E30 M3 minor rust repair (few finished pic's)

[x-works]

It took a little over a month before the urge to burn both the car and the garage to the ground
had passed and I felt it safe to return to the rebuild. The refund process on the f*cked up
piston order is still being argued out as I type and I've managed to bite clean through my
tongue trying not to talk any more about it here. So, it's probably best we move on.
Quickly.

The decision was made to again reorder the pistons. Every dimension was double
and triple checked again and each time they came up exactly the same as the first figures?
So, we placed the order, only this time we dropped the middle man and dealt directly
with JE Pistons themselves. And then began the wait. Five agonising weeks waiting on the
courier to arrive. Would I end up with another 4 pistons identical to the last f*ck ups?
The petrol and matches were waiting.

And then, just as we were starting to check international news websites to see if any large
container ships had sank crossing the atlantic, the parcel arrived................



Inside of which was four beautiful lumps of aluminium that would mean the local
fire brigade were to have an uneventful night...........







although hard to see in the pic's the new pistons do actually have a slight dish.......



Which, if nothing else, was a large f*cking improvement over the egyptian
pyramid planted in the middle of the last one's.

With the pistons looking good we were now back in business.
Before we move on, just a few pic's to illustrate the final reason we had went
with custom pistons. If you remember back, the first two reasons were for bigger
valve reliefs and to up the compression ratio, and the final reason? Weight.
As mentioned earlier one of the objectives when nailing this engine together was
to try and lower the weight of the rotating mass wherever possible. And the pistons
were an area where a lot of weight could be shaved.
Below is a pic of a standard piston, weighing in at 467.8gram's.......



while the custom piston shaves over 100gram's off this, weighing in at
just 344.9gram's..........

[x-works]

along side this the custom gudgeon pins that accompanied the JE pistons also
helped the diet............



When the math is done the custom pistons and pins had managed to shave
over half a kilo (612.4g) off the rotating mass total.
The other items that came with the pistons were oversized piston rings.....



The reason they were oversized (too big for the cylinder bore) is as follows.
When a piston ring is fitted to a piston and then dropped into the cylinder
there is a gap in the ring as shown below......



the reason for that gap is to allow the piston ring metal to expand when the
temperatures start to rise in the cylinder with the engine running. The piston
rings main job is make sure all that rapidly expanding gas from the little explosion
the spark plug just started, stays above the piston pushing it down.
So, with that in mind, we'd really like if there was no gap at all in the ring when the
engine gets up to operating temperature. The rings that come with standard pistons
are designed in such a way that this gap is small when things are warm, but,
with customs rings you can get it a little smaller which should result in an even better seal.

The rings that come with the JE pistons are oversized, which means if you place them into
the cylinder as they are, they overlap. So you've got to file them down to just the right gap
which is usually specified by the ring manufacturer. Theres plenty of special tools out there
which you can buy to do this exact job and they range in price. But, seen as how I now owe
money to almost every known lending institution in the free world, I thought it might be best if I
knock up a tool from what I have rather than hitting e-bay.
What you see below is a Dremel with a narrow grinding disc and a little bent sheet aluminium table
for the ring to sit on.........



The pictures are fairly self explanatory I think. The grinding disc is set up so that
it only grinds the ring towards the centre as you don't want sharp edges on the
outside circumference of the ring that could scrape the bore. And the four little
brass thing-a-ma-jigs make sure the ring rotates squarely into the disc.......



so that you end up with a gap like below, so that when heat expanded together in the
engine the ends will be parallel to each other..........



the grinding process itself is a slow and meticulous one. The rings are ground a tiny
bit and then fitted into the block using a piston to sit them square.........



and then the gap is measured with feeler blades till you reach the required size.....



The whole process takes quite a while as you don't want to grind too much and
risk having to order more rings and start all over again. As is the nature of these things
you should just be getting the knack of how much needs to be taken off each ring when
your finishing the last one.
When all's done and dusted the rings are packed away for the final assembly........

[x-works]

After the rings were finished there was just two final checks to be completed on the
pistons. Check the volume of the dish on top of the piston to make sure our target
compression ratio was looking good, and finally, check to see if the valve relief's cut into
our new pistons were giving us a safe valve to piston clearance.

The dish volume test is the same as was shown a while back,
seal the piston with o-rings, fill with fluid, blah, blah, blah. The dish volume came out at
7.5cc, which is bang on the money. So we could move on to the valve clearance test.
For this we're going to have to pretty much build up most of the engine and fit and
time the camshafts, as we need to find out how much clearance there is between the
valves and the pistons at their tightest point.

One job thats needs to be tackled during this dummy build is the fitting and "timing in" of the
Schrick camshafts.
Theres no hard and fast rules for timing in a set of camshafts, lots of folk have their own method
of doing it and as long as the end result is the cams timed correctly then I suppose it's irrelevant
how you got there. It can however, be a little difficult to explain with pictures and words as opposed to
if someone was beside you watching it, so I've chosen a method here that hopefully should make
sense on paper.
First thing we gotta do is find "T.D.C".
What the f*ck is T.D.C?
TDC is short for Top Dead Centre and what it's referring to here is the position of the piston
in its cylinder. When the piston has risen to the exact top of it's cylinder this position is known as TDC.
For the purpose of camshaft timing you'll almost always be talking about the piston in number
one cylinder. If we want to time the cam's in accurately we've got to know where TDC is .

So, the crank is rotated till number 1 piston comes to the top of it's cylinder as
measured by the little dial gauge shown below..........



On most engines there will be a mark on the crankshaft pulley and timing case that align
to show you your on TDC on number 1 cylinder, and the S14's looks like so...........



Unfortunately for the purposes of cam timing this isn't accurate enough and the reason why
is, if you rotate the crankshaft a tiny bit to the right or a tiny bit to the left what you'll find
is that the piston doesn't move. The dial gauge still shows 0.00. The reason for this is
there's a sort of "dwell" period or dead period between the crankshaft pushing the piston
up the cylinder and just before it starts pulling it down the cylinder. The middle of this
"dwell" period is true TDC and it's what we need to find before we can move on.

So how do we find it? Well you need one of these known as a degree wheel..........



It's basically a large disc marked out with 360 points on it that you either bolt, glue,
nail or weld to the crankshaft pulley to allow you to accurately turn the crank to a
given position between anywhere on it's 360 marked degrees.
The other thing thats needed is some sort of pointer to line up with this disc so you
can see what position you've turned it too. For this we've used a simple M6 bolt
screwed into the timing case and cut a slit into the head of the bolt to act
as the pointer...........



degree wheel fitted to crankshaft pulley with the aid of two totally inconspicuous
welding magnets.........



and with number 1 piston "roughly" at TDC the degree wheel is aligned with the pointer
to read Top Dead Centre for the moment........



Then, onto the actual process of finding where the exact TDC is.
With the dial gauge pointer still resting on top of the piston and reading
0.00mm the crankshaft is turned backwards till the piston has dropped 5.00mm
exactly down the cylinder...........

[x-works]

At this exact point a reading is taken off the degree wheel and as you can see
below its at 23 degrees..........



Once the degree is scribbled down somewhere the crankshaft is rotated back
to TDC (0 degree's) again, and now the engine is rotated in the opposite direction
till again the piston has fallen 5.00mm down the bore..............





and again you take note of the point on the degree wheel, which in this case
was 27 degrees...........



Once you have these two measurements you find the exact halfway point between
them both and you have true Top Dead Centre position for number 1 piston..........



When we do the math to find the halfway point it comes up as 2 degrees after
top dead centre. So we rotate the crankshaft to align this point with the marker..........



Number 1 piston is now exactly at Top Dead Centre, so, using a socket and
pull bar the crankshaft is held dead still making sure it doesn't move,
and then the degree wheel is moved so that it now reads bang on TDC at this point..............



If your like me and f*ck up's seem to visit you with alarming regularity, it's not a
bad idea to run over the procedure again just to be sure you have it nailed.

So what the hell did we do all that crap for?
Well to time the camshafts in we need to be able to set the crankshaft to an exact degree.
In the case of the cam's we're using (Schrick 276 & 284) those points will be
106 degrees "after top dead centre" (ATDC) for the inlet cam
and 106 degrees "before top dead centre (BTDC) for the exhaust cam.
And now that the degree wheel is accurately set we can be happy that when the pointer
shows 106 degrees then it's on the money.
When it comes to timing in cams you've got to try to be as accurate as possible.
Sloppy cam timing can at best loose you a little horse power, or at worst, result in
bent valves.

[Dezzy]

Fooking hell.

I cant even take all of that in

The pistons are right this time, you ordered them direct, using the same company made them the first time, to the spec's you gave the first time and came back correct?

Middle man needs a dry running, prison style IMO

[x-works]

I've shown the "finding true TDC" process with the cylinder head off to try and
make it a little easier to visualise what the hell was going on if you haven't done it
before. But as you can see from the pic's below, if your dummy building up
the engine to check valve clearances or if your nailing it together for real then it
can make sense waiting till the head's on to find TDC, for the simple reason
that it's fairly easy to disturb the degree wheel while your assembling the top end.

So, back to the reason we were doing all this. Checking valve to piston clearance.
The block has been fitted with a single piston in number 1 cylinder and now the
cylinder head is fitted (with old head gasket).........



One inlet valve and one exhaust valve were fitted to the cylinder head with
weak dummy valve springs over cylinder one and the head bolted down with the
old head bolts (just nipped them down, no need to hang out of them)............



after which the cam box got hammered on..............





now we needed to reattach the degree wheel and again find true TDC..........



and the procedure we used was identical to what was shown just a few
minutes ago.



Only this time instead of the little deck stand holding the dial gauge on
the face of the block, we use a modified long pointer for the dial gauge.........



I'm sure you can probably buy long pointer's but we just cut the ball from the
top of a normal screw in dial gauge tip, drilled a little hole into it and bonded a bit
of welding rod into the hole.
(starting to see the penny pinching sneaking into this thread?,
the credit card people finally found me)..............

[x-works]

after that the dial gauge is rigged up on the cam box so the long pointer reaches
down in through the empty spark plug hole and rests on top of the piston,
just like before.............







and again the same procedure as before is followed to get the degree wheel bang
on the money.............



With that done, we could move on to dropping the cam's in, but before they
can sit into place the cam followers and shims need to go in under them.
The one's pictured below are not the standard followers from an S14 engine
but instead are after market and are generally known as "shim under" followers.
The reason for the name is unlike the standard follower that fits in first and then a large shim
sits on top of it, these ones have a small "top hat" shim that goes in first sitting
on top of the valve stem...........





and then the follower sits on top of this shim........



These "shim under" followers are recommended when your using high lift cams (292+)
or a high rev limit, as the shim that sits on top of the standard follower can get
flung out when used in these situations causing widespread destruction.
Whereas with these "shim under" style the shim is safely tucked in under the
follower and is less likely to head off for a wander when the going gets tough.
These aren't strictly necessary for the cam's and rev limit this engine is being
built for at the moment but I plan to change cam's down the line so it seemed
to make sense to fit them now. (plus they were purchased before the credit card embargo)

With the shims and followers in, the cams were next to be fitted, but before they
could drop in we had to do one little job on them first. The standard cams come with
a little notch on them to help you align them when fitting, Schrick cams don't have this
mark. So we needed to transfer over this mark to get us in the ball park when fitting the
new cams.
Two cams are laid out on the bench, new Schrick on the left, standard S14 cam on the right............

[x-works]

making sure the lobes on each cam are mirroring each other as they sit........



and then a guide mark is made on the new cam in the same place as the
notch on the standard cam........



With the marks transferred to both new cam's they were laid into the
cam box with a wee dab of oil on the bearings........



with the marks facing upwards at 12 o'clock.........





then the cam caps were bolted down.........



making sure each cap went in it's right place.......

[x-works]

probably worth mentioning at this stage if you were nailing this engine together for
the final time, and all the valves and proper springs were in place there would be
a fair bit of resistance as you bolted the cams down as some valves are going to
be pushed open by the cam lobes. When this is the case the cam caps are tightened
down very gradually and evenly till everything is tight, other wise you run the risk of
snapping that lovely new camshaft in half.

For this dummy build however there is only two valves fitted with very weak dummy
springs so the cams just fall in.
With all the caps in place you could now see how the marks on the cam's lined up
with the slots on the number 1 cam caps...........





Next to go on were the cam pulleys. We're using adjustable pulleys
as they allow you to fine tune the cam timing to get it just right, which
is helpful when your switching away from the standard cams. The pulleys
are available from the main dealers under the part number 113 113 11781,
and they are similar to the standard pulley only the bolts holes are machined
out to a slot rather than a round hole............



first to sit on is the inlet pulley..........



making sure theres no slack in the chain between the crank and cam pulley
as its fitted.......



after which the exhaust cam pulley is thrown on.........



and as we're only doing a dummy built at the moment two bolt are enough
to secure each pulley (if you were on the final build all six bolts would be in
each pulley along with the little locking washer tab thingy behind them)........



One thing that's probably worth mentioning at this stage is that if your using
the slotted BMW pulleys, the standard retaining bolts are a little long as the
pulley is slightly skinnier than than the stock item. If you use the standard bolts
to secure the pulley they protrude out the back of the pulley and jam in the
cam box..........



Probably not great for performance. A quick lick of a file and a thread or two
removed see's them fit to go again.
With the two pulleys fitted the final item to go on was the chain tensioner.............

[x-works]

which screws into the side of the head.........



and pushes against the large and small chain tensioners, both of which press against
the chain to take the slack out of it and keep it tight,
and,
cost you a f*cking fortune to replace when they wear out ..........




Threads on the tensioner are fairly fine and the threads in the head are only
aluminium, so if you bull it in arseways and cross thread it you need only look
in the mirror to find the person responsible for the world of shit you just stepped into.......





And then, finally, with everything in place we were ready to time the cam's in.
As mentioned earlier, "hopefully", the following method is one of the easier ways
to grasp, although I'll most probably make it sound f*cking awkward as usual.

The following method uses the "maximum lift" points of the camshaft to time them in. Basically,
the cam manufacturer gives you certain degree you turn the crankshaft too and the cam lobe
should be pushing the valve fully open at this exact point. To allow us to know when the valve is
fully open we set up a dial gauge that rests on the cam follower, as shown below............



The dial gauge is set up at the same angle as the valve so you get
accurate readings. When the camshaft lobe isn't touching the follower
at all (like in the pic above) and the valve is fully closed, the dial gauge is
zero'd. Then as the engine is rotated the cam lobe starts to rotate and
slowly pushes the follower down opening the valve. As the dial gauge
is resting on the cam follower the figures will rise as the follower is pushed
down, and, eventually, the after the valve has been fully opened the cam lobe
will start to let the follower come back up again and the valve starts to close again.
The point we're looking for is where the dial gauge figure was greatest, the point
where the valve was fully open, the "max lift" point..........



As you can probably see the dial gauge plays an important part in all this.
And in times gone by I've spent an age setting up the dial gauge
to rest on followers, only to sneeze, cough or fart during the measuring
process and have the dial gauge move on you, meaning you had to first remove the
hammer from the garage roof, or, apologise to the dog for verbally abusing him and then start all over again.
However a little while back I managed to buy a tool that makes this whole
job a lot easier in a group buy over on www.S14.net. The tool was designed and
sold by a forum member named "Jake", and it's worth it's weight in gold........

[x-works]

The tool bolts down on top of the cam box like so..........



and then the dial gauges that were supplied with it with extra long pointers........



simply sits into the angled holes drilled in the tool............



which hold the dial gauge just at the right angle to allow the pointer
to sit on the follower............





and when all the mounting bolts are nicked up you can now cough, sneeze, fart or
experience a minor earth quake and the dial gauge won't move. The dog loves it.

So with the dial gauge fitted and resting on the follower, the first thing to do
was zero the gauge with the valve fully closed. A quick look to make sure the
cam lobe isn't pressing against the follower and that the valve is actually fully
closed (as the cams were installed with the little marks lining up with the slots
in the cam caps then the number 1 inlet and exhaust valves are closed at this point)..............



and then the gauge is zero'd.........



The engine is now turned over clockwise while the dial gauge is watched to see
the valve being pushed open. It takes the best part of 3 quarters of a full revolution
for the cam lobe to start opening the valve from this point. And then the dial
gauge starts to move, as the cam lobe starts to push the follower down and open
the valve. We keep rotating the engine watching the dial gauge rising, rising, rising,
then holding still for a moment and then falling as the cam lobe goes over it's max lift
point and starts letting the valve close again. At this point the engine is rocked back and
forth a little so you can zero in on what the max lift figure is on the dial gauge.
For this engine, with these cams and their valves clearances that figure was 11.31mm.........

[x-works]

Turning the engine either way from here results in the dial gauge figure dropping.
So, the dial gauge is zero'd at this point.........



A quick look down at the degree wheel shows us this max lift point is taking
place roughly at 107 degrees after top dead centre (ATDC)



Probably worth just taking a quick second to explain "before top dead centre" (BTDC)
and "after top dead centre" (ATDC) if you've never come across them before.
In the pic below you can see the degree wheel is split into two colours, red and blue.
The little arrows around the outside show the direction the engine turns (clockwise).
All the degree points on the red side are referred to as "before top dead centre", as,
when the engine is turning these points will be reached before the top dead centre (0)
point is. And likewise, all the degree points in the blue half are reached after you pass the
Top Dead Centre (TDC) point, so, these are referred to as "after top dead centre" (ATDC)........



So, back at the ranch, we had found out that our max lift point on this inlet cam,
as things stand at the moment, was happening around 107 degrees ATDC.
The reason I say "around" is because just like the piston at TDC earlier the cam
hit's max lift and has a sort of "dwell" period where the valve stays fully open for
a few degree's before starting to close again. And again, we're going to have to find
the middle of this "dwell" period to find out what degree the cam is hitting true max lift at.

To do this we use a method very similar to how we found true TDC earlier on.
With the dial gauge still zero'd at the maximum valve lift point.......



we turn the engine backwards........



till the valve closes by 0.50mm......



and note the degree this happens at (83.5deg.).......



(quick word on turning the engine backwards to take a measurement,
never just turn it back to the point your looking for, go back past it and
then come forward again to reach the point. ie. here we were looking
for the point the valve closed 0.50mm, go back till the valve closes
maybe 0.60mm and then come forward again to 0.50mm)

After we noted down this point the engine was turned forward till
the valve was fully open again.........



and now this time we turn the engine forward..........



till again the valve closes 0.50mm

[x-works]

and again noted down the point this happened at (132.5deg)...........



and now with these two figures we can work out the exact max lift point
of the cam as it's now fitted, as it's right smack bang in the middle of these
two figures...........




So, as you can see above the inlet cam was now timed for max lift at 108 degrees ATDC.
But, when we look up the Schrick spec's for cam timing we can see that they want
the max lift or "peak timing" point to occur at 106 deg............



So, we gotta adjust the cam timing a little. We can do this thanks to the slotted
holes in the adjustable pulleys we've fitted, but, first we gotta figure out which
way we need to swing the cam to get max lift happening at 106 deg..........



To figure this out it can help if you try and visualise things on the big degree
wheel. We want the cam to "hit" max lift at 106 degrees (red line) but as things stand
it's hitting it at 108 degrees (blue line).........



As you can see above the cam is 2 degree's late coming on max lift, so, we
gotta swing the cam forward to get max lift happening earlier.........



To do this we return to the two marks we found a few minutes ago while
finding where the max lift point was........



well, because we want to bring the cam forward we align the degree wheel
with the forward one of these two marks (83.5deg).........



and again the dial gauge is showing the valve closed 0.50mm at this point.........



As we want to bring the max lift point forward 2 degree's we now turn the
crank forward 2 degrees from 83.5 to 81.5 degrees.........



Now when we checked the dial gauge it was showing the valve
had closed 0.59mm........

[x-works]

So we gotta adjust the cam to get this reading 0.50mm. To do this the cam
pulley bolts are loosened off a little bit to allow us to swing the cam without actually
moving the cam pulley. With the bolts loosened enough a spanner is placed on the hex on the
camshaft..........



and the cam is swung forward till again the dial gauge reads 0.50mm.....





With that done the cam pulley bolts are locked up again, and it's time to
redo the max lift check all over again to see where max lift now lies.

The engine is turned over a couple of full revolutions to let things settle and
then you find the point where the dial gauge shows the valve to be fully open again........



and then repeat what we done earlier, turn the engine backwards till we find the
point the the valve closes 0.50mm.......







and then forward...........







and then do the math to find out the mid point between these two degree's.......



and what we find is that the cam max lift point is now timed to happen at
105.75 degrees, which for the purpose of this write up I'm going to call 106 degree's.
If you want to find that last 0.25 of a degree then knock yourself out.

After that the exhaust cam was timed in the exact same way.
Rotate the engine to find the max lift point of the exhaust valve and zero the
dial gauge at this..........



Swing the engine each side of this till the dial gauge shows the valve closing 0.50mm.........



and what you'll probably notice is that your working on the other half of the
degree wheel now because the exhaust cam is timed at 106 degree's BTDC......



again the two points the crank stopped at are noted (136 deg. BTDC)..........



and 85 degree BTDC .........

[x-works]

and when we do the math to find the centre point between these two points we
get 110.5 degrees BTDC.........



So as things stood our exhaust cam is timed for max lift at 110.5 degrees BTDC
and we want this to be happening at 106 degrees BTDC.
Time to look at the big degree wheel again and figure out which way the cam
is going to need to be adjusted.

In the pic below you can see that over on the BTDC (before top dead centre)
side of the degree wheel, 110.5 degrees comes before 106 degree's.........



So our max lift point is now actually happening 4.5 degree's to early. We needed to adjust the
cam to bring this point backwards 4.5 degrees.
Again. the same process we used to adjust the inlet cam. Remember the two "rocking"
points we just used to find the where the exhaust cam is currently timed........



well because we want to bring the max lift point backwards we use the
rear point (85 degree's) and go back from here 4.5 degree's.
Which brings us to 80.5 degree's...........



had we wanted to bring the max lift point forward we would have gone to the
front point (136 degree's)........



So with the crank now lined up with 80.5 degree's we just need to swing the
cam backwards to get the dial gauge again reading 0.50mm at this point........



again cam pulley bolts are loosened so that the cam pulley doesn't move and
the cam is swung slightly backwards..........



till the dial gauge again reads 0.50mm.........



With the adjustments made, cam pulley bolts are tightened up and the engine is again
rotated two full turns to let things settle.
And we recheck to see where max lift is now occurring.

Find max lift on the dial gauge........



swing to 0.50mm each side of this......



note the degree's you hit 0.50mm at (80.5 and 132)......





Do the brain work to find the true max lift point which is exactly between the two
points.......



And bingo, the exhaust cam is now timed to 106.25 BTDC degrees,
which is good enough for me.
All of which will probably make f*ck all sense unless you have an engine
in front of you to play with.

[x-works]

And finally, we get around to what we actually done all this for,
checking the valve to piston clearance.
As mentioned earlier Schrick recommend a minimum of 1.5mm clearance
between the valves and the pistons at their tightest point. Thankfully we don't have to
rotate the engine to each degree on the wheel and check the clearance, as the tightest
point between the exhaust valve and the piston will usually occur somewhere between
15 degree's before top dead centre and top dead centre (green area below).
And for the inlet valve the tightest point will be somewhere between TDC and
15 degree's ATDC (yellow below)...........



So we only need to check the clearance in these positions.
We started with the exhaust valve. The degree wheel was lined up with
15 deg. BTDC..........



The dial gauge was showing that the exhaust valve was open at this point,
but we're not really interested in that. What we are interested in is the clearance
between the valve and the piston at this point. So, the dial gauge is zero'd......



And we use the special "valve depressor tool", which looks suspiciously like
a large flat screw driver with some soft cloth tape wrapped around the business
end so as not to scratch the cam follower...........



and thanks to those weak dummy valve springs we fitted earlier we can now
push the follower down till the valve GENTLY hit's the piston......



When it hit's the piston and can't go any further, the distance it travelled is
read off the dial gauge.............



And thats the exhaust valve to piston clearance at this point. It's noted down
and then the crank is turned slightly to the next point, 14 degrees's before TDC.
Again the dial gauge is zero'd, the follower is depressed with the screw driver till the
valve butt's up against the piston and the clearance noted from the dial gauge.
And this is done with the exhaust valve for each of the 15 degree's to TDC
where upon we ended up with the following figures.........

15 deg. BTDC - 2.28mm
12 deg. BTDC - 1.98mm
11 deg. BTDC - 1.95mm
10 deg. BTDC - 1.93mm
9 deg. BTDC - 1.90mm
8 deg. BTDC - 1.93mm
7 deg. BTDC - 1.93mm
6 deg. BTDC - 1.95mm
5 deg. BTDC - 2.00mm
TDC - 2.46mm

And from this we were able to tell that our tightest piston to valve clearance on the exhaust
valve was at 9 degree's BTDC and it's 1.90mm, which is comfortably in excess of the minimum
recommended 1.50mm, and hopefully should provide enough clearance to upgrade to more aggressive
cam's down the line.

The exact same process was used on the inlet valve and it was checked at each degree between 15 deg. ATDC
and TDC and the minimum clearance came in at 2.24mm.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we wrap up tonight's episode.

Till next time.............

ps.
nope,
I tried, but I've nearly bit clean through my tongue,
Top End Performance suck's at supplying piston's.

[m_jermyn]

Genius.....

Explains alot and really appreciate the time you put into these great write ups...

[Supafly]

Thank you for the time and effort in posting up all the pictures txt and diagrams. It really is very very useful.

[Gortour]

Fabulous write-up, incredible detail and quality pictures as always. Amazing work.

Top marks X-Works.

(And good luck with kicking Top End Performance's rear - much deserved.)

[e30mazm3]

As mentioned great write up!its hard to see all the detail that goes into project cars these days, thanks for the great info

[kman82]

Fantastic work X-works, you make it all sound so simple!!

Hope you have success getting your dosh back on the duff pistons.

[darren_mk]

Totally superb write up as per usual!
The time and effort you are putting into the words and pictures alone is amazing - never mind the work itself. First class, and very well written and easy to understand/follow.

Do you keep a rough log of the man hours on a build like this? as you must have the patience of a saint.
I get carried away with doing the work, then once its finished wonder why i didnt take pics half way through.........
Looking forward to the next installment.

[snakebrain]

I never thought I'd understand how engines work.......and I still don't!

But I'm a lot closer now.

[dn808e2]

Question ???As x works mentioned earlier ,to play in front of engine is different, is any chance to make a video of timing and valve adjustment.

[maxfield]

That is impressive work.

[Morat]

Fantastic! Even johnny three thumbs here could now time some cams! I also realise now why standard engines have fixed cam pulleys....
Top work again.

[ross_jsy]

That was a nice refresher course for me! Been a couple years since I last did it and I will no doubt refer to your guide when I next do it!

[x-works]

Haven't had much of a chance to work on the car lately, but, by way of a
small update to the thread I've routed out the last of the pic's for the
engine prep section.

One of the final items on the list to check were the valve springs...........



both the outer and smaller inner springs first had a quick check to make sure their
free standing heights were all equal.......





tolerance I'm using is 1.5mm, so, any spring thats over 1.5mm shorter
than it's brothers and sisters bites the bullet.
happy that none of the springs were deformed or "squashed" from previous use
the next check was to ensure each one was straight.........



tolerance this time around was 4mm, any spring displaying a drunken lean of
more than 4mm gets shown the door.
Before finally the poundage of each spring is checked using this little gauge......



Each spring is placed into the screw press and using the dial gauge each
one can be compressed the same distance while the force it takes to do
so can be read off the little gauge.........





The idea behind the check is to highlight any weak springs which may struggle to
control the valve when the engine rev's start to rise, and having seen in the last
section how close the valves run to the tops of the pistons the last thing you want is a rebel
valve doing it's own thing as the piston hurtles up the cylinder at warp
speed trying it's best to make shite of it.
Schrick list pressures in their catalogue so you can check each springs pressure at it's installed
height and at it's fully opened height (valve fully opened, spring compressed) to make sure they're
on the money.
However, when testing other makes of springs or even the standard BMW valve
springs it can be hard to track down this info and in this is the case each spring is just compressed to
it's installed height and it's fully opened height and the pressures are noted and all are checked to see
if they are within 10 percent of each other which is usually good enough to show up a weak
spring.

After this was done it was on to the coma inducing task of checking
valve spring installed heights.
So,
whats the deal here,
nobody asks.
Looking at the picture below you can see all the valve's in place and
and the springs pulling the valves tightly closed into their seats..........



The springs need to be pulling the valves closed into their seats just the right
amount. The smart folk that design valve springs do so in such a way that when the
valve is installed in the head, and it's spring is fitted, the valve spring is compressed
just enough to hold the valve shut with the right amount of force.
This is all bloody marvellous when the engine leaves the factory, but now we've had
a chance to screw around with things by cutting the valve seats and fitting aftermarket
valve springs we were going to have to check the new valves were going to be pulled shut
again just the right amount.
To do this we were going to have to measure the "valve spring installed heights". And
hopefully the diagram below should help to show what this measurement is........



As you can see above the valve spring is trapped between the lower and upper
valve spring retainers. The distance between these two retainers is the valve spring
installed height and Schrick kindly list what this measurement should be in their catalogue.
So next we need a way to measure what the installed heights were on my valves so
we can check it against this figure and below you can see what we use.
It's called a valve spring micrometers............



Basically the little tool is inserted instead of the valve spring and you rotate the
two halfs of the tool to extend it. When the tool is extended as much as the valve
spring retainers will allow you read off the little increments on the side to see
what the distance is between the top and bottom retainers...........




Unfortunately due to the nature of the design of the S14 cylinder head and the
shape of the retainers I'm using the little tool took some serious modifying to
fit into place and do it's job right. After a little bashing and much swearing
it worked and what it showed was that my installed heights were too large
as things stood which would mean the valve springs wouldn't be squashed
enough at rest to hold the valve shut with the right amount of pressure.
Thankfully the cure is rather straight forward. Some valve spring shims,
which are available in a variety of different thickness's, were purchased
and fitted below the bottom retainers to return the installed heights to what
they should be.

[x-works]

While up the top of the engine it's probably worth
mentioning another two small jobs that were carried out in the valve train area
during the engine prep. The first of which is camshaft clearance.
The cams being used are a higher lift than the standard items and as such the
lobes on them are naturally a little taller than the standard ones, hence the higher lift.
The standard cams are a rather "snug" fit in the cam box and when your fitting larger
ones this "snug" can become "tight" or "interference" depending on the size of the cams.........





and while the cams I'm using didn't actually hit the cam box while being rotated
they came a little close for comfort and it was a fair bet that if larger cams were
being fitted down the line things could get funky.
So, mark up the areas where the cam lobes and surrounding metal are trying
there hardest to become intimate (which is usually only on the inlet cam)..........



whip out the belt sander........



and mow chunks out of it........



The other little task needing doing was to check the oil clearance on the
camshaft bearings. The cam box is bolted down tight to the cylinder head........



and each bearing journal on the camshaft gets a little piece of the plasti-gauge
stuff we used earlier fitted before the cam caps are torqued down on top of it...........



removed the caps and checked how squashed the plasti-gauge was......



and thankfully they were all within the listed tolerances of
0.0011"-0.0021" (0.027-0.053mm).

[x-works]

With that done, it was time to take a break from the measuring part of preparation
for a while and concentrate on some "blinging", because if e-bay has thought us
nothing else it's that bling adds at least 100hp to any car.

The rocker cover was looking reasonably well upon engine dismantling as she had
taken a lick of paint not long after I bought the car.........



so it didn't need to be stripped back to the bone again. A little wire
wooling to scuff the surface and give a fresh coat of paint something to cling on to........



and a little block sanding of the raised aluminium pieces just to brighten
them back up again..........



bit of masking tape, splatter of satin black and bob's your uncle......



the other thing getting painted at this stage was the airbox I had purchased
a long while back in a group buy. We'll probably get into how it works and whats
involved fitting the airbox down the line at a later date, should any of us live that long,
for now all we are interested in is how it looks.
As mentioned, I purchased this airbox a good while back and it's a little different
from most airbox's people may have seen as it's constructed from fibreglass rather
than the usual carbon fibre. The upside of this was it cost a fair deal less than a
similar carbon one.............



Although the airbox is an exact replica of the motorsport derived units there
was no escaping the fact it didn't quite have the same bling factor of the
carbon version. So, I decided to try brighten it up a little (and in the process
waste some more f*cking time which would have been better spent getting
this car finished and on the road).
The airbox came with a sticker of the same logo that adorned the rocker
cover............

[x-works]

which was cut up and the individual letters were stuck to some aluminium.........





and then we used our state of the art, computer guided, CNC controlled,
water cooled, 3d, 5 axis..........hacksaw to cut the letters out and then
file them down.......





after about the 3rd letter I realised this was going to take an eternity, after the
fifth letter I tried introducing alcohol to the procedure, the rest is a kind of blur
funnily enough.
Eventually the lettering was done and after detoxing the task of bonding them
on straight could begin............



the curvy nature of the airbox very nearly seen alcohol been reintroduced
to this step...........



the letters were bonded on with this stuff, which if you ever get the chance to use
it you'll find is good gear, i'd say there's a fair chance you could glue an elephant
to the blades of a windmill with this, should you need to...........



with the letters bonded on and me having recovered from very near disastrous
experience of a quick toilet break while using industrial strength glue, everything
was taped up for a final coat of satin black to match the rocker cover........



The end results of which were..........





Thats gotta be worth 20 horse power, no?

[x-works]

The final pictures on the hard drive are for a little port matching.
After having the inlet ports enlarged during the head work we wanted to be
sure there would be no slight "bottlenecks" for the incoming air
before it reached the cylinder head..........



This task is made a slight bit easier on the S14 engine as the throttle bodies
and the rubber insulator blocks that fit between the cylinder head and the
throttle bodies are all dowelled. The advantage here is that when you get each
piece of the induction system matching it's neighbour they all line up perfect
each time things are reassembled thanks to the locating dowels........



first to go on was the rubber insulator blocks. Even though these were
the larger 48mm style blocks they still needed opening up a little to match
the exact shape of the ports..........





Once they were a good match for the head side they were removed, flipped
over and bolted down to the throttle bodies.......



the throttle body side was a very close match and needed only a very slight rub....



next up was the airbox and we had to induce a little smoke from the ears
to figure out this one. The problem being it was all but impossible to see
how the ports on the airbox were matching up with the ports on the throttle
bodies. So a devilishly cunning plan was hatched. The airbox is sealed to the
throttle bodies by 4 large o rings.........



each of these o rings were given a smear of engineers blue ink and the
sealing face of the airbox was covered with a little masking tape........



nail the two together.........



and then remove to see from the transferred blue markings how well
things were aligning............



as you can see above the outer two ports needed a little material removed
to get them a better match for the throttle body ports.
Which when all assembled should now leave a nice smooth obstruction free
path for that incoming wind.......



And that, you'll be delighted to hear, is the last of the engine prep photos
I have for you, which unfortunately for me, means I now have to extract
my thumb from my lazy ass and actually nail this engine together.

Till next time...........

[e30topless]

Awesome work and of course attention to detail, what interests me is how is the carbon airbox filtered ?

or does it just suck lots of raw air in there?

[x-works]

oops, apologies for delay replying to questions

darren_mk
Do you keep a rough log of the man hours on a build like this?

not on this build no, I have kept logs in the past when building
cars for other people, but since this one is for meself there
didn't seem to be much point. If I were to take a guess I'd say
we're somewhere in an around the 1200 mark. I constantly have
to stop and remind myself not to rush things.

dn808e2
is any chance to make a video of timing and valve adjustment.

wouldn't work to well I'm afraid. I've a very strong Dublin accent
which I've been told is hard to decipher (well either that
or the person was politely trying to tell me I talk shite).

e30topless
what interests me is how is the carbon airbox filtered ?

some people seem to run them raw (without a filter) and others
seem to incorporate various K&N style filters. I'll definitely be
using a filter of some kind on the airbox but haven't quite
decided what style yet.

[dn808e2]

Q to x-works. r you gonna use rotor arm and distributor or it's gonna be new electronic type like on e36 m3 and later , i saw some pic of later DTM m3 they used this system.
thanks. what diff you gonna use ? 3.15 ,