Motors I'm building my own car... UPDATE - Stoneliegh 2013

Everything (so far) has been in excellent mechanical condition - they've just been very dirty, usually with surface corrosion / rust. Basically in need of a clean and new lube.

 

just read all of this thread (not sure how i missed it for so long), and just thought i'd comment on how good its looking. Can't wait to see it being all put back together.

 

my shrink says i shouldn't get involved in projects like this, not doing me any good waiting for you to ignore your "real life" commitments and work on the car 12 hours a day

 

Looking awesome GOO, keep it up.

 

That's hot.

AH

sorry.

 

wow GOO job really well done so far , are you still enjoying yourself or is it getting to be a chore cleaning everything ? i cant wait until you start pulling it all together

 

Wow, it is absolutely amazing what a coat of paint will do. I cant wait to see this together.

 

GOO!! leave the family alone, they don't need you.. this thread does!

 

No not really a chore, but it is getting a little repetitive... But it's still fun, especially as I tore into the engine before I left to go on holiday.

@Fev: Sorry mate... updates won't be for some time now, as I'm in Florida on holiday, so no tinkering. I will however be making a pilgrimage to Daytona Beach in the next couple of days, and I believe Seabring isn't far from here either.

 

Hey guys - back from holiday, ready and raring to go again.

The only problem is that before I went away, I managed to bugger up the crank shaft on the engine:



This happened when I was trying to remove the nose bolt from the crank. This holds the main timing belt sprocket on, and consequently the lower timing belt cover (the bit I wanted to get off to clean). In trying to lock the crank up to stop it from moving, I put a couple of bolts into the flywheel flange, and then put a hefty bar across them so it would lock up against the engine stand. Of course, everything was going peachy until I thought I'd managed to move the bolt - only to find that I'd popped the side out of the flange...

Anyway, I've managed to secure a new crank from an E30Zone regular, but in order to swap the old one out, I'm still at square one - and the reason why the old crank got fudged in the first place.

I need to get the big nose bolt out of the crank, to remove the main timing sprocket and the lower timing belt cover. Problem is, with the engine out on a stand, the crank free to rotate and the huge torque the bugger is tightened to, it's a seemingly impossible task.

I can lock the old crank up - I'll just have to make a plate or something that can bolt on the flywheel flange using all the bolts and stop it from moving, rather than the bodge job I tried before. I can take the engine off the stand. But the torque issue is going to be the killer. I don't think I'm going to be able to get enough leverage on my breaker bar to get the bolt off. There are torque multipliers, but they're bloody expensive, and seemingly impossible to hire.

So - does anyone have any ideas?

 

Get the biggest wrench you can, attach it around the bolt, wrap your arms around it, and let your weight try to pull it off.

Remember, torque = force x distance. Let's say you weigh 80kg. The gravitational force on you is relatively 800n. If your wrench is M long, you 1m have 800Nm of torque.

Yes, I knwo that I've argued the merits of Imperial in various threads. Metric is preferable for science.

But just for the hell of it, say you weigh 180 pounds and the wrench is 3 feet long. You have 540 ft-lbs of torque.

The reason that I use kg x gravity for one but just straight-up pounds for the other is that F = ma. Acceleration in this case is gravity, so the force is 80x9.81 or about 800, since 80kg is your mass. Weight, however, means gravity x mass, and pounds are a measure of weight, as your weight will change based on gravity, but your mass will not.

This fits relatively well in with the universally accepted value of 1 ft-lb = 1.355 Nm. Calculating it gives you the value of 732Nm, the reason for the difference being that I rounded gravity, and 80kg isn't 180 pounds, and 1m isn't 3 feet.

To fix this, let's set gravity back to 9.81. Now you have 784.8Nm of torque.

To redo the imperial calculations, let's try
You weigh 176.4 lbs and your wrench is 3.281 feet long, so 578.77 ft-lbs of torque. Multiply by 1.355 and you get 784.2Nm of torque, differences due to rounding.

So yeah, that's a bit tangental, but hopefully it will help you calculate how much torque you can create by using a certain length wrench. Remember, the more force and the longer wrench, the more torque.

 

you need a big gun... i've been told you can't undo those things by hand

 

Scientific solution

Sensible solution

 

Thanks for the reminder about mechanical advantage Altron...

I sort of knew that I needed more leverage (bigger breaker bar), but the issue was really locking the crank sufficently to get all that torque through the bolt.

Anyhoo, I posted the same question on E30Zone, and here's their solution:

http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=38070&highlight=

I'm going to give it ago at the weekend.

Oh, and I'll be picking the new crank up tonight. £20! I thought it'd be a hell of a lot more expensive.

 

could you not use the gas axe to heat it up?

 

use a cheater bar over the breaker bar

a length of heave steel pipe works

i have a 6 ft length at work for when i get really fed up with stuff

just slide it over and poof, torque is multiplied. make sure youre breaker bar is up to the task tho. they fly apart and you go flyin, i know this from experience.

 

I know exactly what you are talking about, but that still made me laugh

 

Managed to get the bolt out tonight, using the method suggested over at e30zone. Worked like a charm!

So I've got the lower timing cover off, and got it and the sprockets degreased and cleaned. I also coated the engine block in degreasent and got the majority of the cack off it. It needs another going over, but at least it's getting there.

 

Last night, I was mostly removing pistons and crankshafts.

Managed to get all the pistons and the fubar'd crank out. It's a shame I managed to bugger it, as apart from the flange everything looks fine on it. All the journals look great, no scratches or anything. Even the bearing shells look good.

Hmmm. It's all a learning experience, eh?

I also managed to clean the cylinder block / cylinder head mating surface up some. It looks a lot better than it did, but probably needs another round of elbow grease before I'm satisfied.

Oh - top tip - A Tesco's cardboard wine carrier makes a great place to store pistons, and you can write which piston is which on the carrier.

No, I didn't watch too much Blue Peter as a child. Honest

Pics later.

 

Nice GOO, glad to see it's still coming along. Can't wait for those pics.