Zero10

Well, I finally got the engine out of my 951, and after much fighting, got the bellhousing off, and after stripping 2 bolts on the pressure plate, finally got the clutch assembly off and the flywheel removed, so I could mount it on my stand.

So, the engine is on the stand, and mostly disasssmbled. It went very quickly. Much much easier to work on at waist level, with everything out in the open.
I made one big mistake. I forgot to pull the crank pulleys.
I have no idea how to get them off now, the head is off, the rods are out....
Maybe I can lock something into the flywheel bolts?...

Anyways, after a lot of looking, here is what I find.
7 good lifters. I can push as hard as I want, and the little bump won't depress on 7 of them, however on one, it pushes down very easily, I guess that means 1 bad lifter.

I get the head off, to find one _very_ ugly head gasket, it's all swolen, with crap clumped all over it, rotting away quite badly. I can't find any spots where the gasket obviously failed, but I had all the symptoms.
Taking a look around the cylinders, front to back, first 3 looked perfect, but on #4 I noticed some light scoring.
Upon further inspection, I find some minor scratches on #1, and some pretty serious ones on #4.
One scratch runs from the top to the bottom, and is definately deep enough to feel with a fingernail, and on the opposite side, there is a cluster of scratches, about 1" long, which are all deep enough to feel with a fingernail, although barely.

I have a shop in town which has a sonnen machine, and is properly trained to use it. I'm wondering, can I have the cylinders bored and honed, then use over-size rings to seal this up?
I'll post pics later of the scratches.
I'm already planning to take the block in to have it checked out, so perhaps they can assess the cylinder damage?...

I found some very very dirty pistons and valves as well, on some the soot is pretty deep. This is confusing, since I was running lean for the entire return trip...

Anyhoo, I get down to the bottom end, those rod nuts are very tight!! I had to lock 3 wrenches together to get them off, since all of my sockets are 6-point.
No big surprises down here, everything is very clean, and in good shape. The rod bearings showed very minimal wear, nothing to worry about. I'll assess the main bearings once I get the crank out.

I had a bit of a hard time getting the pistons out, looks like I have a ridge on the top of the cylinders.

I better get the ridge reamer out! (Sorry, just looking for a reaction)

The clutch was down past the rivets, they have eaten deep grooves into the pressure plate and flywheel. I'm hoping it can be machined out. Looks like I'll be taking my head, block and flywheel into the shop on monday to have it all serviced.

I did notice, that the small end of one of the rods (I think #3) had some play on the wrist pin. If you shook the rod and piston in opposite directions, you could hear a thunk, like perhaps the wrist pin bushing is getting worn out.

Upon inspecting my rods, they end with the letters RARSP (Or is it rasrp?). Does this indicate that they are forged rods?

Other than all of this, it pretty much went as expected.

Do the pistons have to be put back in the same holes they came out of? They are getting re-ringed.

I had no idea piston rings were so deep. I thought they were just a thin strip of metal.

There's the update on my engine!

Ski

Do not use a ridge reamer! If the girdle is still on the block, you can use some blocks of wood to hold the crankshaft while you try to break the crankshaft bolt. The torque on that bolt is like 165-168(ICRC) and it will be TIGHT. One of the big things to find out is if the cylinder bores are straight; if not then you need to consider alternatives.

Porsche-O-Phile

Take it all apart once you get the pistons out and crank pulleys off and bring it to a shop. Let it be their problem. If they screw it up, you have recourse. If you attempt to "de-ridge" it and screw it up, you eat it.

Chris White

To keep the crank from spinning just put a wooden handled hammer in the between a rod journal and the block, that will keep it from spinning when you apply some serious force to the crank bolt.

Chris White

Zero10

Okay, good advice on the crank pulleys. I will follow that for sure.

I was just kidding about the ridges, I literally almost fell on the floor laughing though, lol!

Okie dokie, here's the pics. It's funny, the camera can see scratches I can't. It's all bad news though, found more scratches in the cylinders.

I'll have a running narrative here

Chris realizes that just a 14mm wrench will not take the rod nuts off. To be accurate, it took a 14mm wrench, with a 24mm wrench locked into it, with a 22mm wrench locked into it to get enough leverage.


The bottom of the engine, with 3 of 4 rods unbolted.


#2 piston after a short trip to the floor. It came out a lot easier than I thought it would, not saying the rest came out that easy...


Wow, good thing we used this engine stand, the engine *grunt* turns *grunt* so... easy! *grunt*


#4 cylinder, driver's side


#1 cylinder driver's side


#2 cylinder driver's side


#3 cylinder driver's side


#4 cylinder passenger side


#1 cylinder passenger side


#2 cylinder passenger side


#3 cylinder passenger side


My empty engine bay.... So lonely without an engine. So dirty though, definately in need of some serious cleaning.


There's my update for the day, now I have to call the machine shop to see what they think about it, and what they can/can't do.

I'm still looking for some advice on the cylinders. Is it possible to bore them out re-hone them, and just use over-sized rings? Or is this not reccomended?

Are these scratches enough to worry about? Or should I just let them go?...
I have no idea how big a scratch has to be before it is a problem.

Zero10

Well, I just got off the phone with the machine shop.
$50 a hole to hone
$100 a hole to bore and hone.
Doesn't seem too bad, add about $200 for misc work done on the block, like magnafluxing, hot tanking, etc, so $400-$600 for the block work.
They won't give a price on the head work, needs guides and seals replaced, then the seats ground so it seals up nicely. What should I expect price-wise for this?

I also need the flywheel resurfaced, and when I asked about price, he said 'it will be much cheaper than the other two'. I'm guessing maybe $50? It needs some pretty serious work.

Should I just replace the block? For $600 I can get a good condition N/A motor, and take the block from it....
I might be in need of somebody with a near-perfect block.

Mike S

Aaaahhh...having flashbacks. I can still smell the oil.

Take a real close look at your oil pickup tube. Mine had a hairline crack around the base and was probably on its way to failure. Easier to fix now than later.

Zero10

Haha, I was thinking of that as well!
I gave it a good look over, and it seems pretty good. I'm so paranoid, I'll probably devise a few ways to find cracks.

Is it normal for our oil pans to have a big piece of plastic bolted into them? Because mine does...

Ski

yep, it's a baffle.

Mike S

Carefull....it's brittle. I broke mine trying to pull it off and then spent an hour at the dealer trying to figure out which of the 6 or so versions of the baffle I should be using. LOL!

Zero10

Okay cool, I just wasn't sure if it was factory or what. It doesn't have any numbers on it that I could see, and it looks like it's been broken once.

I think I finally figured out the funny scoring on the cylinders.
All of the marks on the passenger side are from crap coming in the spark plug holes when the plugs have been removed. And, the scratch on the driver's side of the #4 cylinder, is from the corner of a ring. I'm not sure why it would do that, but one of the rings has a rounded corner.

Is it possible to get gapless rings for these pistons? I've always thought they were pretty cool.

adrial

It is possible to get gapless rings from total seal...

Search a little for more info on them... I remember finding some good info on them when I was searching a while ago.

Tom M'Guinn

An impact wrench should get that pulley nut off.

If you bore tthe cylinders, you will need one-over (next bigger) pistons -- 100.5mm. Those are hard to find, to say the least. There are a few vendors who are now starting to sell aftermarket pistons made for the alusil cylinders, however, which may allow you to move to the one-over size.

Porsche-O-Phile

Check out EBS racing for the head work. They're reasonably priced and from what I've been told, they do very nice work. You'll probably end up being able to get a little upgrade too.

http://www.ebsracing.com/

Ski

I don't know if Andial has anymore 100.5 left...wonder if Broadfoot does? The last Mahle ones I knew of were $1700 a set.

Tom C has the aftermarket ones for $1125 a set in 100.5 and 101mm, and 101mm 2.8L wrist pin set up.