fuel's 'oh god what have I done now' GT-Slow

[mjrstar]

I had the balancer part company on my mivec diamante, fortunately all it left me with was no electricity..

[fuel]

1 minute ago, mjrstar said:

I had the balancer part company on my mivec diamante, fortunately all it left me with was no electricity..

sucks that the 30M Diamante is prone to the same issue too, as one of my spare balancers is from my 30M engine which is more or less the same apart from the timing mark being in a different spot. I have another spare that is supposedly good that I will use temporarily until a new one turns up - I've painted some marks on it so I can easily see if it's starting to separate and allow the outer ring to shift like on my original balancer. 

[shrike]

@fuel how long you in Melbourne for and what part? 

Keen to grab a beer?

[fuel]

4 hours ago, shrike said:

@fuel how long you in Melbourne for and what part? 

Keen to grab a beer?

Am in Niddrie (near Essendon) but only here til the 27th and kinda jam packed with family shit so far. Where are you in Melbs?

[shrike]

10 hours ago, fuel said:

Am in Niddrie (near Essendon) but only here til the 27th and kinda jam packed with family shit so far. Where are you in Melbs?

All good no pressure, I'm currently in Frankston at the inlaws but I'm based out of Werribee

[lowlancer]

20 hours ago, fuel said:

Already have a head gasket set and new valves delivered to me while I'm in Melbourne for the Xmas holidays and will piece it back together when I'm back. A few weeks back I fitted some RS-R 'Down' springs I ordered from Japan a while ago, as well as refitting the missing fog lamps and bumper grills.

Not slammed but definitely better than the sky high look it was before, and the ride is much firmer too. 

 

Man these look great with some subtle upgrades.

While not 6G levels of punishment, I ran a facelift Legum VR4 a few years ago. No surprises the spark plugs on the rear bank were ancient.

[fuel]

Slowly plugging away at this - cleaned up the block deck surfaces and fitted new water pump, crank oil seal, tensioner & idler

 

Some of the new parts ready to go - am still waiting on the lower timing cover to arrive from Japan. Amayama are doing their best to ghost me with no updates despite an another order placed after the timing cover order arrived already.

[fuel]

Cylinder heads cleaned up, bent valves removed and new valves fitted. My first time lapping valves so I was worried it wasn't going to work out. But eventually sped up the process by fitting the valve lapping tool into a drill at low speed. I did one pass with coarse paste followed up by a fine paste and the end result was valve to seat contact patches all within spec. Phew.

 

And they seemed to hold fluid just fine

 

I guess the real test is when they're back on the engine and running. Am getting half way there though

[fuel]

Now featuring both heads.

 

I accidentally dropped the 10mm hex part of the tool to tighten up the head bolts into the rear cylinder head, which conveniently found its way through the perfectly sized oil drain hole down to the sump. D'oh. Magnetic tool wouldn't pick it up, so off came the sump.

The sump has been off before at some point, so will be a bit happier about cleaning up the excess sealant and resealing it properly, not that it seemed to be leaking before. I did find four of the rocker arm needle bearings which is good, but brings the total of needle bearings found up to 40 now. Three rocker arms were destroyed letting their needle bearings escape, and the small issue is that 40 doesn't divide by three cleanly so there must be another two needle bearings floating around somewhere. The good news is they are larger than the sump pickup mesh strainer, so I'm not too concerned about them being ingested into the oil filter. The oil did seem free from metallic sparkle which is reassuring, I'm not sure if I'm going to bother dropping a big end or the mains girdle to check bearing condition or not.

Belt on and all timed up - somehow got it bang on first try which was nice - usually with these quad cam V6's I have to attempt at least two or three times to get it good. Not too much left to do before it's running now.