So, ages ago I bought a universal flywheel locking tool, but it doesn’t fit my lightened flywheel at all well. So, I’ve made my own. It took less than an hour.
All I did was trace the outline of the flywheel onto a bracket, and then cut and weld it to a piece of 20mm square tube. The tube was then drilled and bolted to the block. It’s a nice snug fit and should be able to take the load when the crankshaft bolt is tightened 100Nm + 90 Degrees.
So, this lot arrived this week. A full dry-sump kit and electric water pump. Lots of shiny. I had intended to bolt a lot of it on this weekend, but then I ended up lying around on the sofa a lot.
So this quick post is as much a reminder as it is a post. I have my lovely new pocketed omega pistons (88mm) and I’m assembling them on to the rods.
You can see the c-lock on the right there, and they’re not easy to fit. I had a couple of careful exploratory attempts but decided not to go much further until I could either get this right, or buy a tool for it.
So, I found this you-tube video done by Orval Stuckemayer (great name) and he totally nails it. Put the gudgeon pin in, hold the clip in a certain way, push … and it clicks positively home. Bob’s your uncle … done. Pretty pleased with the speed this can be done with.
Well, after planning everything carefully on this, I ended up rushing it in anyway – I had cleaned all the mating surfaces with acetone, put thread-lock on the bolts and using my artists paint-brush, painted ARP ultra-torque under the ARP bolt head. Bolts were turned in hand-tight.
Then, I thought … I’m going to need to lock the flywheel, and got my one-size-fits-everything-but-a-duratec universal flywheel locking tool. No worries – a bit of bar, a couple of bolts, a bit of plate with teeth cut out and an inch of weld, and I have a custom tool.
Then I thought … meh – it’s 10pm and I need an early night, so I started to pack away. At that point a little voice in my head reminded me that there was thread-lock on the bolts, so I needed to do something pretty sharpish.
I grabbed an old head-bolt, dropped it though one of the flywheel holes and wedged it against a rib on the block. 2 minutes later and I had the bolts torqued up.
I torqued them to 95 lbs/ft, and did it in 3 increments of 30 lbs/ft per time. The fastening sequence was to fasten opposites. 95 lbs/ft is looking tight, on the tightness scale.
Mild setback averted.
Here is the crank-shaft oil-seal in place, using the plastic insertion tool (not shown) and all new shiny bolts are torqued down to 10 Nm. Sorry, Davy, but I didn’t ensure I had lined up the bolt-heads with each other.
I’ve also put the seal in with assembly lube on the seal surface and the surface of the bearing. It’s horrible sticky stuff, made of cancer I think. I wore gloves.
Hopefully I’ve got it right, because they’re £50 each to replace. and an engine out as well.
So a while ago, I had the engine balanced and I thought I’d share the output of some this work. Below are my new omega pocketed pistons (for my outrageous cam), and the Saenz conrods and the box the pistons came in.
The thing of note is the writing on the pistons’ box. It basically says not to change the pistons and pins around because they’ve been matched and balanced to 0.05g! that’s a twentieth of a gramme.
Happy with that.
So, I finally started on the new race engine build. Rather than putting the old bolts back in, I’ve put in some new ones: this is partially because I didn’t want to put the old bolts in, and partially because I didn’t really take care of all the bolts I took out of the engine and I lost some.
Here you can see the difference between the old zinc plated steel bolts and the new zinc plated steel bolts. I think I did the right thing. The old bolt had actually been cleaned in acetone. IT still didn’t look very nice.
I was doing a little research about carbon duratec bits, and came across this blogL DuratecFury. Inside the blog there’s a wonderful post about reconditioning a duratec engine (a job I have to do as well).
Definitely worth a read, and a really nice job done.
I’m part way through this migration, and there are many advantages to doing this:
However, there are other factors
But, taking that lot into account, it’s still worth it for the end result – it’s not hard to get 270bhp from these if you add the right bits with little to no machining. I think everyone who’s gone to that route is happy they have.
So, two compressors are in place, and plumbed. They just go into a V and into the main feed to the retractable air-lines. I need to produce a bypass so the air doesn’t go over the oiler. The oiler is nearly empty at the moment so I didn’t worry. However, when it comes to refilling it, then I will need to bypass else I’ll be oiling my soda.
Now, to the pictures. This is the inside of the rocker cover, half cleaned to show the brown lacquer. This has already been through the parts washer to try and get most of the crud off.
Below is the crank cradle – it looks factory fresh but was as skanky as the inside of the rocker cover. Needless to say the entire engine is going to get this treatment inside and out.
