First week after rebuild...

Well.. a few days have passed. Xantia has done maybe 100 miles with no issues. Oil and water fine, have found some evidence of an oil leak but not looked into it.

Powersteering never worked.. removed the valve from under the car, a tough job, and disassembled, two of the new seals were broken already.. was suffering from a motorbike fall on the Monday morning, but stuffed two old seals in and put valve back on rack... Power steering now available for left hand turns :)))

more to follow.......

Sunday...

Ok, the rest of day was slightly frantic... from 4 till 10, two of us put back all the bits that took me 4 hours to remove, a fortnight before.. Bottom Rad hose, a thin coolant pipe into head, LHM reservoir, and general routing all gave small headaches...The intercooler pipes got in the way a bit... Engine in, ready to try, hub nut needs tightening and wheels refitting.. Monday beckons...

New ones on..will apply paint to bare metal, and may try to cover exposed threads, to make life easier next month when these are worn out again... (tip : injecting more grease in is supposed to prolong life)

This method is nice too.. I think without a grinder, a very tough amount of hacksawing lasting ages..difficult access to.... This way, both links off in about 5 mins..

Removing 10 year old drop links... Worked for almost two 'nut' revolutions !...

Enlisted a top crane operator !.. she had not quite done this kind of work before, but as shops were generally closed, she was free! About 1 hour of gentle persuasion got us to gearbox mounting bolt in :) very satisfying. This angle of lean seems ok, a bit more may have been better..

Because patio is only 16 slabs, it's only big enough to have front of car on, whilst engine is way up in air.. I had to push car up over the slabs towards crane, alone, whilst making sure the bonnet didn't shut with the motion :O (it would have crashed down onto hoist) this was my risky bodge.. ;)

Today.. engine must go in and all be connected...fluids to add, drop links to replace

11.30 start

Saturday...

OK.. Saturday comes to a close... Steering pinion is back in rack, thanks to friend taking over that job.. all gone together ok.. engine is ready to go back in,,Another hour tonight and it may have been in car, but got to cut evening a little short and light is fading.. I have put the inlet ducting on as I dont really like fitting at after engine in..not sure it's the right move..

LHM removed.... it is green, a tiny bit green, honest... I will have to put back in tomorrow if engine gets in car :( but will change it asap for hydroflush. Only about 2 - 2 1/2 litres here.... (I knew car was running low due to leak) I have a new 1l bottle too..

LHM filter #1 , mesh is very fine....

Injector pipes, quick wire brush... may as well

Filter from spare DERV engine.!.. that will do for a month :) (tight doesn't come close)

Fuel filter housing going on (Gasket was used)

I had some spare fuel pipe from the 'other' filter housing... decided to make a new turbo pipe, as it was cracking....

remove DS seals..

what a punk... guess who fitted a cam seal to both sides of head?.. forgetting that a vacumn pump goes in this side instead of a seal.. dooh... managed to lift rocker enough to loosen cam cap enough to get seal back out... !

Nice work :) thanks to mr egr blanker man, an aluminium plate for the inlet, too :)

ahh... if you're going to make that with it, then I am ok..

Someone's stealing my steel..

Decided you can't have spare manifold gaskets lying around, so used metal and paper ;)

What do you mean, officer? I don't know what an actuator arm is, let alone how to shorten it!>? Will do some fuel pump tweaks in the near future, in the mean time have shortened this by about 1/4 inch.. if nothing else, it's free'd up to mess about with later.. :)

Old manifold bottom.. two main differences, the inlet pipe has become black plastic, and there is a slight curve to the left hand edge - on the newer style manifold.. time is as always running out, so decided to keep with the early manifold as it's clean :)

Cleaned inlet manifold, and the Garret turbo waiting for a general clean.. noticed I had cleaned the older manifold... oops (gasket was removed from face later)

Off to dealers first thing, for the first and hopefully last time :) comfy chairs and a lot of beaurocracy to get these bits... Pipe was £4 and could well have been the reason there was an oil leak around back of engine... Driveshaft seals and sump washer brought total bill to £30....

Today, engine needs to be ready to go back in ASAP... weather looks dodgy for tomorrow too. Plus, wanted to have tomorrow for connecting all the pipes and wires and testing...

Friday night..

New Serpentine... not sure why there is an auto tensioner and a tensionable idler... anyway, feels tight

Starter motor given a quick wash, AC compressor back on, New Oil Filter, sump given another scrape

Was going to give this job to friend, but me being me, thought I would have a go.. new seals are on, but due to distortion, #2 and #3 would not 'sit'properly, i.e. the seal walls were not vertical.. I tried to give them opposite twist, and got a small peice of clear plastic and wrapped them then taped them.. next morning they had not shrunk and were still twisted.. bike chain lube in background, used for o-ring chains so thought it may be ok on the pinion valve...

Old seals removed from Pinion valve, distortion from removal.. seal furthest on, suffers most as it has the longest journey.. new seals shown in pack too..

ok.. a bit of a delay there... where were we?


Friday night , ah yes...

Thusday 14 08 2008

Sumptuous ;)
inside was nice,
exterior mainly un-cleanable.. even with wire brush and kerosene..gave up ;)

in this nice photograph, you can plainly see the sump gasket someone has used before.. silicone everywhere and no trace of a normal gasket.. took ages to remove beads of sealer.. mainly from outside and inside of block not from gasket face... all with a scalple, holding a table lamp in other hand, with engine swinging above me ;)))

ello ello !.. what haven't we here then ? .. it starts to dawn on me ..

When doing sump from under car, maybe these would have been a bit more obvious.. but with engine up on a crane, they went unnoticed for some time :(

Quick way to get about 20 sump bolts out ;) 'sump removal machine'.... the sump gasket was one of the initial must-do jobs.. the silicone flapping about on the outside of the block/sump face looked nasty... an oil leak hot-spot I had hoped... Lesson, you can undo 20 bolts quicker than an F1 pit crew, but no mention is made of the two hidden allen bolts going up though A/C compressor mounting, at least not in my haynes... this was supposed to be one of the easiest and quickest jobs, a sump gasket change... try 2 hours !

belt on, new tensioner... idler feels a touch loose... will think of changing it in nearish future.. not noisy and no worse that the spare engine...

After an Offside engine clean, first nightmare tonight... 3 hands needed... I spent about 30 mins trying different ways to compress the cambelt auto tensioner, this is what finally worked..a brake union spanner. ... very frustrating job.. in Haynes there is a way to avoid letting things get like this (when working alone).. add to this time spent cleaning each 'valley' in 4 different sprockets, blahblah.. adding this belt seemed to take half the night! anyway, all on and timing spot on.. :)

didn't spot this until tonight... different cam sprockets from a'97 to 99
(97 at top), injection pump is similar.. assume weight loss? ..

longest night so far...

started at 6ish, cleaned up and in at about 11 30 for dinner :( - working in moonlight in end.... pretty much...

Tonights jobs, cambelt and tensioner, sump gasket... should be easy, right? (there were many other jobs on the list today)

Wednesday

phew...! During stage 3 tightening (220°) using a 2 foot Torque wrench -set to some astronomical number- the whole motor was trying to spin on the floor..

A notch above... 5 notches to be precise.. quite different from the OE gasket that was on there, with its rubber sealing rings etc..

hope this is the last sighting of these... I really do..not that I haven't had a good time or anything..

£110 worth of bits from the rucksack :) Sure I would have been overloaded if stopped...

About 20 kgs... needs must when the devil rides.. gale force winds too..

Micrometer arrived thanks to a good ebay seller... won 8pm Monday night..

working out some shim stuff.. colour gives possible matches.. in the end it wasn't quite as obvious as it seemed.. the bad matches above turned out to be good clearances when all installed, and the supposed good matches wern't always good. I found it tricky to measure gaps really, a light sliding fit mean't that the actual gap was a fair bit wider, if the gauge is forced. After three camshaft removals, and 30 mins taking a 2.96 down to a 2.88 using various grades of wet and dry, all was pretty close.. will update final clearances here. (will also check after a week of running, assuming it runs again ) :)

Tuesday , again

Back to the valve... can't believe there isn't a repair kit available.. the are 4 channels and only 3 O-rings too.. hmmm

Then back to the gearbox and engine.. better together... release arm burr filed off, bushes cleaned and greased, some copper grease on the input shaft.. still a pig to get them together even like this.. god knows how I have managed under a car doing it..

Left the steering alone for a while.. all the black bits given a wash and waiting for the rains...

inside rack

ok it is out... :)

Can I get this out...... :(

Well that's about it for tonight... also cleaned bellhousing, removed and cleaned release arm and both bushes.. left a few parts in part washer overnight.. but it's over for the Jizer .. at least I know how many cleans it can do... I guess about 100, a lot heavily soiled..

Cleaned up.. the vanes and the cylinder are quite scored....

Didnt really want to get into this...clock is ticking... Vacumn unit... felt quite stiff compared to the 150K spare one... decided to take a look...

Ebay £0.50 pence for this new valeo clutch !

postage £49.50 mind you! ;)

Old clutch.... friction plate not too bad.. release bearing was no longer 'square' on the diaphragm.. assuming some of leaves were warped... can't work out what effect it would have had.. too late at night.. possibly contributing to the snatch during a fast get away ;) , then a stall....

night's are drawing in already..

Shim-time.....


(hundreths of a mm)

wanted :

_I_E_ E_ I_ I_ E_E_I_
15 30 30 15 15 30 30 15

have :
07 45 48 05 05 38 33 09

exhausts have all opened, inlets closed...

awaiting a micrometer now ;(((