Bemused and Confused

As you can see from the description to the right, this is basically my blog about me, my cars, and my adventures at the track. Well, to me they are adventures. To you, it might seem a bit tame… or obsessive, maybe even boring. But, I am having fun with it and through this blog, I hope that I can inspire others to get out there and have fun.

It has been a long time since I updated anything. Let’s just say that I have been occupied with other things. The last work I did on the car was near the end of last summer. The details of that are below. It isn’t much.

I do have to say that I have gotten somewhat discouraged. I had a number of lousy things, not uber-bad mind you, just not good things, happen over the last year or so. They’ve all added up to a lot of time spent away from the car and the track. I’ve also gotten somewhat frustrated with both the car and my abilities as a mechanic. It is a learning experience and I have to take it that way and not let it get me down. Also, because of the mistakes I have made, and the near destruction of the engine, it’s made me somewhat gun shy. What if I’ve missed something else important? What if it lets go at the wrong time? It makes me cringe when I think about starting that motor up again. Anyway, it is what it is and I’ll get through it.

The Engine

I left off after putting the engine back together. It looked good and all I needed to do was to put it in the car and fire it up. Yep, all great plans of mice and men…

After a lot of wrangling, I managed to get the engine into the car and on the mounts. It isn’t easy when the car is just up on jack stands and you are doing it by yourself. The engine had to be tilted just right and then lowered, and then tilted more and then lowered, and then tilted less and then lowered again. It took a couple of hours to do.

I hooked everything up, double checking as much as I could. I didn’t want oil or coolant spraying all over the garage if I missed a line. I had a bit of trouble getting the coolant lines that go to the heater coil tight enough, it’s a pretty tight space to work in. The electrical was a bit of a pain to hook up. Getting the giant rubber seal plug on the main harness through the firewall was a real challenge. It had been a long time since I had taken all that stuff out so it was difficult to remember everything. But, I got it all done. It was late in the day and I was tired, so I decided to call it a day and planned to finish it up the next day.

I got outside early and finished up the last few things. I checked the oil level and coolant one more time. I had the battery hooked up and charging all night, so everything should be ready. I disconnected the main relay and cranked it over for a while to bring the oil pressure up. Once the oil pressure light went out, I hooked the main relay back up. It was time to try it for real.

I held my breath and started the engine. I cranked and cranked but wouldn’t start. I check the relays, they were all OK. I check all the wires and circuit breakers, they were OK. I checked for spark, none. I checked for fuel, none. OK, that’s just not right.

I tried everything I could think of, and couldn’t get it to work. I used the manual to diagnose everything I could think of using a multimeter and some jumpers to check things at the ECU end of the harness. Nothing was wrong. So, I posted online asking if anybody had any ideas. It’s one of those generic, “my car won’t start” threads. I got the usual starting from basics responses. However, One smart guy suggested that the on board computer might not be getting a signal. There is a wire that goes from the main harness to the OBC and if it isn’t hooked up, the OBC can’t tell the ECU that it has been unlocked. You see, the Germans are very tricky. The OBC can have a code put in it, kind of like a password, and if that code isn’t entered, the car won’t start. On my OBC, that feature is turned off. But still, if that wire isn’t connected, the car won’t start. I found the wire… I connected it. I had missed it when I put the harness in. It’s pretty easy to miss, it’s just one little wire up under the glove box and it had gotten buried under other things.

Starting it for Real

Now I was ready to really start the car. I was nervous, but it should start this time. I did the same trick to get the oil pressure up, and got ready to hear that engine purr. It fired up on the first crank… and made the most godawful clanking sound that I shut it right back off again after about a second. Wow, that’s bad. I just went inside to clean up and think.

I thought through a bunch of stuff, possible reasons, none of them very realistic and none of them right. There was only one thing left to do, I had to pull the engine back out of the car. It was a tough thing to do after all that work putting it in. But, it had to be done. It took a few hours, but got it all back out again without breaking anything.

At first, I was thinking it might be the flywheel being horribly out of balance that caused a big vibration and a subsequent clanking sound. But the flywheel was fine. The clanking sound had a very metal on metal sound to it. I couldn’t imagine what it could possibly be.

I pulled the oil pan off the engine and started poking around the bottom end. Nothing jumped right out at me as being wrong. I was sure I had torqued everything properly. Then I noticed that the rods wiggled really easily on the journals. Then, I noticed the radial play the rods had on the journals. In other words, I could pull on the rod like I was trying to move the piston up and down, and there was a lot of play there. When I looked more closely, I could see a gap in the rod end caps. Not good.

It turned out that I had not torqued everything properly. I had done the initial torque on the rod end caps, but I hadn’t done the final torque. The final torque as an additional 70° turn. I had only torqued them down to the initial 15 foot pounds.  The bolts had started backing out, probably when I was cranking the engine trying to get it to start. When it finally did start, the bolts were loose enough where the rod end caps clanked against the journal making that horrible sound. It’s a very good thing that I shut it right back off again or I would have done some really bad damage.

I started checking all this out and decided that I had better check the pinch gap between the bearings on the rod ends. I hadn’t done it before thinking that the crank had never been turned. Wrong again. After a lot of messing around and asking questions from a very knowledgeable friend, it turned out that the crank had been turned. The bearings I used were standard thickness, but what I really needed were double oversize bearings. The gap was so big that it wouldn’t even register in the plastigage that I bought. It took a while, but my friend found a supplier for the bearings and I put them on order. I have no idea why the crank had been turned before. The main bearings were all fine, just the right gap with the standard bearings. Go figure.

Once the bearings came in, I installed them, checked the gap – perfect – and put everything back together. And, there it sits. I haven’t done much with it since then. I have partially installed a roll bar setup that I bought. The front legs are bolted down, but I still need to do the rear legs. It won’t take much to finish that part off. I need to bolt the flywheel, clutch and transmission back on the engine and then it will be ready to install once again. I’m thinking about hiring somebody to do that part for me, but we’ll see.

I do want to make it to some track days this year. I miss being out there. The car will be a blast to drive once I get it done. It’s one of those cases of bighting off a little more than you can chew. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to take a step back for a while and make sure you are doing things right.

Over the last few weeks I have been steadily adding components to the engine when I had the time to work on it.

I did run into a bit of a problem with the intake manifold as shown in my last post. The problem turned out to be me, as usual. It seems that I hadn’t gotten one of the old gaskets off of the head. It blended in so well that I didn’t see it. That is how the intake manifold cracked, the mating surfaces were not flat.

I got another manifold, cleaned it, and tried to bolt it on. I cracked it too. That’s when I found the old gasket. Pretty stupid, I must say. I don’t know why I didn’t check better before trying the second one. I guess I was thinking I had just let the manifold get partially hung up on one of the studs and that is what caused it.

So, I found another manifold and had it shipped up. It arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, it was an intake manifold for the wrong engine. When you look at one of these manifolds, they look pretty much the same. But when you put them side by side, you can start to see the differences. The one I got would fit, but it has smaller tubes so it won’t flow air as well.

 The dirty one is the wrong type.

I found yet another manifold and am having it shipped up. I checked the casting numbers on this one and it is the correct model. Now I just have to wait for it to get here. Then I’ll have to clean it up and then install it. What a waste of time and money. It’s things like this that really make me kick myself. Oh well, lesson learned.

Bigger Stuff

I installed the flywheel, clutch, pressure plate and the transmission today. It went relatively well. The only real problem that I ran into was getting the clutch plate properly aligned so that I could mount the pressure plate. There is a special tool for doing this, which I don’t have. I managed to whicker up a little rig with some sockets and extensions that managed to do the job though. Aligning the transmission with the engine was a bit tricky. The engine has to come off of the engine stand, obviously, and it was mostly just hanging on the hoist. Getting it at the proper angle and height to mate up with the transmission took some time, but I eventually got it.

I will mount up the starter and the new manifold when it comes in. There are a few more pieces that need to go on, but then it is ready to go back into the car.

I also bought an oil pressure gauge and sender unit. I want to be able to see what the oil pressure is not see an idiot light when I have no pressure. However, I bought an adapter that is going to allow me to keep the factory oil pressure switch (which runs the idiot light) and hook up the pressure sender too. I have to wait for the adapter and some hose to come in before I install it. I also have to figure out where to mount the gauge in the dash. I am not sure where I am going to do this. I can cut up some stuff, or velcro it on, or buy a mount system to put it down where the ash tray would normally go… but I don’t know yet for sure what I will do.