anything (to my knowledge):     Weirdly, you lock timing on these engines by putting a bolt through the timing belt pulleys into special recesses behind them, but as you can see it doesn't set it to TDC. Not sure if it's supposed to be like that or whether the last guy just hosed up reassembly of the pulleys, it seems like a fuckup but the workshop manual does mention in its typically vague way that the pistons should all be in the middle of their travel, so who knows. It's not like there's any other documentation out there for these things. I'm trying to figure out where the problem occurred. There is quite obviously a bunch of milky oil on the cams for cylinder 3 and not on the others, and there was evidence of the same on the head bolts closest to that cylinder. I know that the crap mechanic who did this job in October reused the torque-to-yield head bolts, and seems to have installed one of the washers at an angle (the one you can still see on the head, I can't get it to move and it's definitely crooked), and I'm wondering if that would be enough to cause the problem, or whether I need to keep going and pull the liners and install new o-rings. I mean, I know I need to keep going because it would be a disaster to put it all back together and have to take it apart again, but I really, really don't want to because I'm a big baby who is afraid of screwing something up down there. I'm taking the head to a machine shop for a full rebuild tomorrow first thing (and potentially a port/polish if we can agree on a price). I think I'll take tonight "off" and just clean the intake, throttle body, cold start valve etc.
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Jan 30, 2019 22:16
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Grakkus posted:Weirdly, you lock timing on these engines by putting a bolt through the timing belt pulleys into special recesses behind them, but as you can see it doesn't set it to TDC. Not sure if it's supposed to be like that or whether the last guy just hosed up reassembly of the pulleys, it seems like a fuckup but the workshop manual does mention in its typically vague way that the pistons should all be in the middle of their travel, so who knows. It's not like there's any other documentation out there for these things. That is weird (and very French). I've never come across an engine where you locked the timing at anything other than #1 TDC for cam/head removal, but Peugeot is as Peugeot does... Grakkus posted:Lastly, this is probably a stupid question (and is definitely going into the stupid questions thread), but how do I detach the throttle cable here? You'll probably find that the cable goes through a slot in the side of that plastic 'pulley' and wraps around the little grub screw (on the other side to the one we can see in your pic) which clamps the whole thing tight. Just remove the screw and the cable should pull out.
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Jan 31, 2019 00:46
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BalloonFish posted:That is weird (and very French). I've never come across an engine where you locked the timing at anything other than #1 TDC for cam/head removal, but Peugeot is as Peugeot does... Yeah, apparently this is intended behaviour. Which gives me a big problem because I couldn't find any timing marks anywhere on the block, head, cam pulley, anything. The crank I can set to TDC by poking something through the spark plug holes, but the cam? No idea. And of course there is ZERO DOCUMENTATION on this that I can find anywhere. It baffles me that the workshop manual wouldn't bother giving any information on timing marks... I guess I have a day or two before I have to deal with this problem so I'll just keep going and hope I figure it out by then! The tiny screw on the cable ended up being the key after all - undo it and the rest of the cable can be freed. I'm thinking of doing a proper writeup/guide once I'm finished - so that the people who come after me have a little more to go by 
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Jan 31, 2019 19:40
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The XU9 with the cranked locked will have all 4 pistons inline halfway down bore, and iirc there's a timing mark on the crank sprocket and a corresponding mark on the oil seal carrier about 90 degrees clockwise, some replacement belts supposedly have a line you place on this mark.
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Jan 31, 2019 20:33
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Yeah, that's where I'm at currently, I made my own timing marks on the block/crank sprocket as backup, my concern is that there's no timing markings of any kind on the cam/cam cover area - so unless the cam/pulley can only go on one way then I don't know how to set timing at the top.
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Jan 31, 2019 20:43
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Well, since it's an 8v you only have one cam and if you use the locking bolt, that in turn can only sit one way?
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Feb 1, 2019 02:36
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Nidhg00670000 posted:Well, since it's an 8v you only have one cam and if you use the locking bolt, that in turn can only sit one way? Well my point was that I wasn't sure if the pulley could go onto the camshaft in any orientation or not - since the crank pulley with its locking bolt can. It turned out to be irrelevant however as the machine shop didn't remove the cam(e: of course they removed it, they just replaced it as it was).        There are still carbon deposits on and around the valves, and the intake/exhaust ports are untouched. I have no points of reference for head work so I don't know if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty unhappy with what was done. I was expecting things to be a lot neater than this. I'm thinking of getting a second opinion tomorrow (or third, after goons). Grakkus fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 11, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 22:46
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I have no point of reference neither, but cleaning it properly shouldn't be that much of a trouble for a shop with all the proper gear right?
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Feb 2, 2019 09:01
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That's (one) reason why I was dissatisfied with it. Another is that when I asked if it had been pressure tested I got a really unconvincing "it'll hold pressure" rather than a "yes I pressure tested it". It's at a different shop now to be looked over and tested again. It's costing me nearly half of what I originally paid, but I want to be sure it's good because I don't have the time or inclination to take the engine apart and reassemble it a second time..
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Feb 2, 2019 12:44
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Since I'll be getting the head back on Monday, I took the day off today and just did little cosmetic things for fun. I polished up the rad cap:  Fitted the missing foglights:   And sanded and primered the grotty windscreen wiper:    I'll hit it with some satin black tomorrow morning to finish it off.
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Feb 3, 2019 01:06
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It's been a busy few weeks, the week after my last post was spent struggling with a variety of issues related to the crappy machine shop I used, as well as a couple of fuckups on my part, so I didn't get to finish the job before flying back to Denmark. Since then I've then spent my time struggling with an absolutely dire rental market trying to find my a new place to live before our lease ends, so I haven't really had time to post until now. Anyway! Back to it: On Sunday I finished up the wiper arm.  Before and after. I didn't paint the pipe as it's an incredibly primitive system where that pipe just has a couple of pinholes in it to jet washer fluid onto the windscreen as the wiper moves. In retrospect, I could probably paint it and then make some holes of my own, or just paint the front-facing part or something, I may still do that but for now I think it looks a lot better. I also painted the valve cover, despite it not being very visible in the engine bay, mostly just to practice. I screwed up the second layer the first time around, it was covered in fisheyes, so I sanded it back and redid it and the second time it came out decently. I was surprised to find that painting it showed up some casting imperfections on the outside of the cover that I was totally unaware of before, a couple of bumps and an odd area that looked like a paint run but in the metal of the cover. Cleaned, sanded and masked:  Primered:  Painted:  And test fitted back on the head, complete with grubby fingerprints:  And with that, back to the story of the head. I collected the head back from the second machine shop, who were much more pleasant than the first. They ran me through everything with explanations, and said that it is indeed straight and holds pressure, and that the rebuild was done mostly correctly, and even asked me if the cam was new as it was in amazing shape (  ). There were just two issues; firstly, the valve adjustment was done to the wrong specifications and the clearances were a bit too big, 0.35 and 0.50 when according to him they should be 0.2 and 0.4, but he assured me it wouldn't make a big difference outside of a bit more valvetrain noise. The second and more serious problem was that one of the plastic joiners for the cam oil sprayer bar was missing: I reviewed some pictures I had taken and confirmed that it was there when I took it to the first shop, and missing when I got it back. They denied having lost it, but eventually promised they would look around for it and call me back, which they of course did not do. Meanwhile, I scoured my entire place for it, and eventually found the drat thing wedged in one of the seat rails of the Polo, prompting a colossal sigh of relief from me as I had no idea how I would replace it; these engines are pretty rare and pricey at this point and oil sprayer bar on its own has been NLA for a long, long time. I still have no idea how they managed to have that piece fall off, as it snaps into the head quite firmly, but I'm immensely grateful that it didn't fall off somewhere at the shop, or between the shop and the car.  With that bit of excitement over, I decided to double check the valve clearance specs in the workshop manual. To my considerable displeasure, I found that while the clearances for regular BX 16/19 engines are indeed 0.20 and 0.40, on a GTi head they're actually 0.10-0.15 and 0.20-0.30, meaning that the 0.35 and 0.50 on my head were wildly out of spec. I called up the owner of the shop that had done the work and told them how out of spec it was, and the fucker had the cheek to explain how to fix it myself. When I reminded him he had charged me to do it, he said he wasn't going to fix it but that I could have my money back if I went over there, knowing that it was a fairly long drive for me. I drove over, he handed me about 2/3rds of what I paid for the valve adjustment (my receipt was not itemised, it was just the full sum saying "head rebuild" - not making that mistake again), and I left him with a few choice words and a promise to give him a poo poo review on every platform I knew of. I called the second machine shop, explained the situation, and they told me to bring the head over. The manager remembered me from my first visit and took pity on me; he gave me a discount and said he'd have the valves adjusted to the correct specs by the next day, so I ended up only losing about £25 to have it sorted out properly. Fantastic place, I'll be going there with all my machining needs from now on. Snapped a couple of cool cars out in their lot as I was leaving:  Next update: Block, sump, cylinder liners are investigated! More head troubles!
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Feb 27, 2019 18:28
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MrOnBicycle posted:I have no point of reference neither, but cleaning it properly shouldn't be that much of a trouble for a shop with all the proper gear right? I took my 7M head to a local machine shop that does car parts and it came back pretty dang spotless, he took it all apart, gave everything a hot bath until it was clean, skimmed the head, SPRAYED IT SILVER to protect it (aluminium head), reassembled everything with new seals on the cams and valves... My only complaint was that he put one of the studs back in the wrong place which lead to an hour long headscratch trying to figure out why I couldn't install a particular part back on it... 
Olympic Mathlete fucked around with this message at 18:27 on Feb 28, 2019 |
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Feb 28, 2019 18:24
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Yeah, pretty sure I would have gotten the exterior cleaned and painted had I gone to the correct machine shop to begin with. Anyway, last time we left off with the head in good mechanical shape, so it was time to turn to the block. I inspected the water passages surrounding the liners and discovered they were alarmingly full of rusty sediment - the back sides of some of the liners were up to halfway submerged in crud. This could have been from the supergenius mechanic in Denmark that failed to replace the headgasket correctly the first time refilling the cooling system with (immensely hard Danish) water, but I think it's much more likely it's been getting worse for the years the car has been sitting dormant. It may have even contributed to the original head gasket blowing. In any case, I ran water through the block until it was clean. Here's some of the sludge that came out and would have been running through the cooling system, I hope the radiator is alright:  I then worked on pulling the sump off to check for any evidence of coolant leaking through into the crankcase. This turned out to be a greater struggle than anticipated. These sumps bolt on with 18 regular 13mm bolts and five internal torx head bolts. This is because some of the bolts are overlapped by things like the hydraulic pressure regulator and LHM hardlines in such a way that makes it impossible to reach regular bolts with spanners or sockets, so they put torx bolts there instead. So, of course, some PO had bolted the sump on in the past using whichever bolts in whatever holes he felt like, making a five minute job a two hour struggle of turning a spanner a tiny fraction on the bolt, putting it on in a different orientation and moving it a tiny fraction, and so on. But eventually it came off:  Inspecting the crankcase, there was no sign of water ingress through the liners. I filled the block with water and left it overnight, and there was no evidence of leakage the next day - obviously not a conclusive test, but it would have shown any egregious leaks. At this point I had an important decision to make - whether I would reseal the cylinder liners. I had originally been told that if the head gasket is replaced and coolant is still appearing in the oil, the culprit is most likely leaking liners. If I was to continue on that assumption, the next step would be to pull and reseal them. However, over the week I was disassembling the engine I had been reading a lot about them and had learned a fair amount. One thing that was causing me a considerable amount of worry was that there was quite a few stories of people who had pulled liners from properly sealing blocks during rebuilds and found that doing so had damaged corroded liner seats so that the liners couldn't be reseated properly, resulting in the block needing to be scrapped. There was also roughly a 50/50 split of experts saying to always do the liners vs just leaving them alone. Basically, I have no way of knowing for sure if the liners are leaking or not, but it would be really lovely to pull good liners and in doing so trash the block. In the face of mounting evidence of the head gasket job being done badly by the previous mechanic, the reuse of TTY head bolts, no evidence of big leaks from the liners, plus the worrying amount of corrosion I had found in the block, I decided to just leave them be and reassemble the engine. I'd prefer to disassemble it again than risk needing to find a new block for no reason. With that in mind, I began putting the head back together in preparation for putting it back on the block. I had two days before I was flying back to my girlfriend, so I was pretty confident I could get it back together and running before I left. On went the thermostat and distributor housing and in went the sensors, including a new temperature sensor to replace the old one that seems to have shattered in the winter cold:    Then came the exhaust manifold. The studs went into the head, the manifold went on, and then as I was tightening one of the nuts, the stud tore in half like a piece of old cheese, luckily with a good inch sticking out of the head. It came out fairly easily with some pliers, but it was too late in the evening to buy a new one, so I had to wait until the next day. I picked one up, threw it into the head, started bolting the manifold down and  gently caress. That's the new stud. And I don't have tools to deal with it. I was even using a torque wrench to make drat sure nothing went wrong, but it was late again and tiredness had made me stupid. The torque wrench wasn't clicking, so I kept on turning it. I even remember thinking "I've been turning this nut for too long" a split second before it broke off. When I saw it, and saw how flush with the head it was, on my last night before having to leave I honestly nearly threw the drat thing through the window. All the stupid, pointless setbacks with the car from the idiot mechanic taking months to put a head gasket on wrong right up until this latest issue caught up to me and I must have spent about 45 minutes pacing the garage yelling like a lunatic at this inanimate object in front of me. I'm usually laid-back to a fault, I can't remember the last time I was that angry. First thing the next morning I rolled up to the good machine shop with the head and showed them what had happened. They took pity on the idiot who had been to them 3 times that week with the same stupid head off a french shitbox and took it immediately and pulled the stud out for me for free. Really top notchguys. All I had time for after that though was to get it back home before it was time to head to the airport. That was three weeks ago, I just got back to the car and am reassembling everything this week. Hopefully my gamble with the liners will pay off, but who knows.
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Mar 11, 2019 15:03
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Also, for all the non-Euros reading this, here's an article by an American about how he imported a Citroen DS to the states: https://citroenvie.com/fulfilling-a...xTBl0nbGbsSg9LE
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Mar 11, 2019 19:38
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I admire your perseverance, and the self control required not to yeet the whole drat car over the fence.
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Mar 11, 2019 19:47
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Grakkus posted:as many of you probably already know, spraying fresh paint 'melts' the layers underneath as well, so i was left with this tacky swipe. Stop reminding me 
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Mar 11, 2019 20:51
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It's all reassembled, just having some dinner and then I'm turning the key. I hope I put it all back correctly There was a last minute panic moment with a hose that connected to nothing, but digging out my engine bay picture from when I bought it in August solved the mystery. Wish me luck!
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Mar 15, 2019 18:17
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False alarm, I broke a hydraulic fitting. Epoxy'd it back together but it'll take four hours to set so I'm going to call it for the day and try starting tomorrow.
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Mar 15, 2019 20:25
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It's been a wild couple of months. I'll be doing a big post on the BX GTi soon, but here's a sneak preview: In the meantime, though, the Lancia has had it's frozen brake pistons removed and the calipers rebuilt:   And has been shipped off for bodywork and paint!  Wait, what's this?  It's a(nother) Fulvia! A series 1 this time, a very early production one from 1965.   I'm way over capacity for cars at the moment but when I found out about this one, I couldn't pass it up, especially with a temporary space opening in my garage with the departure of the S2. It was being sold off from a collection whose owner had died, at a price only marginally higher than ones in need of a complete restoration (like the red one). It's rust free(!), the paint is just in need of a good polish, and the interior is mint. Mechanically it was sound other than an extreme reluctance to start and unwillingness to idle, but all it needed was a new set of spark plugs. All it really needs to be good to go is a set of S1 hubcaps, a new rear view mirror, tyres and that polish - there's some damage to the chrome on the bumpers but it's not worth the money nor effort to fix, really. The plan is to do those things, enjoy it for a little while, send it over to my dad for him to drive for a bit, and then sell off when we get the red Fulvia back. In the meantime, the Mercedes is also going up for sale in order to free up some space and money. Grakkus fucked around with this message at 08:22 on May 15, 2019 |
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May 14, 2019 20:29
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Okay, so, the BX GTi. Last time I posted, I was about to turn the key, which went like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBd_HiAaS_8 And that was that. It would crank, occasionally nearly catch, and that was it. I spent the next week or so running through every single thing I thought it might be - the car stank of petrol after cranking, so I figured it was flooding for some reason. I checked for spark, dismantled the intake and throttle body and cleaned them and the air/vacuum hoses up, thinking it could be an air supply issue, and tested the injectors. Everything was fine, but it still didn't start after reassembly, so I went after the electrics next. Failing engine temp sensors famously stop these engines from starting, but seeing as I had just put a brand new one in I figured it could be the wiring, so I started by checking over all the wiring associated with it. The plug was old and crap and the fastening clip had broken, so I put a new one on. No difference. I continued through the wiring, testing everything and replacing plugs where I found ones that were looking a bit worse for wear. Still, the engine kept flooding. I was starting to look at replacement maf sensors when a lightbulb went on over my head and I went and pulled the temp sensor.   The failed temperature sensor was causing the engine to start as if it was in -40°C, which was causing the flooding. Bloody annoying that it took a week for it to occur to me that the brand new temperature sensor might be broken. Anyway, threw a new one in, tidied the plugs up a bit and the car started and ran quite happily. Success!  or not. It performed well on its first couple of short-distance shakedown drives, but on the first >5 minute drive it began losing coolant at an alarming rate, and when I took a look at the oil, that's what I found. Turns out my gamble with the liners had not, in fact, paid off. In disgust, I abandoned it where it sat in my driveway, packed my poo poo and flew to my gf's place in Copenhagen to spend time with her, focus on work and be car(e)less for a couple of weeks. ~~~weeks pass~~~ During my break, I had time to reflect on the things I had done wrong the first time around that might have had an effect on the end result, and made a mental note to not repeat them. I had definitely made a mistake with the head bolt torque sequence; one stage called for each bolt to be loosened a quarter turn and then retorqued to 80nm - it was worded ambiguously and I had loosened them all and then tightened them again, when I was actually supposed to loosen and tighten them one at a time. I had also made a small mistake with bleeding the coolant system which had resulted in the car overheating slightly (it got to about 100°C before I noticed and shut it off). I flew home and, with the help of my cousin and dad who had flown in to help, set about dismantling the GTi's engine for the second time. Impressively, with their assistance and armed with my knowledge from the first time, it only took a few hours to strip the engine down and pull the head.  Next, we pulled the sump, and unbolted the first conrod:  Now, supposedly, the next step was to put a block of wood against the bottom of the liner and hammer it out. Simple, right? Of course not. Removing the first liner took hours. The bottoms of the liners were sharp, hard metal and did NOT want to move. They would split any wood we tried pretty much instantly, and even the few good whacks we managed to get in would have seemingly no effect.  Eventually we devised a weird workaround where we would cover the top of the wood with a thick strip of cloth that protected it for the most part against splitting. Then we realised that since we were whacking it on one side of the liner, it had canted imperceptibly backwards and jammed in the seat, which is why further whacking was having zero effect. A couple of wood-block-taps to the side of the top of the liner straightened it up and freed it to further whacks from below. Using this alternating top-and-bottom method, the liners came out fast and easy:     A bunch of crud from the cooling system fell through the liner seats onto the crank, which I made sure to clean up every last speck of. That crappy rubber band-looking thing to the right of the liners is the only thing keeping the system watertight. Ridiculous. The next step was to attack the liner seats in the block and liner mating surfaces with WD40 and scotchbrite pads until they were as smooth and clean as possible, and then inspect them for any unevenness caused by corrosion. Thankfully, everything seemed fine, so I put the new seals on, being careful not to twist them. I also gave the parts of the liners that sit in the water jacket a basic tidy up to remove (most of) the rust, but was advised that having them machined was a waste of time, so I left them as is:   I had also picked up a set of new big end bearings, so I threw them on. I don't know anything about diagnosing wear on bearings, the old ones certainly didn't look great but there was no wear I could feel on their surfaces, but I figured it was worth doing while I was in there:   Now came the tricky part - since I don't have liner clamps, I would have to put sealant on the liners, fit them and then immediately fit the head and bolt it down. Precision is key in this operation, as the liners need to go in exactly right, sitting flush on the seats and with the grooved sections perfectly parallel, and the pistons oriented correctly inside. The head needs to then go on without disturbing the liners. I had my cousin with me to assist, and we practiced fitting the liners a couple of times, but we only had the one shot at putting the head on. For obvious reasons, I didn't stop to take pictures of this part Thankfully it went smoothly, up until the head was on and I realised my torque wrench was in my Mercedes a few streets away Cue me rushing like a madman to get it while my cousin tried to get about 30nm on them by feel. When I got back, we went through the torquing sequence (correctly this time!) and it was back together again! From there, it was just a simple matter of reassembly, with one notable cockup. Firstly, while bolting the conrod endcaps back on I discovered that bolting #3 on caused it to pinch onto the crankshaft and make it impossible to move. That caused several hours of anxiety, wondering if we had put the liners back in wrong or somehow gotten a piston backwards, all the while removing bearings, swapping them around, swapping old ones in, all to no avail. Eventually we realised that my somewhat excitable cousin had accidentally swapped #2 and #3 endcaps around while moving them from one spot to another earlier in the day, and swapping them back fixed the problem. Got the rest of it back together, and it was time to start it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkE341Ljq5k Ran nice and smoothly right from the start. I took it for a few loops around the block and was impressed by how rev happy and eager the engine is, it just wants to go and go and go. However! After a few laps, the low coolant warning light flashed up again. poo poo. It wasn't disappearing as fast as before, but it was definitely still going at an alarming rate, it would lose about a pint every 10 minutes of driving. And it was definitely still going into the oil  Oddly, though, it didn't lose any while idling, which was the one bright hope I was clinging on to that I hadn't screwed something up that would necessitate taking the engine to bits for a third time (fourth counting the mechanic's efforts last autumn). So, while mentally setting aside a big wad of cash to pay someone else to fix the drat thing, I gave the engine a once over and noticed this: Why would there be so much water in the oil catch can/filler neck? And not emulsified oil, but just plain water? Maybe I plumbed the hoses wrong? I was pretty sure I had them exactly as they were before. The engine bay after I reassembled it:  Before I started work in January:  Nope, it's all correct. But then I checked the picture I took back in August when I bought the car:  Check the pipe that comes from the top of the throttle body and into the catch can. And the one that comes from just above the thermostat housing and disappears downwards, the one that loops to the back of the head in the more recent shots. They're obviously wrong! And I know for a fact that coolant runs through the throttle body, I just thought two of the other hoses connecting to the underside of the throttle body were feed and return - turns out one is feed, one is a breather hose, and the one I thought was a breather connection was in fact the return, running to the thermostat housing  I pulled off the 'breather hose' to find this:https://i.imgur.com/4AlUUHj.mp4 So it turns out that my throttle body has literally been dumping coolant directly into the oil this whole time. Swapping the hoses around seems to have stopped the problem, though I haven't had a lot of time to test it thoroughly as I flew back out to my GF a couple of days ago. I don't know if the idiot mechanic who hosed the hoses up actually fixed the head gasket and this was the only problem, thus rendering all the ballache I've been through unnecessary, but for the sake of my sanity I'm going to say that it wasn't, and that I fixed it myself. Certainly, I've ended up with a fresh engine and a massive amount of knowledge and experience that I didn't have before. A few months ago, the idea of changing the timing belt on the white BX was a scary prospect, and now it seems trivial. I'm not declaring the car Fixed just yet, I still want to take it on some longer drives, but it's looking promising at least. I'm off on holiday to Italy tomorrow, I'll be back to the car next week and we will find out for sure if it's good to go. Sorry for the long post https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knaht_1_HrI Grakkus fucked around with this message at 02:39 on May 16, 2019 |
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May 16, 2019 02:31
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Congrats, and holy poo poo, I know that pain too well.
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May 16, 2019 04:23
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You're doing some amazing work, it's just coming along with lots of learning 
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May 18, 2019 18:11
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That S1 is great.
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May 18, 2019 18:47
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:That S1 is great. Thanks! It's funny how different it is to use compared with later models. Almost all of the dash controls and steering column stalks are totally different, and the gearbox is weird to get used to with it's super long throw truck-style shifter emerging from under the dash rather than the more conventional one in the S2. I'll post about it some more soon, I'm getting some non-ancient tyres for it today. Meanwhile, bodywork on the S2 has finally started today. I'm excited but nervous, the shop that is doing it certainly produces some stellar work but it's taken them way longer to get started than expected, I hope that isn't a sign of things to come.
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May 29, 2019 12:50
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The S2 has been stripped of most of it's interior and exterior stuff! I stopped by the shop and took a few pictures of it:   A little crispy near the front left of the boot, but otherwise the back half is pretty good.   The centre sections aren't too bad either.    The front floors and footwells are pretty shoddy though, particularly the passenger side. Evidence of poor quality repairs as well, probably by the same person that did the 20 footer paint job that it's wearing at the moment. The biggest casualty so far, though, is the bonnet:  Looks like it'll be cheaper to buy a replacement one than get this one fixed. It looks like water got in through the bonnet badge holes and pooled in there, rotting it out like that. Oh well.
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Jun 3, 2019 20:01
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Holy poo poo you might be more broken than I am. This thread is amazing.
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Jun 4, 2019 03:36
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Those floor patch jobs are terrible. You can usually tell someone has done a good job if the entire footwell is smooth rather than ridged since that means the entire original metal was sectioned out and replaced.
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Jun 4, 2019 13:21
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Holy poo poo, how did I not notice this thread before? I mean, when I run into trouble I'm usually comforted by the knowledge that all you guys will be silently judging me, but I've only got one rust bucket to deal with. That said, I now want a feisty little I4 to toy with more than before. If I only had room... Oh yeah and you've also convinced me to let trained professionals handle spring replacement, when that time inevitably comes. But swapping out a couple of belts suddenly doesn't seem so intimidating...
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Jun 20, 2019 21:32
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Since my last post, I've been slowly working at improving the GTi. I've fixed some electrical stuff, done some (very) minor bodywork, done a DIY refurb of the speedlines, and continued to try to dial in the performance. I'll be going into more detail about all that once I've uploaded the pictures and have a bit of breathing room to sit down and type it all up. In the meantime, though, I've sold the Mercedes, and yesterday I picked up a whole new level of luxury shitbarge:  1990 Citroen XM 2.0 Tecnic, in the dizzyingly rare Vert Amandier. A blown head gasket saw it parked in 2000 and it sat untouched until the guy I bought it from won it in an auction in 2017. He then overhauled the top end and replaced the head gasket, overhauled the suspension and fitted all new spheres to it, refurbished both the set of wheels in the picture as well as a set of two-piece Zender XM wheels that came with it, and fitted it with an LPG system for cheap running. He also screwed a couple of things up like the temperature gauge which now shows 20 degrees higher than what the engine is actually at, the door locks and remote fob, and other such stuff. Apparently, he tired of listening to his wife bitch about how much she hated the way it looks and bought a 3.5L Vel Satis to replace it as the family car. ....Not entirely sure that's an upgrade, frankly, but hey, it meant that I could pick it up for £1k which is less than the value of the wheels and LPG system. My first priorities will be to fix the broken A/C and put a set of new tyres on it, since it's currently on the '00 ones he bought it with (and drove it on for 2 years, with his kids in the back). I'll throw up some more pictures of it once I get it washed. Pursesnatcher posted:Holy poo poo, how did I not notice this thread before? I mean, when I run into trouble I'm usually comforted by the knowledge that all you guys will be silently judging me, but I've only got one rust bucket to deal with. That said, I now want a feisty little I4 to toy with more than before. If I only had room... A dirty-sounding I4 from the 80s is the best, I can't recommend it enough. I've been driving the BX exclusively (until yesterday!) and it's just great. You get to do the "slow car fast" thing, it's unbelievably practical, very comfortable, sounds great and makes people grin when they see it The springs would have probably been less hairy had I used the proper Mercedes tool rather than the off-brand one, but even so, it would have been a gigantic pain in the rear end. Honestly, next time I end up having to do springs on a Merc I'm going to fit lowering springs just to make the job easier. Or maybe pay someone else to do it, but I hate paying someone to do something I could do myself. Grakkus fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Jun 24, 2019 |
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Jun 24, 2019 19:15
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Such a cool car!
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Jun 24, 2019 20:19
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I've never seen an XM in that colour and the wheels are amazing, great find!
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Jun 24, 2019 20:38
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