Well, today has been a busy day with Project Elite's top end rebuild!
Everything stripped off that needs to be pretty much. I was working on my own doing the stripdown so I'm pleased I did it in an afternoon.
I think I made the wise choice though, in doing the rebuild. It needs it, and most things were leaking. It hadn't been put together very well, there was sealant used on the previous HGs which is a no-no in my book.
The biggest snag I come across, is when removing the manifolds, four studs snapped, (3 clean off).. 3 studs in one head, and one in the other.
One stud I managed to extract, but there was no hope for the others. So Markie and I have spend our entire night in the workshop, drilling the old studs out and tapping in new threads. Not a task to take on carelessly, I'm always nervous drilling alloy heads, especially so close to the water jacket!! We've done it though, all holes are drilled out, and I can get studs to tighten in them and come out again (phew)..! Also snapped two bolts off in the manifolds, where the secondaty air injection pipes go in, these also we had to drill and tap. although, they weren't so bad, they tapped really well.
For example, here is a pic of one of the manifold studs snapped off:
Here are studs being drilled (we both did a few!)
Holes being re-threaded...
End result..... holes with thread, ready for new studs!!
Here are some general pics of the stripdown today!Out of interest, decided to see how well the cam timing was done previously before taking the belt off. Who can stop what's wrong with this picture?!
More snapped studs...(all sorted now..)
The RH cylinder head just taken off...
Both of the heads...
The old HGs, a little worse for wear...
The engine, looking a bit sorry for itself!
This oil cooler plate will definately need re-sealing, and lots of cleaning in this area:
One of the heads...
I knew these heads had their uses...!
Tomorrow, the plan is to clean up the heads surfaces, flatten the exhaust manifolds and their mating surface on the head, and re-fit the manifolds with new gaskets, new studs and nuts, and get them torqued down to perfection (in progressive stages, to prevent them working loose).
I then plan to clean up the engine area, re-seal the oil cooler plate, and get the heads back in place, using new copper gaskets (or whatever they are) on the manifold to downpipe joins.
I will then spend the rest of the day cleaning out the throttle bodies, breathers, etc etc... in prep for the rebuild.
I'll be happy if I can do this, because then I can just tinker for a couple of hours each night in the week, until I get it finished, it shouldn't take too long.
That's me done, enough for one day... time for a beer...
I'll post more tomorrow night on tomorrow's progress, any comments welcome
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Topic: Project Elite - Todays progress and pictures! (Read 3171 times)