My Retro Resto - E30 325i Cab
- Thread starter InvaderGIR
- Start date
+1 Agree with that!
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If your after any engine bits, give me an email as I am breaking a e30 320 at the moment and most parts are the same, I bought it for a few little bits for my v8 e30 project but yeah it's only going to end up weighed in so give me a message if your after any bits!
Day Three - 07/05/2012
After a lazy day doing the seats yesterday I decided I'd tackle the remainder of the engine today, removing ancileries and generally getting it prepped for block removal later in the week.
Before that though I wanted to do a little cleaning up of the rust in the boot that I mentioned yesterday, this isn't body rust, just some bolts that have gotten wet and rusted.
Rusty bolts.
Removed the bolts etc. from there and gave it a going over with a wirebrush.
Tidy.
Granted it isn't perfectly clean but that is more due to the access and the state of the brush I was using than anything else. It is solid in there which actually surprised me, but in a good way. The car looks like it has been garaged most of it's life in all honesty, with the last few years it being out in the wet. This would explain why the car is so clean and tidy and virtually rust free. On that note, I've worked on newer cars that haven't been garaged and bolts etc. are rusty and snap or round when attempting to remove things. On this car though I've had about two or three bolts that refused to be undone, although the Irwin sockets we've got make light work of them. They just bite in and undo them as if they were new bolts and a normal socket being used on them.
On with the engine!
This is how the car started this morning:
Front end.
Pulled the sump plug out to drain any oil, water or engine parts that may be in there but was only oil, although saying that I had a couple of 'glugs' happen when it was draining out, didn't catch what they were and haven't fished about in my tub'o'oil just yet.
Just like a normal oil change.
I decided to pull the belt inspection panel off, to, inspect the belt although I was greeted with a rather unhappy looking belt tensioner.
Tensioner through inspection port.
To get the full belt cover off I needed to remove the dizzy (been a long while since I've had a car with a dizzy
) so figured I'd also inspect the condition of that. The cap seemed ok but the rotor has seen better days.
Dizzy rotor.
Once that was out of the way I could then remove the timing belt cover and have a good look at the tensioner which was certainly not in a good condition. The belt on the other hand looked fine so I'm not sure quite why the tensioner has failed. I'd assume it was not replaced when the belt was which is rather poor on a service, but there we go.
Timing belt and tensioner.
Timing belt and tensioner.
Belt tensioner
The belt tensioner being skewed as it is meant that the belt was rubbing on the belt cover which really isn't good, as you can see in the picture it has cut through the grime and polished itself a nice little channel.
Belt cover inside.
With the belt out of the way I was then able to tackle the water pump which I knew already had oil in it, just how much though I didn't know until I went to pull it out. I pulled it out and oil went everywhere, it seems like my water pump got converted into an oilpump when the engine died.
There was barely any mayo in the pump though, just nice black oil.
Oily water pump.
Oil & mayo slick.
Oil slick.
I decided I'd inspect the water pump by cleaning it and seeing if there was much wrong with it. Aside from the fact it was full of oil it was in very good condition. The pump spins freely and nicely but the gasket is baked on, some is on the block, some is on the pump as can be seen below.
Water pump wiped down.
With the oil slowly draining from the water ways in the block I figured it'd be a good time to remove the expansion tank and pipework for it. I expected there to be a fair bit of oil the pipework but there actually wasn't much at all.
Expansion tank.
As I was removing ancileries I then pulled the starter off which was again, in a very good contion. It looks to be original (but may not be of course...I should go through the paperwork/22years of service history I have for the car) which again I thought was pretty good going considering the car is 24 and 140k up. I realise they don't get much use as they are for starting only but I've had loads fail on French cars in succession.
Starter motor.
At this point the engine looked slightly bare.
Engine sans bits.
I wanted to get the oil cooler off but found out that this meant I needed to remove the front skirt which was not at all easy (it should have been simple) due to the fact the car has had a knock. Inspecting the car at this point showed me about the knock and what has happened to various parts and why they are as they are. The front headlights don't match and I've properly discovered why. The front driver's side has taken a beating but it appears to have not been structural as the actual chassis is intact, it hasn't been bent or anything. The wing was replaced (and so has no rust on it compared to the others) along with the headlight so I no longer have two smilies.
The skirt is meant to have a few screws on the front by the oil cooler vent holes (which mine does), one on each side in the wheel arch and then another on each side below the fog lamps. On one side (driver's) this was fine and they were set used correctly. Popping out the plug from the front of the skirt and unscrewing it was nice and easy on the driver's side. On the passenger side though I came into a problem, long thin screws that didn't seem normal and also a pile of solid stuff where the front screw below the fog where a screw should be. I had to beat the nuts out of the skirt to get it to come off the car, it would appear that someone had broken this fixing point when removing/refitting the skirt after repairing the damaged wing etc. So, rather than getting a replacement skirt they decided to use filler and fire some utterly rubbish screws into the skirt and body to hold it on. Nice and *****, ffs.
So it looks like I'm going to want a new skirt thrown onto my list of bits I need to buy, that or I fabricate a better way of fitting the current skirt to make refitting a lot easier than before.
Normal screw and long ***** screw (Passneger side).
***** screw no. 2 (Passenger side).
Fillered cracks (Driver's side).
***** screw and filler replacing normal screw (Passenger side).
Once I'd gotten over how stupid someone had been I then removed the oil cooler assembly and the oil filter (a huge pain to remove on the car as it is under/below the exhaust manifold) and inspected it. It would appear the engine did seize/hyrdolock and luckily (for the oil cooler and myself I guess) it was before mayo could circulate around the full oil system and so the cooler and filter only contained black oil, no mayo at all.
Filter connection (the mayo in there is from the water lines, used the same bucket).
The car now looks even less like a car than before. A huge amount of the front can't be removed though unfortunately so (I think I mentioned it yesterday) the engine will have to be hauled out of the top rather than pulled out the front. On the E36 you can remove most of the front end and easily pull the block with minimal lifting required. Still, all is not lost, it is doable.
Front End.
Front.
Now was the turn of the cam cover to come off, I expected mayo and was indeed greeted with a fair load of it on the underside of the cover, but I was not expecting what I did find.
Cam cover mayo.
What's wrong here?
Ok, so, not a huge amount of mayo really on the camshaft or rockers but something really isn't right in there at all!
Valves on 6, 5, 4. All good.
Valves on 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Not so good!
Valves on 4, 3, 2, 1. Not good!
Ok so I'm sure people have worked out now what is wrong here, but if not I'll explain, from the begining.
The M20 is a single cam 6 cylinder, 12 valve engine. The way the head and cam are set up on this car means that the valves are operated by a rocker rather than the cam itself (Single Over Head Cam / Duel Over Head Cam engines on the other hand have a camshaft (or two) that operate the valves itself). These rockers are tear drop shaped and run on their own shaft. When the cam turns the lobes push one end of the rocker up which forces the other down onto the valve to allow air, fuel or exhaust gasses in/out, as the cam continues to rotate the lobe drops away from the rocker which is then forced up by the spring on the valve.
A simple enough design and it works well enough, although modern cars are all OHC engines as it is generally just better.
What has happened here is that one cylinder has filled with mayo due to the head gasket failing (either directly into the cylinder or into the air system and then it has been injested into the clinder) which has resulted in an incorrect amount of pressure within the cylinder so when the rocker tried to open the valve on No.2 it was unable to and instead it snapped.
This means that I am likely to find some more damage within the cylinders, either the pistons themselves or potentially some scorring on the bores, both are not exactly ideal.
Snapped rocker on No. 2.
Half of rocker No. 2.
With that playing on my mind as to how much other damage there is I decided to do the final ancilery removal and pull the PAS system out of the way.
Clear block.
And that is how I left it today. I still need to disconnect the exhaust system, gearbox and/or prop shaft to allow removal of the engine later in the week. It has been an interesting day finding out more and more about the car and piecing together it's history and it's untimely engine demise. It is looking like I'm just going to source a replacement engine rather than rebuild this one after today's discoveries but I shall fully strip down this one to find out exactly how/what happened to it.
After a lazy day doing the seats yesterday I decided I'd tackle the remainder of the engine today, removing ancileries and generally getting it prepped for block removal later in the week.
Before that though I wanted to do a little cleaning up of the rust in the boot that I mentioned yesterday, this isn't body rust, just some bolts that have gotten wet and rusted.
Rusty bolts.
Removed the bolts etc. from there and gave it a going over with a wirebrush.
Tidy.
Granted it isn't perfectly clean but that is more due to the access and the state of the brush I was using than anything else. It is solid in there which actually surprised me, but in a good way. The car looks like it has been garaged most of it's life in all honesty, with the last few years it being out in the wet. This would explain why the car is so clean and tidy and virtually rust free. On that note, I've worked on newer cars that haven't been garaged and bolts etc. are rusty and snap or round when attempting to remove things. On this car though I've had about two or three bolts that refused to be undone, although the Irwin sockets we've got make light work of them. They just bite in and undo them as if they were new bolts and a normal socket being used on them.
On with the engine!
This is how the car started this morning:
Front end.
Pulled the sump plug out to drain any oil, water or engine parts that may be in there but was only oil, although saying that I had a couple of 'glugs' happen when it was draining out, didn't catch what they were and haven't fished about in my tub'o'oil just yet.
Just like a normal oil change.
I decided to pull the belt inspection panel off, to, inspect the belt although I was greeted with a rather unhappy looking belt tensioner.
Tensioner through inspection port.
To get the full belt cover off I needed to remove the dizzy (been a long while since I've had a car with a dizzy
) so figured I'd also inspect the condition of that. The cap seemed ok but the rotor has seen better days.
Dizzy rotor.
Once that was out of the way I could then remove the timing belt cover and have a good look at the tensioner which was certainly not in a good condition. The belt on the other hand looked fine so I'm not sure quite why the tensioner has failed. I'd assume it was not replaced when the belt was which is rather poor on a service, but there we go.
Timing belt and tensioner.
Timing belt and tensioner.
Belt tensioner
The belt tensioner being skewed as it is meant that the belt was rubbing on the belt cover which really isn't good, as you can see in the picture it has cut through the grime and polished itself a nice little channel.
Belt cover inside.
With the belt out of the way I was then able to tackle the water pump which I knew already had oil in it, just how much though I didn't know until I went to pull it out. I pulled it out and oil went everywhere, it seems like my water pump got converted into an oilpump when the engine died.
There was barely any mayo in the pump though, just nice black oil.
Oily water pump.
Oil & mayo slick.
Oil slick.
I decided I'd inspect the water pump by cleaning it and seeing if there was much wrong with it. Aside from the fact it was full of oil it was in very good condition. The pump spins freely and nicely but the gasket is baked on, some is on the block, some is on the pump as can be seen below.
Water pump wiped down.
With the oil slowly draining from the water ways in the block I figured it'd be a good time to remove the expansion tank and pipework for it. I expected there to be a fair bit of oil the pipework but there actually wasn't much at all.
Expansion tank.
As I was removing ancileries I then pulled the starter off which was again, in a very good contion. It looks to be original (but may not be of course...I should go through the paperwork/22years of service history I have for the car) which again I thought was pretty good going considering the car is 24 and 140k up. I realise they don't get much use as they are for starting only but I've had loads fail on French cars in succession.
Starter motor.
At this point the engine looked slightly bare.
Engine sans bits.
I wanted to get the oil cooler off but found out that this meant I needed to remove the front skirt which was not at all easy (it should have been simple) due to the fact the car has had a knock. Inspecting the car at this point showed me about the knock and what has happened to various parts and why they are as they are. The front headlights don't match and I've properly discovered why. The front driver's side has taken a beating but it appears to have not been structural as the actual chassis is intact, it hasn't been bent or anything. The wing was replaced (and so has no rust on it compared to the others) along with the headlight so I no longer have two smilies.
The skirt is meant to have a few screws on the front by the oil cooler vent holes (which mine does), one on each side in the wheel arch and then another on each side below the fog lamps. On one side (driver's) this was fine and they were set used correctly. Popping out the plug from the front of the skirt and unscrewing it was nice and easy on the driver's side. On the passenger side though I came into a problem, long thin screws that didn't seem normal and also a pile of solid stuff where the front screw below the fog where a screw should be. I had to beat the nuts out of the skirt to get it to come off the car, it would appear that someone had broken this fixing point when removing/refitting the skirt after repairing the damaged wing etc. So, rather than getting a replacement skirt they decided to use filler and fire some utterly rubbish screws into the skirt and body to hold it on. Nice and *****, ffs.
So it looks like I'm going to want a new skirt thrown onto my list of bits I need to buy, that or I fabricate a better way of fitting the current skirt to make refitting a lot easier than before.
Normal screw and long ***** screw (Passneger side).
***** screw no. 2 (Passenger side).
Fillered cracks (Driver's side).
***** screw and filler replacing normal screw (Passenger side).
Once I'd gotten over how stupid someone had been I then removed the oil cooler assembly and the oil filter (a huge pain to remove on the car as it is under/below the exhaust manifold) and inspected it. It would appear the engine did seize/hyrdolock and luckily (for the oil cooler and myself I guess) it was before mayo could circulate around the full oil system and so the cooler and filter only contained black oil, no mayo at all.
Filter connection (the mayo in there is from the water lines, used the same bucket).
The car now looks even less like a car than before. A huge amount of the front can't be removed though unfortunately so (I think I mentioned it yesterday) the engine will have to be hauled out of the top rather than pulled out the front. On the E36 you can remove most of the front end and easily pull the block with minimal lifting required. Still, all is not lost, it is doable.
Front End.
Front.
Now was the turn of the cam cover to come off, I expected mayo and was indeed greeted with a fair load of it on the underside of the cover, but I was not expecting what I did find.
Cam cover mayo.
What's wrong here?
Ok, so, not a huge amount of mayo really on the camshaft or rockers but something really isn't right in there at all!
Valves on 6, 5, 4. All good.
Valves on 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Not so good!
Valves on 4, 3, 2, 1. Not good!
Ok so I'm sure people have worked out now what is wrong here, but if not I'll explain, from the begining.
The M20 is a single cam 6 cylinder, 12 valve engine. The way the head and cam are set up on this car means that the valves are operated by a rocker rather than the cam itself (Single Over Head Cam / Duel Over Head Cam engines on the other hand have a camshaft (or two) that operate the valves itself). These rockers are tear drop shaped and run on their own shaft. When the cam turns the lobes push one end of the rocker up which forces the other down onto the valve to allow air, fuel or exhaust gasses in/out, as the cam continues to rotate the lobe drops away from the rocker which is then forced up by the spring on the valve.
A simple enough design and it works well enough, although modern cars are all OHC engines as it is generally just better.
What has happened here is that one cylinder has filled with mayo due to the head gasket failing (either directly into the cylinder or into the air system and then it has been injested into the clinder) which has resulted in an incorrect amount of pressure within the cylinder so when the rocker tried to open the valve on No.2 it was unable to and instead it snapped.
This means that I am likely to find some more damage within the cylinders, either the pistons themselves or potentially some scorring on the bores, both are not exactly ideal.
Snapped rocker on No. 2.
Half of rocker No. 2.
With that playing on my mind as to how much other damage there is I decided to do the final ancilery removal and pull the PAS system out of the way.
Clear block.
And that is how I left it today. I still need to disconnect the exhaust system, gearbox and/or prop shaft to allow removal of the engine later in the week. It has been an interesting day finding out more and more about the car and piecing together it's history and it's untimely engine demise. It is looking like I'm just going to source a replacement engine rather than rebuild this one after today's discoveries but I shall fully strip down this one to find out exactly how/what happened to it.
As it stands I'm probably going to source a replacement engine rather than repair this one, but we'll see when I have it in pieces across the garage.
Soldato
M20s are prone to snapping rockers, usually because someone's got the clearances wrong or they've been neglected. Well worth checking when you put it back together...
Caporegime
Not posted here in ages, but i watch on with interest. Great work. Its been sat for so long that it is very rewarding to see the old girl getting some love and attention.
(Yes, i am the aforementioned mate
Jez! You need to post more
<3
Soldato
I know you said mayo from HGF, but wasn't it these engines that had some issues with the oilways and waterways being too close so the head went porous mixing oil and water?
I can't remember the model, just that is was the early 6 cylinder models.
I can't remember the model, just that is was the early 6 cylinder models.
Caporegime
Oh, epic thread btw Rob
The putting back together depends on there being no other internal damage really. I'm tempted to source an M50TUB25 as I prefer the chain driven, DOHC VANOS units to the rather poor belt driven single cam and it gives me an extra 20hp.
Well, initial findings (as I've not had the block apart yet) suggest it is HGF although this could have course be water/oil ways breaking down. I'm expecting the engine to have more issues when I delve deeper so I'll probably be on the hunt for another engine soon (I say soon, I mean at some point as there is no rush
).I may have a set of rockers, and the bar if you want a new(old) set or just one?
Also, I have a front skirt/valance thing in reasonable condition, slight bit of rust on the tips, in red and pretty well sanded down. Transport for that would be a pain however.
I think I have a few of the smiley face lights, probably without condensation if you're lucky.
My old 320iSE 2 door is sitting rotting down aswell, you can just have any cheap bits for the cost of postage.
Finally, I have a full air-conditioning kit, probably in need of a bit of refurb, which should plumb in easily for a man of your skill.
edit - Seen your response above about the engine bits, either way I'll chuck anything your way you want, if I can't have a decent E30, by god someone will!
Also, I have a front skirt/valance thing in reasonable condition, slight bit of rust on the tips, in red and pretty well sanded down. Transport for that would be a pain however.
I think I have a few of the smiley face lights, probably without condensation if you're lucky.
My old 320iSE 2 door is sitting rotting down aswell, you can just have any cheap bits for the cost of postage.
Finally, I have a full air-conditioning kit, probably in need of a bit of refurb, which should plumb in easily for a man of your skill.
edit - Seen your response above about the engine bits, either way I'll chuck anything your way you want, if I can't have a decent E30, by god someone will!
I may have a set of rockers, and the bar if you want a new(old) set or just one?
Also, I have a front skirt/valance thing in reasonable condition, slight bit of rust on the tips, in red and pretty well sanded down. Transport for that would be a pain however.
I think I have a few of the smiley face lights, probably without condensation if you're lucky.
My old 320iSE 2 door is sitting rotting down aswell, you can just have any cheap bits for the cost of postage.
Finally, I have a full air-conditioning kit, probably in need of a bit of refurb, which should plumb in easily for a man of your skill.
edit - Seen your response above about the engine bits, either way I'll chuck anything your way you want, if I can't have a decent E30, by god someone will!
I may well have to take you up on some of those parts although it'll wait a bit until I've decided what I'm doing with the engine.
Which 'Shire' do you class as the real one? If I was to get a fair few parts (especially sizeable ones) from you I'd probably rather just collect in person.
You know, you could have a good E30 too...just fix yours, unless of course it is a heap of rust.
Well, I need to re-black all of the 'black' parts of the car externally, grille, bumper trim etc. so will probably sand them all down and respray with a hard wearing black paint/dye. Same goes for the spoiler, apart from the sanding obviously. Actual 'back-to-black' products are fairly poor in my experience, they usually send the greyed items black for a short period and then need redoing.
I'm not sure spraying it in car colour would look very good at all though due to the size of the spoiler I think it looks best in black.
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Oh, and I've seen more valve coking on a 30k Audi
It isn't the coking that is an issue (as there is barely any) it is the mayo sat on top of No. 6's valve that worries/intrigues me.
It isn't the coking that is an issue (as there is barely any) it is the mayo sat on top of No. 6's valve that worries/intrigues me.
It was my tongue in cheek dig at Audi's pretty crappy range of current engines
Soldato
Awesome - looking like a fun project!
Just to be pedantic, that is a SOHC engine, because the camshaft is over the head! Most, if not all SOHCs will need an arrangement of rocker arms to operate all valves from the single shaft. Only a DOHC will operate all valves 'directly' with the camshafts.
Just to be pedantic, that is a SOHC engine, because the camshaft is over the head! Most, if not all SOHCs will need an arrangement of rocker arms to operate all valves from the single shaft. Only a DOHC will operate all valves 'directly' with the camshafts.
I beg to differ...
205 GTI (1.9) head:
Valves directly operated by the cam.
The M20 is SOHC as obviously the cam is over the head, but as the valves aren't directly operated by the cam I'm sticking to my wording.
Nice mayo. Not as impressive as that Mondeo on here recently, but I'm definitely impressed at some of the places that the oil has managed to get into, particularly the whole cooling system
I may well have to take you up on some of those parts although it'll wait a bit until I've decided what I'm doing with the engine.
Which 'Shire' do you class as the real one? If I was to get a fair few parts (especially sizeable ones) from you I'd probably rather just collect in person.
You know, you could have a good E30 too...just fix yours, unless of course it is a heap of rust.
Shropshire of course, so absolutely chuffing miles away unfortunately.
It is a heap of rust sadly, and what with a new house I just haven't got the time or money to sort it out.