Vlad's rides thread

[vlad01]

Clutch cable spacers looked great and were of a hard alloy so they didn't mush over time given some of the concentrated load and moment on them.

One did not go over the clevis given they are so fat, the washer turned out to be 15mm ID, there the cable spigot was exactly 14mm. I had my spacer made around 14.2mm so a nice easy slip fit. Well that was a bugger. But the clevis is so fat, I was more willing to file that than the nice spacer!

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And as for the dowel rotation tool, worked like a charm! I tested its grab on the old dowel first, the ones I tapped the M14, with a bolt and even light clamp on it, I couldn't move it with the big shifter I had in hand.

But on the actual offset dowels, they were made of a much harder steel, so the original ones were soft and the tool could dig in good, but on the offset, they did slip. But once I tightened the clamp screw enough, it did turn it with some force on the handle without slipping.

The hard steel on the dowel was completely unscathed by the slippage of the first couple of attempts, so at least on the plus side there was no risk of damage slipping on them unlike the OG dowels which were marked from just clamping them.

I rotated the dowel initially to the score lines as intended and started off just seeing if that was all it needed and pretty much yes!

The error went down to 0.07mm. I just had to be within 0.127mm or 5 thou total indicated. The error also changed angle to about 45 deg of the ref which is what I expected if the 12- 6 was zero and the 9 - 3 was 0.15. I could only increase the 12 - 6 while reducing the 9 - 3 and being in the middle of the two would be the lowest overall.

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Top right bellhousing bolt now binds a little due to the housing moving down quite a bit. I figured I'd recheck the reading with this eliminated. One thing it did was removed the tension against one side of the dowels. So now I had a very slight play side to side where I could go from that 0.07mm to about 0.10mm if I put some pressure towards the left during the bolt tightening. I can even feel that slight play. Since the left dowl with the housing fully preloaded to the right yeilds the 0.07, but to the left it gets closer to the previous error. I figured that if I slightly rotate the right dowel this time in the same anticlockwise direction, it should kick the dowel slightly to the right where it takes up this slack, that way, I should be able to just wack the housing on and get the same reading each time and not have to push it one way or another.

I'd say it only need a slight tweak there. That dowel was even easier to drive in, so it should rotate with ease.


I had already measured the rear parallel error and got these measurements. I will recheck them after I finish with the dowels.

My next step here is to get a engine machine shop to shim the housing on the surfacing machine such that they get the same or as similar reading as here. On that circle at each intersecting line as accurately as possible (values change fast when you move around that circle)
What this should do it zero the parallel out to my engine and crank by surfacing it deliberately wrong in the opposite way and amount. I've seen this done like this a few times on the Tremec FB group, when the block is wrong.

I had it machined parallel and it actually made is a little worse, probably becasue the error it had happened to be more or less in the opposite direction to the engine itself.

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Before I get to that, I am going to put some fresh fuel in, prop the engine via the housing safely and start the engine with just the flywheel, so make sure the balance is good, the rear main seal I installed doesn't leak (flange was a bit rusty on the seal surface, I've cleaned is as best I can, but want to be sure!) and prime and flush the PS system of any potential overhaul and assembly contamination, these do not have filters so this is important if I want it to last!


After that and the housing rear surfaced having verified good, its the spigot and clutch side of things, then the box can finally go in

This dowel and also flywheel saga is something that was stressing me out and was a major roadblock for a long time, so I am so happy to be getting past it for certain now.


I also forgot to mention that the bellhousing cast iron brace once actually installed with the bellhousing and dust cover in between was not level again because the brace and or the block is not 90 deg exactly. So not only do you have to shim for straightness on the engine studs, but also for the angle on the block to get that bellhousing plane. I achieved this with 6 shims per stud for the front two, 2 shims per stud for the middle and none at the rear. This got me even contact across all studs and flat on the bell housing and studs at the same time, a lot of mucking around!

So the brace was all sorted and with dust cover acted as one unified engine block mating face which on the dial gauge showed basically no distortion when tightening the bolts on the brace/cover. I also recommend some blue loctite on those locking nuts. Had them come loose many times before, but likely from all the strain and misalignments that are evident now. But still, doesn't hurt to use some.

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[Charlescrown]

I remember the rear main seal the dealers also replaced the alloy housing at the same time. Probably blaming the housing for the problem. What is the first pic it looks like the end of the clutch cable over something.

[vlad01]

Luckily these don't have those stupid rear seal plates, just a bore in the bock and main cap casting, so much better leak resistance, no chance of a coolant leak either.

As for the cable, that's a screwdriver I used to hold the clevis while I filed it. I couldn't hold it with my fingers without it flipping sideways all of the time and was starting to butcher the filing. With the screwdriver in there, the job was much better, quicker and easier, and more precise to boot.

[vlad01]

Well the time had come to finally replace the heads and gaskets on the old shitbox which I will remind you that it was severely overheated back in around 2017. The front bypass fitting broke off when my nephew was using as his primary car, being plastic and all. It dumped most of the coolant and he seized it around 5-6 times over a trip of about 50Km from when he first noticed it was running bad. Of course. no coolant, the temp sender didn't really register a change in temp floating in air basically, if anything it went down I recall and tricked us. I was trying to help him over the phone at the time. Some 8-9 years and ~ 230k later, the gas getting into the cooling system was getting bad and misfires became the norm as well as almost daily bleeding of the thermostat nipple with about a balloons worth of gas coming out each time.

It took me months to track down a set of good cores to have rebuilt to swap over, in order to minimize downtime. No one had any except cranky and expensive Holdent. 400+ and a lot of stuffing around mid/late last year I got some that looked ok-ish. Parts for these engines are getting hard to find, despite complete engines still common enough, but no one wants to part out good engines anymore. Also, yes I could've probably found a used engine for similar money, but their age means a high change of neglect which is the reason this one copped so many problems that lead to others and so forth, all the root causes being cooling system neglect from the OG owners, as you'll see later in some of the head gasket pics.

Dropped the heads off in early Dec to Duggan's and got them back early April, at a cost of 940 bucks for the job. New exhaust seats, decked, tanked, crack tested, one new intake valve (bent from the engine it came off blowing up) valve guides redone in bronze liners, stem seals supplied as new.

Because I had newish springs and keepers on the shitbox already, I was to assemble them myself with those bits transferred over to save money.

I started with pressure washing everything to reduce contamination falling into the engine once it started to come apart.

After I popped off the pas side head.

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Gasket was leaking around the fire ring and via a rotted out area on the small hole just between the bottom of # 1 and 3. This is where the combustion gasses were entering the cooling system under pressure in the above pic.
The cylinders showed plenty of water entering into them, past and likely recently with the misfires. They look way worse they they actually feel, almost nothing can be felt by the nail. Very slight pits on # 1 on that vertical line could be felt where the ring gap happen to be.

I could almost not feel any bore lip either, at a guess maybe half a thou, less than 1 I reckon by the feel of them. Amazing given how hard this was driven for the 10 years of ownership and the huge Ks too. At least 435k at the time of these pics.

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Interestingly, these Payne garbage brand intake gaskets are absolutely trashed after only installing them in 2022 I'm 95% certain. They are even worse than the ones that were in there for longer previously.

I had Nulon coolant in there since 2023 and used Tectalloy just before that, but they just perished at a rate I have never seen. I speculate the chemicals broke down or the coolant became acidic from the combustion gasses mixing in all of the time. Co2 makes water acidic, other combustion products and unburned fuel all didn't help. I was sus on the quality of those gaskets, so they never went into any of my cars until I needed something to get me out of trouble back in 22. So that could also be a factor in their extremely short life.

I had always planned to have an alloy (probably a high Zn one) insert made to press into those gasket coolant ports to support the plastic and prevent them from ever collapsing like that.
The alloy of choice needs to be one that is more galvanic protective of the iron and the alloy of the intake. A high zinc alloy like what the thermostat housing is made from should work best. One day

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[vlad01]

New head being put together.
Got the block deck nice and clean using those safety razors, they make light work of the graphite material. Given the age of these, it was quite possible that these contain some form of asbestos, so I wore a respirator for the duration of all of this. I am extremely sensitive to most solvents now anyway, so it's a must for me now days. I used my shopvac to suck up the flakes of gasket as I scrapped it away, and any debris from other stuff within the engine to try keep everything as clean as possible.

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These left header was stuffed, some cracks and also the water in the cylinders ruined the union joint. It was getting close to paper thin at this point, the Y pipe side already had pin holes. Given this was ok when I last checked during a clutch change in 2023, I reckon the water getting in really got bad more recently. The right side was still good and looked much the same as last time.
Luckily I kept the headers from the VR I sold. But I'll have an issue with that later which you'll see.

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One side all done, but guess what? As I was unpacking the head gaskets, they put them inside loose bags with one end open, folded in a way you can't tell that it's not sealed from outside the pack, so as I was trying to get it out of the main package, the gasket just drops out of the end of the bag which happened to be the bottom in the way I was opening it. Hit the concrete and the rear most bottom corner with the largest coolant passage hole folds over and cracks. FFS!

So the local Bursons was able to get one in by mid Monday (this happened to me on the Friday arvo), Lucky! Or unlucky depends on how you look at it.

[vlad01]

Since I can't drain the coolant on the driver side (they didn't drill deep enough into the block's drain bung, so it's useless with the end blocked with casting) I ended up using my fluid transfer kit which is a giant syringe with various plastic tubes and rubber adapters. I stuck one of the plastic tubes in one of the rubber adapters that happen to fit the head bolt holes, and a few m length of PVC hose. I loosened a bolt on the lower part of the head, and quickly shoved it in and plugged it up with the rubber adapter. With the transfer syringe, I drew it until it could siphon itself into a bucket. About 2-3L came out until the block was dry.

I could then proceed to remove the head without dumping all the coolant into the block.

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Now that I had the head off, I could see some obvious damage to the fire ring. It was really odd at first to see the ring pulled in rather than the typical blown out failure most see. But more on that in a bit.
Also evident that the cooling system was severely neglected in a previous life. The gasket was rotten in all coolant (originally all water when we got the car) exposed areas, with the gasket as thick as 8-10mm in the worst puffed up areas. Gross!

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Given that I do far less long distance driving now and many smaller trips, the oil is starting to look sludgy where I knew it was pretty clean in here last time. So I have decided to drop services down to 5k from now on.
So I gave it a decent clean in the valley area while I had it apart, cleaned all the dog bones and spider, and vacuumed up any bits that dropped in, including some blobs of coolant. Yay for shop vacs. A trick is to adapt a bit of poly hose used for garden irrigation, so that you have a small "nozzle" with concentrated vac, perfect for getting into tight internal engine spots.

The cylinders on this side looked much better, far less water staining/damage. Just in the middle one, odd given that when the intake gaskets fail, it almost always the two outer ones as they get the direct path to the coolant leaks. But the outers were good, just the middle had a bit in them at some point. The head gasket itself showed no signs of leaking coolant, just the stuffed fire rings. But who knows, it may have leaked for a short while initially and resealed itself to show no evidence at a later date perhaps.

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[vlad01]

Last head assembled.

This one has one brand new intake, as mentioned, one was bent slightly.
About 18 months ago, maybe even around 2 years ago knowing I had to do this and likely was going to land newer heads with smaller 5/16 rocker bolts, that is exactly why I picked up a set off a car at the Bendigo wreckers. In hindsight, should have put the effort in and got the heads too. They quoted 150 for the pair, a bargain compared to the 400 and something I had to pay in Melbourne. Anyway, I got the "Mace/ZZP" rocker bolts from Metric Men (awesome fastener joint) for I think about 10 bucks. All went well there. I lubed up all the valve stuff with 2 stoke oil as it has that tacking agent that will remain in place longer than normal oil (like assembly lube) and won't smoke like a MF. The springs and arms with just normal motor oil.

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Now as for the gasket, now that I was looking more closely, I could see universally across all cylinders that all the rings had pulled in. My hypothesis is that, going by the shape of the ring profile, that as the heads overheated and expand a lot as they would have been totally dry of coolant while the block would have been cooler and still had some coolant in there as it was lower than bypass. The heads would have slid/sheered past the rings on top given the shape is almost like a one way mechanism (open ended wedge like), but as it cooled down, the shape does not allow for it to slide back easily without it wedging itself against the head/block and it basically just anchored to the surface and pulled the top side with it with a huge sheering force, that then pried open and unrolled the ring profile which you can see in various areas as ripples or ballooned sections, this naturally also dragged the ring into the combustion chamber. One area even cracked all the way though as it was basically being bent edge on. On the gasket material itself, you can see a shadow of where the ring was originally before it all went to shit.

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[vlad01]

Valves were toast!
Very pitted, rusty looking shit.

The heads were surprisingly in ok condition and will make good rebuild cores, I do contemplate keeping them with my spare block. No evidence of cracking anywhere, these clearly are much tougher than ecotec by a long mile! These not only were severely overheated, but also suffered chronic multi 100k and years of mild overheating as it was nearly impossible to have them air/gas pocket free. I would often tell by the rapid engine warm up and higher temps that it was due for bleeding. The heads would be half full of air/gas every other day, daily by the end. Yet no obvious structural damage. Even the seats remained in place.

As for the valve guides, off their face! Some of the exhaust ones had almost 1.5mm of side slop Maybe 1.2-1.3mm as an estimate. Truly massive play.

Seats were worn heaps and very uneven, especially in the ex ones.

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With the new heads on, it was time to sort the intake gaskets.
I took out some out of my NOS stash. Less worried about availability now as there are many good brands making them, even Felpro make a good set. About 10-15 years ago, it was Genuine and mostly cheap poor quality ones like the Payne set that it had prior and not much in between.

Evidently, the coolant was not very inhibitive anymore, and the alloy got lots of pitting, small but deep ones.
I cleaned it good with a soft wire brush, manually picked out as many as the deep ones as possible of all the aluminium hydroxide as I could. Then blocked the whole thing to polish it up a bit for better RTV adhesion. Micro cloth and many times over with thinners until the cloth was only coming up clean. Wiped the heads the same until he cloth wasn't pulling anything up.

Gave it all a nice thin coat of the oil resistant formula silicone. That stuff just seems to bond better than any other formula I have tried so far and seems to be resistant to most things more than the regular gasket makers.

With the pits being mostly bare metal inside them, the sealant is bonding within the pits, not just loosely sticking to the oxide/hydroxide layer and chunks.

Before I plonked the manifold down, I checked again for any debris, then poured a few L of clean oil all around the sides of the valley to flush any old crud and small contaminants down into the sump which I'd later change the oil before starting it.

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[vlad01]

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All back together!

But as I mentioned a few posts back about the replacement header. The shape of the union joint was quite a way off and it leaked, sounded like a clapped out tractor. I tried initially high temp RTV, but the gaps were bigger than I could see.

So a few nights latter when I had time, I dropped the Y pipe and wire wheeled it back to almost bare metal on the Y side and the header side only needed a basic clean to rid the silicone. I used this stuff I had for slip joins. I couldn't see if I got enough in, I put heaps in and and checked with this random piece of mirror I found in the junk in one of the other barn like sheds, looked alright and so I pre-cured it with the heat gun as I guess it was going to blow out if I started it as is. This worked and it sounded like new again! No more tractor!

The old header as far as I can tell dates to 2004, it was bought 2nd hand off ebay for 200 bucks in 2010 with unknown Ks. It went on my vacationer, then to this car. Between the two cars it easily has around 440,000km, not including what it originally had, so it could well have half a mil on it and 22 years old! It did well, but the coolant leaks did that header in. The right side is still going ok and should last years more.

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What I noticed imedially is how much less the exhaust stunk. Smelled like the cat started to work lol, but I think with the sloppy valve control, it was running inefficient at low speeds and so idle emissions suffered a lot. The engine also sounded like the "cam" got smaller, not the lumpy like idle it had for the last few years.
2ndly, the long distance economy improved absolutely massively.

Did a trip to Bendigo, filled up there, ran about to many places getting stuff, then lunch, Bunnings on the way home.

Then when I got back home, I filled up at the servo. 5.62L 72.5Km and only used that much fuel. This is an all time record for this car! Into the 7s L/100 first trip and I also still had a slight misfire. Turned out my leads were worn out too, so I just replaced them on Thursday. So I am keen to see if I can get even lower next long trip.

It was about 5 years ago I was able to get around or just under 8.5l/100, then it slowly got worse with all other things ruled out. As of the last year it was lucky to even get min 10s on the highway with best efforts.
So if you wonder where the economy goes on the engines as it ages, 1: is the false knocks retarding the engine all of the time, that being eliminated, 2: the biggest economy killer is worn heads! Even with the way my bottom end looks in the pics, obviously not going to have the ring seal it once had, that seems to be such a small factor that it likely makes little difference as it is, but the heads make very significant one.

Of course, there is no miracle with short town trips with the economy. It still sucks, but that's all down to the driving type. I am sure there have been gains, but yeah. Maybe 400km out of a tank is all you'll get with daily 5min trips to the school, shop and around locally.

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[vlad01]

While I was making my trip in Bendigo, got my old mates to quickly bend up some blank brackets to spec which is over length so I can cut down to what I need in situ and then add the holes. Yes they aren't all in even locations, but that was how it is with the existing setup on there. I didn't do the cooler originally FYI lol.

So that was the cooler sorted Much better now!

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Then a few days ago I tackled the last dowel, just turned it anticlockwise based on a whim, nailed it! Now the concentricity was the smallest I could get at 0.06mm and consistent regardless of how I chucked the housing on and bolted it back up. Very happy with the result there.

Now I have to deal with this mess at the back. The housing is suppose to be parallel and I did do a rough check with a glass table as a flat surface and it seems to check out. Then I figured out I could check the block using the flywheel itself as the ref and I was able to confirm without a doubt the block to crank was actually pretty bang on, all blind hole areas came out at or near zero, only the driver side single though hole was + 0.15, but this does not account for anything I measure on the bellhousing mounted up.

To simulate the numbers I got, I had to shim the front face at the bottom on the table by 20 thou or 0.508mm, but I can't see how it can be this far off relative to the crank, the block measures almost as perfect as one could hope for a factory job.

Something doesn't add up at all. I want to use someones machinist granite block and measure it properly. I know of a guy who has a massive 3 ton block, but I lost his contacts and his business is listed as closed on google. So I physically will have to try rock up to his house assuming he still lives there and go, hey you remember me from like 5 years ago?

Either way, I never trusted the rear of the bellhousing as I know it has some warped areas, but I have no way to know which way things are warped without a machinist granite block. Using a dining table isn't going to cut it I think.

When it was machined parallel, they did the front instead of the rear and the rear I know it is concave in the middle. So they machined it in reference to the outer edges of the rear, areas I can not reach with my dial gauge nor can I measure each hole area without having to reset the gauge as most of the holes are not in the same PCD, rendering any measurements there meaningless. So A, I need to confirm my inner PCD against a granite block to see what the error and warpage is, then machine accordingly, or B, machine it again but at the rear, then recheck to get the true values, machine again to compensate. But the more it's machined, the more of the input to spigot clearance gets eaten up.

All a massive PITA!

I wish I had access to a fly cutter, I'd literally do it myself. Hell, I'd practice on a spare just to understand how to compensate for the numbers I read.

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