So a bit more progress to report
Naturally, I’m in a lot deeper than I first envisaged – shocking. Not.
I think I was only fooling myself at the time when I said id give the engine a once over, new set of shells, set of ARP’s and im away. Realistically, the perfectionist in me knew that was never going to happen.
So, a quick big end shell changed ended up like this
When I took the shells off, I wasn’t mad about what I seen - there was more wear than I expected, not so much wear in a general sense, the engine only has about 65k miles on it and the bores are perfect.
It had all the characteristics of an owner was completely careless and neglectful – either that or the car was regularly driven hard from cold or had been stolen.
There was a lot of signs of infrequent oil changes and complete lack of care. So next step was to pull the oil pump and see what I had going on in there – again, nothing drastic, but casing scoring, wear were evident again showing lack of fresh oil changes.
That was enough for me, so a complete rebuild was in order.
Tore down the engine to every last nut and bolt to assess what I needed to get, meanwhile I sent off some parts to the machine shop for some work I cant do myself.
Block cleaned
Crank ground, cleaned and balanced
New valve guides installed
Head skimmed and pressure tested
New parts so far:
Ported Cosworth head
Mahle main and big end bearings
ARP Bolt kits
SBD oil pump
Mahle forged pistons
SBD thermostat
Water pump
Timing belt kit
Head gasket set
Head bolts
Valve lifters
AP paddle clutch kit
Steel flywheel
In the meantime, I’m going to balance and polish the stock rods, they are more than up to the task as they are.
I haven’t started the build yet as im still waiting on a lot of parts.
Time is getting away as I still have the actual car to do, ive the make a wiring loom for the engine bay, weld in a grp4 chassis strengthening kit and of course the chassis mount engine mounts.
Lots of things to crack on with! More soon
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