Mk1 16v Project

[Volksee77]

nice work chris, great to see it coming together, better pull my finger out now hey and catch up

[mikinoz]

Looks good bro. What happening Wednesday mik???

Chris said the engine would be in by then!

[Preen59]

nice work chris, great to see it coming together, better pull my finger out now hey and catch up

Ha, yes you should extract that digit! Your donk will be a lot more impressive than this one...

Chris said the engine would be in by then!

Don't get too carried away.. Once I get the car back the engine and box have to come back out so the bay can be painted.. But it's a start!!

[Volksee77]

not really as a running engine far outperforms one still in bits

[Preen59]

not really as a running engine far outperforms one still in bits

Haha, true..




Well I went to time the cams in this morning.. So first things first, I went and got some bolts I needed for the cam cover.. And some moly grease for the cam lobes..




Then, as luck would strike me, I found out that my dial indicator attachment wasn't long enough to fit down the bore in the head and screw into the plug hole... Very, very frustrating. I've made an extension and i've got an ejector pin that I will cut to length tomorrow to suit.. A bit of a PITA, but i want to time these cams in properly..

In other news, here's some pics of #1 piston that came out of this engine and also the contents of the original water pump...





So... Time the cams in tomorrow.. Then I can put the cover on, get some spark plugs and work on getting this donk in the car....

[alex g]

Hows the bore look in the number 1 cylinder? Did you get them honed yet? What is the indicator you are using for your cam setup, would be interested in theses process as I love to make sure mines dialed in properly.

[Preen59]

Hows the bore look in the number 1 cylinder? Did you get them honed yet? What is the indicator you are using for your cam setup, would be interested in theses process as I love to make sure mines dialed in properly.

The bores were all pretty worn. That's one of the reasons I bored it out to 82.5mm..

I'll take pics when I time the cams in and show you what i'm talking about.



..... Oh and for the sake of information.. Standard KR plugs are NGK BCP7ET.

I couldn't find it anywhere in my info so I had to get Tim to grab the info off ETKA.. I don't know what i'd do without that bearded redneck.. (Here's hoping he reads this! haha)

[Volksee77]

hey nice pics, that water pump is still good, just a couple of tubes of metal mend and you'll be able to reuse that lol. One thing to watch though when you get this started you may want to get it running and warm it up then drop the oil fairly soon hey as you never know with all the moly grease etc in there you would hate to block one of the piston oil squirters or something as they don't take much to give up the go and then your running into bigger issues than you want on a new engine

[Preen59]

hey nice pics, that water pump is still good, just a couple of tubes of metal mend and you'll be able to reuse that lol. One thing to watch though when you get this started you may want to get it running and warm it up then drop the oil fairly soon hey as you never know with all the moly grease etc in there you would hate to block one of the piston oil squirters or something as they don't take much to give up the go and then your running into bigger issues than you want on a new engine

Hahaha cheers, mate.

Yeah i intend to drop the oil very quickly.. You never know what got left in the engine and there's all sorts of particles that start floating around after the first fire up..

[Preen59]

Man... What a day!!

First up, here's my dial tool with the extension I made..



The moly grease I used..





Now... Timing the Cams in..

Firstly.. It's a good idea to wind the crank so that all cylinders are half way down the bore when fitting the cams.. This stops any valves dropping in to say "Hi!" to the pistons.

When they're in and timed to eachother, wind the cam sprocket 'round 'till the line on the inside of it is flush with the top face of the head (Sorry, i forgot to take a pic of that!).

The way I wind the cams is by using a belt strap type oil filter tool around the sprocket. This also works rather will for tightening the retaining bolts on the sprockets and pulleys.


Before I go on, here's some pics of the TDC pointer I made today:






Now, fit your dial indicator.. (I should mention that you can also use a piston stop and a degree wheel in basically the same fashion, but I like dial indicators and I didn't have a piston stop.. )



Wind the crank until the piston pushes on the dial and reaches TDC (The point where the dial winds up to its highest point) and zero it.

Now, normally you have to account for piston "dwell". Piston dwell is the time the piston remains, for all intents and purposes, still at the top and the bottom of the stroke. This is affected by rod length and stroke length. This is hard to explain it text, but basically, the longer they are the more dwell you will have. Given that this engine has a relatively short stroke and only 144mm rods, it has (for the purpose of timing) no measurable (by these means) dwell. So that makes picking up TDC really easy.

To pick up TDC on an engine with a measurable amount of dwell, you wind the crank clockwise past TDC until the indicator moves a given amount.. So lets say 0.03mm. At that point, mark your pulley where the timing marker is sitting. Then wind the crank anticlockwise until you go past TDC in the other direction and the indicator moves 0.03mm. Mark your pulley again.

Half way in between these two points you just marked is TRUE top dead centre.

Now you can mark your pulley, like so:




I also like to put a dob of white marker on it, so I know which one to use.. Given that this pulley has the original marker for the 1.8T..



More to come..