Ken

I finally got my engine out of the car and took the oil pan off last night. It is most definately the #2 rod bearing. The rest of the motor looks great though. I'm confused as to how to proceed. I tried to pull the #2 rod apart, but I could not get it all the way off. Is there some trick to their disassembly? The bearing appears to have completed trashed itself. The damage seems limited to the rod though, as there are large score marks on it but not the crank.

Is there any way to limit the disassembly of the engine. According to Haynes, I need to have everything off to get the crank out, including the head, timing stuff, waterpump, oil pump, etc. Is this true? I can tell that the flywheel and some timing stuff needs to come off, but everything? Also, do the pistons need to come out the top of the engine? Or can I cheat and put them in the bottom?

Anyone in the area(Dave? Adrial?) want to come take a look at everything and lend me a hand? Tonight and Sunday is good for me. (Going to Hershey on Sat.) I have beer!

M758

Cam needs to come off to prevent valve to piston contact due to mistiming when you are working with it. Oil pump needs to come off to get the crank out. Head... Probably not, but might just want to pull the head to replace the headgasket while you are right there. waterpump no, but if it is old... timing belt & balance shaft belt yes. Flywheel yes. Piston's can sat in bores if they look good. They must come out the top if you pull them however.

hacker-pschorr

Good thread, you beat me to the punch! I'll be doing the same thing on my car, with a slight difference.

My "bad" motor with the thrown rod bearing is already stripped down to the bare block. I have a used shortblock I'll be rebuilding to drop in.

Word of advice, tear down the motor if you plan to keep the car. I have 2 cylinders scratched from my #2 bearing.

adrial

Tonight works for me better than anything else, but not too late...leaving early tomorow morning as you probably are too.

Saturday and Sunday I'll be in Hershey. (Sunday me and Yarin made plans to check out a mazda 323 GTX .... 2500lbs turbo AWD )

My rod bearings came right out, but the crank was held in there pretty good by oil. Nothing specific I can really think of...just pry whereever you can pry from without damaging the crank. The alignment points on the bearings come to mind...

M758 answered the rest of your questions...

If you have stock head studs then its definetely a good idea to leave the head on...although you wont get a good view of your cylinder walls to see if they were damaged by the bearing failure.

PM me your cell #, I dont have it anymore. Rutgers FSAE is driving tonight till 6ish, but after that I can head over. I received my lindsey baffle kit so I can show you what it looks like and where it gets installed.

L8 APEKS

What's the oil baffle run?

Ken

If I can, I'd like to not remove the head but it doesn't look good. I just had the headgasket replaced 1000 miles ago along with all the other big maintaincence items on this engine. This is probably the third time these head studs have been used, so I'll probably have to replace them if I take the head off. There is definate damage done to the #2 rod though. Is it possible to replace a rod without taking out the piston? I'd imagine not as getting the wrist pin out is gonna be real tricky. So that means the head's gotta come off! Thanks.

Adrial, check the PM.

URIN 2ND, $60 for the kit and around $150 for the install. Check it here:

http://www.lindseyracing.com/Merchan...44OILPANBAFFEL


More questions:
Is there anything special about removing the flywheel? Does the orientation need to be maintained?

adrial

There's a pin on the crank that locates the flywheel...no need for you to worry about anything. Just take it off.

You can have the ends of the rod machined so you may not need to have them replaced, I had to have this done when I installed ARP rod bolts.

However if the rod needs to come out, then the pistons need to come out and that means head needs to come off...

While its all out maybe you want to have everything balanced...it's cheaper than you may expect.

Dal Heger

Take the head off, take the pistons out and have the rods (#2) checked for straightness and have it fixed. When you spin a rod bearing the big end of the rod tends to oval out a little bit (with the banging going on) and usually the cap will be hard to take off (compared to the other ones). This is a problem. You can slap in new rod bearings and go, but you'll still have a slightly oval rod bearing and you'll end up spinning it again due to the difference in the clearance (ovalled big end of the rod - tighter clearance top and bottom versus looser clearance side to side).

Do it right or you'll end up doing it again.

Pull the crank, get it checked and micro-polished, take the rods and have them checked, straightened and shot peened (stress relieved) and then take the block out and have it THOROUGHLY flushed to get all the little pieces of shredded rod bearing material out of the passages, don't forget the oil cooler too.

Dal.

Ken

That ovalling sounds exactly like what happened. It seemed to bind on the rod bolts like they were not parallel anymore. Thanks for the advice. I was hoping I could get out of this without a huge amount of trouble, but it's worth doing it right.