tintedpane.com

Couple of things. The intake manifold is now mounted. Not torqued but bolted on well enough for a stopping point. A few notes to make for future reference:

• Make sure breather tube is well cleaned and pressed into bottom block before putting on intake
• Possibly put head on with intake attached next time. May be easier than struggling to attach intake nuts blindly with nearly no space to get to studs.
• Remember to attach rear coolant hose if going that route.

Sometimes the order of a process can make or break the job. Fortunately it wasn’t a deal killer this time.

On a different note, thanks to Ann for providing Sean and I with a nice dinner and movie for our belated birthday gifts. TBS would be proud :-p

Old story (2003) about a single wheeled bike(?) using the same gyro principle as the Segway. Wheelie anyone?

Have been removed. The intake was stuck due to an oil soaked gasket. Rubber mallet (deadblow hammer) worked well with light taps in getting it off. The exhaust came out without much fanfare to my surprise. The only snag was that two of the studs decided to come out instead of just the nuts. From the looks of it, oil was leaking from the camshaft/cylinder seals and running down to the exhaust headers where it slowly ate at the gasket and eventually worked through and started leaking into the exhaust valves. You can see the oil on the 6th (leftmost) cylinder.

Notes:

• Next time it would probably be easier to first remove the intake manifold. But only after first removing the thermostat cap, which interferes with the fuel rail on the intake. This way one can inspect more closely the hoses and electrical connections still remaining on the cylinder head.
• I remember now how I got the distributor rotor off last time I changed the timing belt — I used my bicycle toolkit’s 3mm hex bit, in a 1/4 inch size socket with a 1/4″ drive to 3/8″ drive adapter in order to use the torque wrench.

Saturday:

1:30pm - Jevon helps me move tools to my place.

2:00pm - Drain coolant and remove radiator, coolant hoses, fan clutch

2:30pm - Remove P/S, A/C, alternator belts

3:00pm - Eliot’s hardware run to get 3mm hex bit and masking tape to label items

3:45pm - Remove sparkplug wires, distributor cap, rotor

4:30pm - Remove vibration dampener pulley and camshaft belt

5:30pm - Label and remove various electrical harnesses and coolant hoses

6:00pm - Remove exhaust downpipe nuts. Struggle with fuel lines

6:30pm - Remove remaining heater core hoses from firewall

6:50pm - Remove valve cover and break (loosen) head bolts

7:00pm - Attempt to pull cylinder head off. Run into 3 attached hoses/wiring

• One remaining heater core hose attached to rear of cylinder head
• Diagnostic plug and various wiring ground points attached to intake
• Fuel return hose from front of engine

7:15pm - After standing in engine bay to lift off cylinder head, success. Cylinder head removal DONE.

Thanks to Jevon for helping out. Much obliged.

Pics to come later here:

edit: had a scare — forgot to put the cylinder block on a stand to prevent the open valve from bending. fortunately a quick check saw there was a cooling hose the block was sitting on to prevent the valve from hitting the ground.

It’s that time again. Since the old thing is now nearing 2 decades, it looks like it has a blown head gasket. Gonna do some testing this weekend to be sure. Got a leak-down tester to pinpoint the problem. The manual did speculate that having a massive pressure drop between the 1st and 6th cylinders using the compression test usually indicates a blown gasket.

The local shop wanted $200 for a leak-down test and $1000 if the gasket needed to be replaced. So far, the leak-down kit and parts come to about $275. If I get a compressor, that might be another $200. Hopefully we won’t break any studs taking the top end off. I’m pretty excited. Found one of my old suppliers which beats all the other online suppliers by 10-35%.

Does anyone know the proper procedure for installing a stud? For certain, one of the valve cover studs is stripped and possibly one of the exhaust manifold studs are missing. Last time this happened, we just used a stud installer/extracter to put it in the Type-R block.

A bit of a rehash. Raced/Paced a Ford GT today down the toll. For a couple grand, being able to keep up with a supercar is pretty good. The driver probably wasn’t that experienced as he braked a lot for the turns, but it was a good fun minute or so of mostly WOT. The bike really likes to keep going in a straight line at speed so a lot of leaning and pulling on the handlebars was necessary.

Article at motoringfile.com

Juicy Highlights

• Co-developed w/ Peugeot Citroën
• to be mfg’d by Citroën
• Two Engine types
• Normally Aspirated 1.6L
• Turbocharged 1.6L
• Four output levels
• n/a 75hp, 115hp
• turbo 140hp, 170hp
• turbo 140hp version has 177lb-ft of torque at 1400rpms
• Normally Aspirated Model
• variable valve timing and lift
• acts as throttle control; butterfly valve normally open — used only as safety backup
• on demand water and oil pump
• direct fuel injection
• Turbo Model
• variable valve timing w/ sodium filled exhaust valves
• 10.5:1 compression ratio (!)
• thanks to the direct fuel injection at 120bar (~1700psi)
• twin-scroll turbocharger (!)
• 11.6psi max boost
• water/oil cooled turbocharger w/ additional water pump activated at standstill.

Interesting engine. The water pump “turbo-timer” seems pretty cool along w/ the twinscroll design, which I’ve never heard of on a turbo application.

This and the new R6 6 cylinder for the next gen. 3 series looks to be pretty cool, though I’d still say the new twin-turbo diesel is more interesting.

Cutaway pics of the twin turbo (turbine) design:

• Engine
• Turbo closeup

I hope they have the engine on display for a more detailed look at the L.A. show.