Visitor in the paddock

Testing on the new engine continues with (eventually) good results.

After another test drive, the clutch problem returned. I tried to adjust it again by the roadside, but didn't enjoy crouching by the drivers (i.e., road side) side of the car at night so gave up and drove it home being careful not to press the clutch all the way in. Once cold, the problem seemed to go, so perhaps something expands when warm to create the problem

However, after adjusting the pedal as far as it will go, I had another test drive, and the problem did not return, so I think it's fixed. There is still an odd feeling to the clutch pedal as it disengages - I'm not sure what to attribute this to. It's not causing any problems though so I'm just going to ignore it until it does as I suspect the fix would be a new release bearing (i.e., engine out).

After some thought, I decided that the best way to attach the bonnet scoop would be to bond some bolts onto the scoop and then bolt it down - this will give me the option of making a new (better fitting) bonnet in the future but reuse the scoop, having spent an evening wrapping it nicely. This is the result:

Bonnet scoop drying. Bolts were attached by using very large washers covered by Sikaflex. Not sure how long Sikaflex takes to fully cure so I'm going to give it a week before attaching it.

On Friday I got up at 5:30 to trailer the car up to Fibreform for some welding. Dave got the car up on some ramps and showed me the amount of diff movement I was getting by gently jacking the diff... a bit worrying as the diff nose was lifting by 10-20 mm. After a spot of welding and strengthening he had this sorted and advised me to keep the main front mount tight, recommending lock wiring it to ensure it doesn't undo. At some point I'll undo it, thread lock it and lock wire it.

This morning I sorted out the steering wheel for the n'th time as it wasn't central - not difficult but fiddly and time consuming, but it's right at last. Midway through this I had some problems with the ignition barrel - for some reason the steering lock wouldn't release properly and prevented the key from turning. Fortunately I eventually fixed it by hitting it with a hammer, but I'm keeping a look out for a cheap Ebay replacement part.

I tried another test drive and was pleased to find that the car is performing well with no major problems.

There are a few tasks remaining: the rear brakes are dragging a bit (this is probably what was causing them to lock up before the fronts); and the traction control is playing up on the new engine. Not sure what the solution will be for the traction control. It's booked in for the tonneau fitting on Friday, which will be good to have. Also the car is very dirty and needs a clean - hopefully the vinyl wrap will clean up easily.

Finally: today's visitor to the paddock:

I found this fellow hopping around by the 328 engine.

I caught him and let him go in the field behind the house.

A very long post about putting the new engine in

It doesn't seem like a month since the old engine came out, but according to my last blog entry, apparently it was nearly a month ago that the 328 came out. With the engine in, it seems like it ought to just be a case of ticking off a few details, but as with software, the first 90% of the job takes 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% of the work takes the other 90% of the time. So it was here: all the little things took time, and interspersed with waiting for parts, the engine swap has not been particularly speedy.

After getting the engine in, I made up a mount for the oil cooler and fitted that. Unfortunately, the adapter needed to plumb it into the engine took an unreasonably long time to arrive from the U.S., and without it, I couldn't get oil pressure, and therefore couldn't start the engine or make any progress. When the overpriced but essential widget finally did arrive, I spent ages cranking the engine with no fuel and spark plugs removed (to reduce load on the crank) trying to get oil pressure. I'd been warned that this might not happen easily, and indeed it didn't.

After faffing around for ages trying to prime the oil pump I admitted defeat, drained the engine of oil, took the sump off and removed the oil pump. Since I'd already spilt a fair amount of oil on the garage floor, this involved a lot of lying on the floor, soaking it up and making a huge mess. I dismantled the pump, stuffed it full of vaseline, poured oil into the pick up pipe and sealed both ends of the pipe with vaseline to prevent the oil from escaping, and put it back. I didn't fancy doing it twice so I probably used a good half tub of vaseline. I put the sump back and then started doing up the bolts.

In so doing, I got a good view of the bottom end. It looks healthy.

The oil pump. Really hope I did that nut up tightly enough when putting it back. The internet suggests welding it on but I think that's overkill (and I can't weld), so I just followed Haynes and torqued it up with threadlock.

Shiny crank.

More crank. Note oil pick up pipes.

Underside of piston.

I was mildly concerned by the marks on the underside of the pistons, but apparently this is normal.

My pillow, post oil-pump work. Emily took it surprisingly well.

Part of bolting the sump on involves doing up a bolt inside the gearbox bell housing via a socket extension through a tiny hole. Of course, when removing the extension, the socket popped off the end of it and dropped into the inaccessible bell housing ready to destroy the flywheel. I attempted to salvage the situation with some thorough cursing, anticipating having to remove the engine to rescue the socket, but to my great surprise, it came out eventually by poking it with an allen key through the little hole.

Everything back in order, I cranked it, and got oil pressure. Phew.

With the engine in and ready to start running, I put the exhaust on, spent ages getting the manifold on, then realised that the front side panel wouldn't go over the manifold, spent ages getting the manifold off, threaded the front wing on again, then put the manifold back on... a bit of a waste of time there. To reduce any future pain I tapped the holes for every rivet that I had to drill out and replaced with little dome-head bolts instead, which is how all panels that come off will be done in future. This will make getting panels off much easier in future. Wish I'd done that everywhere to start with, although tapping all those holes would have been pretty tedious.

I also had a look at the bonnet. The throttle cable arrangement sticks up a lot on the new engine:

No way the bonnet will go over this.

So sadly I had to do this.

Which will be covered up by this. (Not fixed in place yet, hence not straight).

I'm not massively keen on having a bonnet scoop, and as a future project I will look into an alternative throttle arrangement which lets me have a nice clean bonnet again - but for now I've vinyl wrapped the scoop so it matches the bonnet and I think it will look OK.

The next step, now that the engine was getting oil pressure, was to get it started. I put the higher-pressure fuel pump in (future plan is to install the old pump at the other end of the tank to reduce oil starvation in the corners), and hooked up all the basic stuff on the engine, along with the loom. The loom is a bit of an oddity, as it's off an SMG (fancy flappy-paddle gearbox) car, so it has an extra ECU slot for the gearbox ECU, several additional connectors for the extra SMG wiring, etc. Fortunately, it turns out they will still work on a manual car - it's just a case of bridging one relay to be always connected (on an SMG car it prevents starting the car when in gear, I think). Relay identified (the half-size one next to the fuel pump relay) and bridged, I got the car sort-of running without too much difficulty.

I say sort of as it was billowing smoke, stalling a lot, idling very badly, and so on. I hooked up the lambdas from the 328 (they're a different part number but I'm pretty sure they're electrically identical), bought and fitted a new MAF, fiddled around a lot, and so on, with limited success. The only clue was that when I unplugged the MAF, it would idle OK, but as soon as I plugged it in, the revs would jump around and then the engine would stall. Jason and Ben felt that a third MAF was required, but my wallet wasn't feeling in the mood, so I kept looking for another solution. Eventually I found what I was looking for: a small vacuum leak after the MAF. This meant that the engine was receiving more air than the MAF was measuring, and hence running badly (very lean) and stalling. With the MAF unplugged, it had to estimate air based on the throttle position and the current rpms - and obviously didn't care what path the air took to get into the engine, so held a decent idle. I plugged up the hole, and got one step closer.

Unfortunately, I still had this problem:

Smokey engine. This is all too familiar. 

And this one:

Noise on pressing clutch all the way in.

The smokey engine was not a huge concern: I'd half expected this sort of thing as it hadn't been run for a while and had no doubt built up condensation while standing. After twenty minutes or so of coming up to temperature, the steam / smoke died away and since then, it's behaved properly, smoking / steaming a little when cold but not for very long.

The clutch was a much more worrying issue. I really, really didn't want to take the engine out to replace a clutch bearing... but it wasn't the kind of noise I could ignore. Pete and Peter reckoned it was a failed bearing (i.e., engine out to fix), although the sound was a bit grindy. I had a more palatable idea: I think it's the clutch release arm (which doesn't spin) contacting the pressure plate (which does). This seems plausible as it only happens right at the end of clutch travel, after the clutch has fully disengaged, as if it were very slightly over-extending. Happily the fix for this does not involve taking the engine out - it's just a case of adjusting the pedal slightly to reduce travel.

I made the necessary adjustment, and was greatly relieved to find that the clutch now operates perfectly and silently, so I think this has solved the problem.

I celebrated by quickly sticking the headlights, nose and bonnet back on, and going for a quick test drive, the first with the new engine. I kept it below 3k rpm and gently pootled about, as (a) it's the first test run, (b) it was wet and (c) the diff mount needs additional bracing before it can handle full power. The engine performed very well, although the weather didn't. After a few miles, I turned around and checked out the fault codes. There are a few that I suspect are down to minor wiring issues, and two down to missing components (air con and the fuel evaporation cannister) - so a good result. Finger crossed the new engine continues to perform well.