Bemused and Confused

Well, the winter is moving along quickly. Unfortunately, my work on the car isn’t. But, there has been progress.

Checking Things Out

I took the block up to for my friend to look at. He gave the once over and basically said that it should work. Nothing is really out of place and the scratches really aren’t much of a concern. We also talked about some other things. He is interested in looking into some improvements for the oil pan. The idea here would be to possibly increase the volume a bit and to also insure the pump inlet stays in the oil. Sucking air with the oil pump is not a good thing. I took some measurements to check for clearances. There isn’t much room on the back end of the oil pan. It is only about 1.5 inches deep at that far end. There are little stators there that channel the oil back towards the front of the pan where the pump is. They are only about 1.3 inches down.

The other measurement I took was how far the piston rod end caps extend past the case. That turns out to be .7 inches. So that leaves only .4 inches between the caps and the oil pan stators when the car is running. That isn’t much room. It does limit options a bit.

I finished up putting the pistons into place. It has been a while since I took things apart, so I had that deer in a headlight look for a while there. I even tried to install some of the pistons backwards… or is it upside down? Anyway, I fixed all that up pretty quick. A few months ago I had installed some of the accessory items and seals to the block when I installed the crank shaft. I am glad I had done that. It gets hard to remember everything. Fortunately, I took quite a few pictures when I was taking it apart.

I also installed the oil filter mount. I put it on backwards intentionally. Without the air conditioning compressor on the car anymore, there is room there to have the filter point the other direction. This will make it easier to take off and put on when the engine is installed. If it is pointed the other way, it is under the exhaust manifold so can be tricky to get to.

Head Games

Today, I put the head back on the engine. Not too big of a job at all. As usual, I think I spent more time poking around for tools and gizmos than I did actually putting parts on. I torqued the head down and now am ready to get the timing belt on and time the valves. I had tried to put the head on last weekend, but as usual, something got in the way. When I went to get the head bolts, they looked a tad short. Whoops, they were very short. The picture shows the old and the new ones. It seems I ordered the head bolts for an M3 instead of my car. The M3 has a different engine than my car so these bolts were obviously not going to work. So, I ordered new bolts and they arrived this week.

The too-short head bolts next to the old.

While checking things out, and arranging the various pieces, it became apparent that I should have ordered some other new parts. The little cover thing that goes onto the cam shaft timing gear was all broken up. Plus, the distributor rotor had some pretty badly stripped screws, so I ordered a new one (the screws come with it). I noticed a few other minor parts that were missing that I am pretty sure I didn’t lose… they just weren’t there to begin with. It’s one of the cool things about having access to the online parts catalog. It’s pretty easy to see when you don’t have stuff. I also ordered some “well, since I’m in there” parts. Things that you don’t really need, but if they break or go bad, they are a royal pain to get back at.

Tar Baby

I also worked on removing some of the thick, heavy sound proofing from the trunk. I had had a long talk with Wes Hill ( a guy who has built a lot of PRO3 cars which are race cars using the same type of car as mine). I was thinking to leave the tar there to help balance the car out, but he said that from 30,000 feet that sounds like a good idea. But practically speaking, the extra weight isn’t worth it.

So, I started chipping away at the stuff. It is a thick tar-like substance that must have lead in it or something because it is really heavy. It is installed with two layers that total about an inch thick. Some people have thrown dry ice into the trunk to harden the stuff up until it get brittle and then break it all loose with a hammer. I just heated it up some and pealed it off. It didn’t come off that easily. I had to work pretty hard at it. It wasn’t comfortable work either. Stooped over the trunk like that is hard on my back.

 Clear of tar on the left, more tar to go on the right.

Anyway, I got a little over half of it out of the car. Like I said, it is heavy stuff. I built a set of crude scales to weigh it. I have some old steel weights that I stacked on the other end of the scales. It came out to 35lbs for about 60% of the total amount of the stuff in the trunk. I’ll weigh the rest when I get it out. My scales are not very accurate. My results are probably going to be plus or minus 5 pounds. Mostly because that is the smallest weight that I had.

 Weighing the tar. The blocks under the scale are just there for the picture. I used an old spring for the fulcrum.

More To Come

So, I accomplished a few things today and plan to do a bit more work tomorrow. I need to get the rest of the tar out and then consider removing a few more things from the interior of the car. I ordered a bolt-in roll cage for the car and some harnesses. The roll bar should be here in a few weeks. It will be a lot safer with the roll bar and the 5 point harnesses in the car.