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.

I decided to get my local mechanic to look at the engine. I figured that I could get them to clean the engine up and then see if they could locate the leak. However, my mechanic looked at the car and decided it was getting a lot of blow by and it was most likely the rings and maybe the valve stem seals. He wanted $3000 to do the job. There simply was not enough oil coming out of the engine to indicate that there was that much of an external leak.

I wanted to know more about what I was dealing with so I got in contact with the PO and got some further details. It was nice of him to help out. It seems the engine had been “rebuilt” prior to his buying it. He then found a problem with it. The person who did the rebuild had left a metallic clamp of some sort in the plenum and it had gotten into the #6 cylinder. The PO’s dad pulled that piston and replaced it with the rings. The piston and rings are of unknown manufacturer, but most likely are BMW. The piston had been damaged by the object. At the same time he had the head pulled off and got the valve seals done and the head machined to flatten it out and he had the cam ground. The #6 spark plug is definitely the least fouled of the bunch, but it is still getting some fouling. So, whoever did the rebuild before has screwed something up, didn’t replace parts like they should, or really didn’t know what they were doing. (The funny thing is I wrote this a while ago before I started work on the engine. It sucks that I was right)

I decided that I had to do it myself if it were to get done. I am borrowed an engine hoist and engine stand from a friend and got to work.

It is surprisingly easy to prep an engine for removal from the car especially if you are leaving the transmission attached. I disconnected the drive shaft from the back of the engine. I had to disconnect the main wiring harness from the engine computer that sits just above the glove box and then thread it out the hole into the engine bay. Then I had to disconnect a bunch of hoses and wires from here and there. I made sure I marked everything so I would know where it goes when I put things back in.

I then drained fluids out of the car, and pulled out the radiator. I unplugged a lot of stuff, but not having a power steering pump or a air conditioner installed made things easier.

I hooked up the hoist to the mount point and started lifting. Well, the engine came up, but I couldn’t get it to move very far forward. One of the problems was this little bumper thing that mounts to the transmission and provides some stabilization for the transmission by pressing up against the front sub frame. Anyway, I got it above the sub frame but the engine still wouldn’t move. I then heard a pop sound. Whoops. What did I forget?

Well, in my confident mastery of everything that is mechanical on this car, I forgot to disconnect the gear shift lever from the top of the transmission. You remember that stuff, right? The bitch clip? Well, let me tell you it is a lot easier to disconnect when the transmission is tilted at a crazy angle because the engine is partially removed. I didn’t do any damage to that stuff thankfully. Once the shifter was disconnected I continued to lift the engine. I had to do it using a very steep angle so the transmission would clear the firewall.

(Remember, you can click on these pictures to see bigger versions if you want to. Just click on the button)

It is honestly a bit scary to lift this heavy of an item out of a car like that. The hoist is a good one with plenty of capacity. This hoist could have pretty much lifted the entire car if I wanted to. But it still makes you a bit nervous.

The orange block thing with the crank handle on it that the chains are hooked to is used to balance the load. Notice that the hoist hook is mounted near the forward end of that crank thing. This allowed the engine to tilt back. You can change how much it tilts by cranking on that handle and moving the lifting point forward and backwards. It is very handy. The one thing that I learned was to have the crank on the other side. With it tilted as much as it is, I couldn’t crank the handle anymore because the arm from the hoist got in the way. The reason that box is there is because the screw inside the leveler kept shedding really fine metal dust and I didn’t want it getting on the engine.

Anyway, I got it out with no problems.

One other thing I had forgotten to do was to drain the block of coolant. I had drained the radiator and all the lines, but I forgot to do the block. So, as soon as I lifted the engine, it would start gurgling out coolant all over the floor. About the time I thought it was done, it would spew out some more. I did a lot of wiping up with towels.

After I got the engine out, I had to remove the transmission. This is pretty easy to do with the engine out of the car and took me about 10 minutes. You can see some oil in the bell housing, so some oil is definitely leaking out of the engine. It shouldn’t be the rear main seal because that was replaced when I had the clutch work done at the shop.

Now the fun stuff starts. I needed to strip all the extraneous stuff off of the engine. The clutch and flywheel had to come off first. I needed those off so that I could mount the engine on the engine stand where it would be a lot easier to work on.

Before starting that however, I decided that I needed to move the Rat outside so I could have more room to work and so I could park my other car in the garage. I don’t like leaving outside at night. So, I cleaned up a bit and prepped the Rat to move. I supported the drive shaft and shifter stuff so nothing would get dinged up. I then covered up all the hoses and pipes and stuff that was left in the engine bay to make sure nothing got in and I put the hood back on (which is a bit tricky when you are working by yourself). I then had to figure out how to roll the car outside.

I then noticed that the driver’s side window was down. Well, no big deal, right? Just roll it up. Well, duh, it is a BMW even if it is old. It has electric windows. The battery was disconnected of course while I was working on the car. So, I plugged the battery back in. Nothing. No power. I hooked up the charger to the battery; still nothing. I had of course unhooked a bunch of wires in the engine bay. One of those was the main power line that goes to the main bus and the circuit breaker panel. Ah-ha! I hooked that back up and I finally had power to raise the window. I didn’t want my poor rat sitting outside with a window down and a garbage bag taped into place. That would be demeaning. Plus, there is still a pretty good stereo in the car and I didn’t want somebody getting any ideas.

I had to get into the car and push with my foot to move it back inch by inch. Once I got over the lip of the garage and onto the driveway slope, it rolled out easily. I was going to do it from the outside, but with nobody to pull the parking brake on, it would have been difficult. The car would have ended up on the street somewhere.

I won’t bore you with the gory details of pulling all the odds and ends off the engine. I do want to point out some highlights though.

Here is the bottom side of the intake manifold. You can see the gooey oil mess inside the intake tubes. This is not horribly uncommon, these cars will sucks some oil though the intake, but this stuff was pretty thick.

Below is a shot inside of the oil pan. You can see a little nut there that definitely should not be in the pan. It is a really tiny nut and I have no idea where it goes.

This is just a nice shot of the intake side of the engine. It is pretty grimy, but not horrible for a 20 year old engine.

This is what happens when you don’t put the water pump gasket on right. I have to take responsibility for this one. It wasn’t leaking, but it sure could have. It would have been smarter to do the water pump at the same time as I did the timing belt since they are sort of hooked together (don’t ask).

This is a shot of the front cam shaft seal on the head. Yes, I should have replaced it too when I did the timing belt. It is obviously leaking a bit. Those two black half oval plugs on the end of the head are also leaking a bit. They are the plugs on the end of the rocker arm shafts in the head.

A shot of the top of the engine with the head removed. It is pretty messy with lots of baked on oil.

Here is a shot of the head. Yet again, more baked on oil. Not horrible mind you, but pretty messy. Nothing looked horribly wrong up to this point other than evidence of lots of oil being burned.

Now things got a bit ugly. This is the #5 cylinder. You can see the two big score marks in the cylinder. Those are not supposed to be there. They are pretty deep scratches too. This means that just honing the cylinders might not work. This block may be useless to me. I could get it bored out, but that would mean buying new pistons. The pistons cost $160 each, new. So that gets pretty spendy.

One of the other problems I found was some mismatched hardware on the #5 piston rod end cap. This hardware should be the same type, but isn’t. This could be enough to put things out of balance. The end caps and rods are all supposed to be oriented in the same direction too (there are markings on both that should face the same way), but they weren’t. This again could lead to some imbalances.

This is the #5 piston. It was the worst of the bunch. You can see the score marks and scratches on the side. All the pistons except the #6 (the newer one) showed signs of scratching like this. The #5 was definitely the worst though. I am not sure if this damage makes these pistons unusable or not. We’ll have to see. The rings are all fine, none are broken. I checked the gaps on one set and they were all within tolerances. 

The crank shaft looks fine and I don’t see any signs of over heating on any of the bearings or the crank shaft. There is some scoring on the bearings for sure, but no deep gouges.

So, there is no definite answer as to what happened to the engine or what caused the damage. I suspect the score marks in the cylinder causes some of the oil consumption.

My guess is that either the oil got left in the engine for way too long and got really, really dirty or some dirt got into the oil somehow, or the air filter was never replaced allowing lots of dirt into the engine, or something similar. It is hard to say.

I will try to get it over to the machine shop in the next couple of days and see what they think.

I might be on the market for a new block. I have a source for some used, standard sized pistons for cheap if I need them though.

Well, that’s the story for now. Hopefully I can get this all put back together soon and for minimal cost.

Well, things didn’t go so well for the Rat or me at the April BMWACA HPDE. I was only able to get one session in because of the oil leak. I lost almost a full quart of oil in one session. So, I had to park the car and just watch.

Again, there were few signs on or around the engine that I could see that showed where the leak is coming from. There are a few drips on the ground, but they come from places where oil is going to pool and drip off no matter where the leak is. Plus, it is never very much.

The plugs are getting fouled. I checked them earlier and cleaned them all off. After my first session at the track I checked again, and they were fouled again. Very oily. But you can see where the oil is mostly on just one side of the plug. When I started the car back up after the session, it did belch blue smoke (oil burning smoke). But this cleared up in a matter of seconds and didn’t come back while the car was running.

Again, the car lost no oil on the way up or on the way back. It only loses oil at the track. I do suspect that the valve cover gasket is leaking some and possibly the cam gear seal. I find it hard to believe that it could lose that much oil that quickly, but I was pushing the car a lot harder than the first track day. It was also dry most of the time so I had a lot more grip which leads to higher g loads.

So, I will most likely try to get the block cleaned up better so maybe I will have a hope of seeing the leak. I probably should get the valve cover checked out and that cam gear seal. I suppose I should have replaced that when I did the timing belt, oh well. I hope that is the extents of the problem, but unless I can see where it is coming from, I can’t really do much except to throw parts at it and hope one of them stops the problem.

Track Time

Unfortunately, I didn’t get my video camera started properly (I can’t tell if it is on or off from the driver’s seat) so I didn’t get any video either. Not a great day at the track.

But, I did get a pretty good session in the car and I am enjoying it. It is definitely more nimble than the Silver Slug. It is more engaging to drive as well. I am still feeling it out and trying to see if I run into any vices, so I wasn’t going 10/10ths out there. The car seems to want to over steer a bit in the longer corners, but that might be just me not being used to a car that will actually turn.

I was also very easily hitting the rev limiter in third gear prior to turn 4. It is close enough to the corner to make it ineffective to shift to 4th gear, so I have been banging against the limiter for a second or so before braking.

The car also feels a bit squirrely under braking, even though I am not hitting the brakes as hard as I could.

Which leads to the brakes. I am not happy with them at all. The pedal is mushy and has too much travel (sounds familiar? Same as the Silver Slug). Again, I am not sure if that is just the way it is, or if there is something wrong. I sure don’t feel confident using the brakes. They work, but they don’t seem to be as effective as they should be. I have stainless lines and brass sliders on the calipers. I have fresh fluid that has been bled very well. I suppose the master cylinder could be replaced, but I am reluctant to do that without some confirmation that there is a problem in the first place. It could be the pads too I suppose, but I really don’t think so. They wouldn’t contribute much to the mushy pedal or pedal travel. They might contribute to the lack of braking force that I am feeling. Ah, well. One more thing to look into. It could be fun

Other Stuff

Now, on to less fun things. Some of my loyal readers may have noticed that I have not posted in a while. That is because I haven’t really been doing anything with the car. I have not attended any more HPDE’s either. That is because there is some major instability with my current employment. They have attempted, through a nefarious and slimy tactic, to move my job to Colorado. Because of my personal situation with my family, I simply won’t move. So we have been negotiating for a while now and it doesn’t look good. Come September, I could be sans a job. So, I have been more careful with my money, hoarding against the (somewhat unlikely) lengthily job search. We’ll see what happens. Right now they need me desperately so they are letting me stay on.

Video on Request

Below is a video from the first track day with the rat. The track is quite wet at the start of the session and then starts to form a dry line. The speed starts picking up, but then it starts to rain again.

This is the first session in the Rat so I am taking it very easy, trying to get a feel for it. Plus, it is a wet track and this was my first experience on a wet track. There had already been one Porsche plant itself into a wall. I didn’t want to experience that particular event myself.

I am taking it very easy in the braking zones so I let up very early and carefully work the brakes. My times are very slow, but not too bad considering the weather and the newness of the car to me.

There were also some cars out there that were painfully slow. They were going down the back straight at 75 mph. I am sure these people drive faster than that on the freeway in the rain… In the corners, some were painfully slow. But, they were higher horsepower cars so they would get away from me on the front straight, but then I would catch them again going into turn 1. It was a bit frustrating, but it is better to be safe than sorry, especially in the rain. Oh, and I know the wind noise is a bit bad, but the engine does sound pretty cool. I think the stock exhaust is worn out, but it is also because most of the sound proofing has been pulled out of the car.