Thanks Brian
No updates for a while, that's because I have been doing some major surgery on the engine.
Short story, cam belt, water pump, oil pump seals and finally valve seals. Long story, read on.
Started by pulling off the front engine mount and cam belt covers. This involves removing a lot of stuff just to get to the belt. Engine mount has to come off but to get the mount off you need to take the crank pulley off and both cam belt covers.
Hmmm that's one cracked cam belt. No idea how old this is.
Engine mount getting stuck.
Top of the intake manifold. Bagged and tagged all my bolts and parts to ensure nothing went missing.
Removed the water pump and replaced. New oil pump seals and O-ring. The shaft seal was leaking leaving oil drips on the garage floor. It wasn't bad but it was making a mess of the lower half of the engine.
Dirty lower engine from leaking oil pump.
Inside oil pump
Next was to remove the valve cover to replace the valve seals. This involves removing the wiring loom from the front of the engine and unplugging the injectors. While I had everything off I decided to clean things up and paint some parts.
Dirty valve cover
Painted top runners
Painted valve cover
Painted cam cover plate
After the valve cover was off I could remove the cam shafts.
Then next I had to remove the old valve seals and replace them with new ones without lifting the head. This was a difficult job with the engine in the car.
Tools I used were:
13/16 spark plug socket with a magnet in it.
Large pliers to push the valve spring retainer down.
Some grease to hold the valve collets in while reinstalling the springs.
Bent nose pliers with masking tape so not to scratch the bucket guides.
10mm deep socket for reinstalling the new valve seals.
19mm socket, 150mm extension and slide bar to reinstall valve collets and spring retainers.
Last but most important, some standard printer paper folder over about 6 times. This allows the collets to be pushed in when you push the 19mm socket over the spring retainers.
For all this I also needed an air compressor adapter to fill the cylinders with air to hold the valves up while the springs were removed and the collets were being reinstalled.
I got my brother to make we one from a BKR6E spark plug, 150mm long stainless steel tube and an ARO air compressor fitting. When I got the adapter I realised the air compressor I borrowed from MR2PWR (Dixon) had NITTO fittings. So I had to get the adapter modified to the correct fitting. *88vvt (Colin) offered to modify this for me. Once that was done I could start on the valve seal replacement.
It took me 1 hour to do the first seal because I couldn't figure out how to use the paper method to reinstall the collets. I did the last 5 in 50mins even though these valves are harder to get at being in the middle of the car.
Cotton wool to stop and collets going into the sump. I didn't need them luckily but I did manage to ahve a couple of collets fly around the garage.
New valve seal installed
Valve spring
Collets all greased up to stay in retainer and valve bucket
Shot down No.2 intake
Keeping the cam cap bolts in order.
Tools I used to do the valve seal replacement,
New cam shaft seals, old ones were leaking.
New idler bearing No.1
New tensioner bearing
Once I had done that I could start putting the engine back together. JasonFriday13 (Jason) offered to give me a hand to do this. I hadn't done a cam belt on a twin cam engine before so his knowledge was very useful to get the timing set right.
We put everything back on the engine ready to be filled with new coolant, oil and filter and new plugs but as I was starting to fill the engine with coolant there was a major leak. This is why, rusty pipe into the back of the water pump wouldn't seal. I wonder why?.....
'New' on left, leaky rust thing on right.
New water pump
Luckily I had bought a good condition pipe of Tat and Nick about 3 years ago. So this went on to the engine but not after having to take off a lot of the parts off the back of the engine. Hardest part was getting the oil cooler pipes off. I assume this is no where near as hard as the turbo engines HFH and HFHOE. Once this was in I filled it up with coolant and there were no more leaks.
Oil cooler hoses under exhaust manifold.
Bled the coolant with help from Jason after starting the engine. No leaks from oil or water except for the bleed valve on the radiator. Needed a new o-ring so we bought a new one and that sorted it.
Drove it up the road but it still has a bit of smoke. I'm putting some down to the oil left on the pistons and under the valve seals. I'm not expecting it to fix the oil burning problem completely but I do hope it helps reduce it.
Very happy the engine still runs after I pulled it apart. I have never done this sort of major work before.
Car is out of the garage and on all 4 wheels for the first time in 4 weeks.
Engine back together and clean
While I had the engine parts off I installed my Kirk engine mount inserts the the Wife bought me for my birthday. They definitely firm up the engine and have a bit more vibration at idle and are quite rough on start up but work really well. When you are on and off the clutch the engine no longer jerks around, you just get instant response from the clutch. Much better.
Turbo mount inserts, I bought some turbo mounts from Jason to replace the broken and poorly designed front and rear mounts.
Inserted read to go in.
One insert in
Both inserts in. Very easy to install. Just need a gentle tap from a hammer to make sure the are placed properly
so the centre through bolt can be installed easier.
Installed into car. Easy with no intake manifold on.
MR2 boot makes a good work bench.
Random photo of parts
Dirty intake manifold.
Cleaner intake manifold
Cleaned up cam belt covers
.
. But nah, I've spent too much money and time on it to let it leave my ownership.
