Jason Exocet type G build thread

[jason82]

Cylinder head work

So after having my cylinder head back from www.racedevelopments.co.uk it was time to get stuck into rebuilding the cylinder head. But first I had to buy a parts washer & accessories, so that I could get everything as clean as possible ready for the rebuild. Every engine builder that I have spoken to have always said " to build an engine properly, you will need somewhere really clean to minimize foreign objects getting into the engine". So with this taken literally, you guessed it, the kitchen it is ! My wife has been amazing throughout all of this I must say, & having the kettle within arms reach was a huge bonus !

  If I could give one piece of advice, when you fit the valves springs & collets, make sure that you are in a well lit area, as this job is quite tricky, made worse by crappy lighting.

So I had to buy a parts washer, it got a little confusing with dimensions to be honest, at the time, I purchased a parts washer that would take half of the cylinder head on edge, then I could flick it around and wash the other half. Dimensions seemed good, so I bought it. I could have bought a bigger one, but it may only be used a few times, so was not worth the investment.

This is the washer that I bought, fantastic quality etc etc, but not being a mechanic, I did not know about the shelf, so this made the washer smaller than I wanted, but I managed, I could have removed the shelf, but I did not want to damage the pump.

The parts washer only comes with a spout, so I purchased a brush which slides over the spout. Its a good brush, but keep an eye on it, on one occasion the brush came detached and I sprayed degreaser all over the kitchen floor ! lol.

This stuff is brilliant ! I bought 2 x 5l containers from ebay for £16.99. Its water based which is important, as most hobby car parts washers only take this type of degreaser.

The head started off a golden colour on the inside, I honestly thought that it was some kind of factory applied coating until I finished washing & scrubbing it.

Sorry for the poor quality, but you get the idea, it came out the same colour as the outside of the head. This engine must have been run into the ground.

This is what I meant about the confusion regarding the size of the parts washer. I had to get real red neck with this to make it work. The frustrating thing is the dish washer is below it, & it would have worked a treat had I not needed it for my coffee cup !

With the head cleaned & dried off, it was in with the pistons. I just want to point out that the piston location numbers are marked, to insure that they return to their correct locations. I soaked the pistons overnight for around 10 hours, I did not scrub the crown of the pistons, just dropped them in face down. (The sides were previously cleaned using scotchbrite & WD40 as they had pick up). I did not clean the conrods as they are being replaced with forged Manley rods, but if you were they could get a good soak aswell.

This is how the piston crowns looked before the good soaking.....

& this is how I pulled them out, completely untouched. This gunk is brilliant ! I had an old toothbrush which I used to scrub the rest off. I also could have used scotchbrite, but the grime was loose enough.

I then removed all of the old piston rings using a proper ring pliers, one snapped, which was good, as I then used it to lightly rub the piston ring groves to get them all nice & clean, with a final swish around in the parts washer to clean the rest off.

With that all done, I wanted to clean out all of the oil passages in the cylinder head & the oil ways around where the cams fit. A quick search around the shed led me to the strimmer ! I pulled off roughly 10 inches of clean strimmer wire and poked it through all of the oil ways. You would be surprised as to how much dirt and grime gets stored in there.

  With my cylinder head fully cleaned, I replaced the valve seals & started to lap the valves in. To be honest, I am glad that I had to lap the valves in because the seats were really bad, had I used the other method where you do not remove the head, I would have still ended up with a smoky engine.

 I bought a valve lapping kit from ebay which had both course & fine pastes. I put some assembly lube around the valve shafts and then first applied course lapping paste to the underside of the valve on the chamfer, stuck the tool onto the valve, then kept rolling my hands from side to side on the tool, occasionally lifting & dropping the valve. After 2 lots of course grit then 2 lots of fine grit, I ended up with a nice seat. I have only done the valve in the bottom left, you can see the state of the seats that have not been done. Had I not had the head off to do this, I would have never known the mess that was hiding.

An un lapped valve...... 

A nice lapped valve. This light grey finish is what you need for a correctly lapped valve which will not leak.

Caution !!!!!

This lapping paste gets all over the place. Make sure that the entire head is completely clean with no grit anywhere on the head. It will get down the intake & exhaust ports, down the valve guides etc etc. If this is not thoroughly cleaned, it will make a real mess of your engine.

Once I was happy that the cylinder head was immaculately clean, I then put the valve springs & retaining collers into engine oil to soak (I had previously ran them through the parts washer. I also re applied copious amounts of engine assembly lube to every valve stem, ready for start up.

I had a 25mm valve spring compressor for the valve stem side & a 32mm spring compressor on the outside. I put the wet valve spring into the head with the collar ontop, then squeezed the valve spring assembly down far enough so that I could put the collets in.

 

Go careful when you put the collets in, they can fly everywhere, especially as you are releasing the valve spring clamp, as they may not be seated correctly.

 

To help fit the collets, I used a small screwdriver with a wide blade, put a good chunk of Vaseline on it, put Vaseline on the inside of the collet ( to help to stick the collets to the valve, otherwise they will fall out), then gently pushed them into their correct location.

 

Doing this 16 times aswell as lapping in the valves takes forever ! Once the valves were built up, I got a cloth & rubbed the excess Vaseline from the top of the valves.

 

 I feel knackered thinking about it !

[jason82]

 So I have been working on my engine block, trying to get the crankshaft timing gear to release. The woodruff key was stuck solid in the gear no matter how I approached it. The key could be tapped up & down but would not pull out, I tried using heat, gear pullers & drilling the woodruff key & nothing appeared to work. I really wanted to give the engine a full rebuild & the only way that this could be achieved was by dropping this gear & removing the oil pump.

  This left me with only one real option, very carefully cut the gear off. This was going to cost me £30 for a new genuine Mazda gear delivered, so I swallowed my medicine & proceeded !

I used a new thin 1mm disc in my angle grinder, & gently cut through the gear. I used the woodruff key as a reference, then when I cut all of the way through  the gear I pulled what was left of  the woodruff key out, then gave the new flat edge of the gear a tap with a rubber mallet.

I kept tapping left & right, then it started to come loose.

The guide for the key is in really good condition, it looked more like the gear as a whole was seized to the crank.

With the gear removed & a few bolts later the oil pump pulled straight off. Just remember what bolts go where as some bolts are longer than others.

With the oil pump removed, I then started removing the 14mm bolts connecting the main bearings to block. They were undone in the reverse torque sequence order, loosening off every bolt, before finally removing them to try & avoid causing un wanted stress to my parts. 4 x 10mm bolts later and the rear crank seal was also removed. I put a load of cardboard onto the floor so that when I removed the crank, I could put it onto something soft where it would not get damaged.

With the crankshaft removed it was evident that there was a fair bit of wear on the main bearings.

 

 

So they were going to get replaced anyway, but what I was not expecting was the marks on the crank. The crank had a few scratches across it where it houses to the main bearings, which means that it needs a grind. I was hoping that this was not going to be the case, but there you go.

  After finding various marks across the pistons, cylinder walls & now the crank, I am getting worried. I have already sorted the pistons out, the bores will be fine once they are honed, but there must be a cause. Initially we thought that it was down to pick up, but now its getting a little too much to be just pick up, so I decided to get stuck into the oil pump.

  After watching loads of videos on youtube, I know that any scratches in the oil pump housing, gears or the pressure relief valve housing means disaster, so with that in mind, I got stuck in !

 

First the pressure relief valve. You need a pair of long nose pliers to pull out the split pin & put your hands over the valve as the spring will shoot out.

 

This picture is in order, so split pin first, then the washer (flat side faces up, concave section sits on the spring), followed by the spring, then the plunger (spring sits inside the plunger, flat edge of plunger goes into the housing first).

 

The trouble was my plunger did not come out of the housing. I knew that it had one, but nothing came out when I tapped it. So I got a torch & had a look inside & the plunger was stuck. I thought that maybe it was the oil suction keeping it in, but no, it was stuck fast. So I pushed a long screw driver into the valve housing, but from the inside, & after a really good push, slowly it popped out.

 As you can see from the picture of the plunger, it was seized into the housing. This is a fairly common problem with MX5's according to various forums. Obviously it means that the oil pump is scrap & it has not been doing its job properly, explaining the marks on the pistons, bearings, cylinder walls, crank etc etc. 

 

You can just about see inside the pressure relief valve housing, just below the glazed oil line is where the prv plunger had seized solid.

 

As I was already investigating my scrap oil pump, I thought that I would give it a thorough checking over. There are 7 screws holding in the oil pump back plate. These things are in really tight & I only just managed to get them undone.

 

This is the inside of the oil pump back plate.....

 

Then I gave the gears a quick wipe over & I did not think they looked too bad at the time.

 

This is the first gear that I removed, they only fit in the housing 1 way, the dot faces up & underneath there is a little steel skirt.

 

I then removed the second gear, these things simply pull out. The outside ring stays still & the inner ring has two flat edges on the inside which locates it onto the crankshaft nose, enabling the inner ring to spin inside the housing, pumping the oil.

 

As before, the dot faces up.

 

I then wiped where the gears were sitting, & the evidence is plastered all over the wall ! The gears have been grinding on the housing, which has caused the pick up in the engine.

 

 

This is the under side of the two gears......

 

 

So where as that left me ? If I had any idea of this in my October post, I would have purchased the ford crate engine from kit spares for just over 1k for a 2l zetec.

  To get this engine back to clean health I need to spend some serious money ! Here is the things that I know that I need:

A crank grind £

Oversized crank main bearings £?? depends on how much the crank gets ground

Oil pump £262.28 from Fab9 tuning (America) already purchased, awaiting delivery.

Oversized con rod bearings £?? depends on the grind

Conrods £223 (billet)

Hydraulic lifters £174.95 + shipping

Flywheel £ ( looks like mine has gotten very hot & is discoloured)

So I could save money with the oil pump, but I had already commited to this before I found the damage to the engine. It was not that much more than a standard pump, but its made of billet, with an improved pressure relief valve, so it should not suffer failure again & will be needed if the engine ever goes super charged or turbo powered.

 Conrods again, were an upgrade, ready for turbo / super charging, plus I am not sure if the oil starvation will have fatigued the original conrods.  Then we have the hydraulic lifters, on going back through every engine component, I found them to be scratched very lightly up the sides, which is a tough pill to swallow, especially after spending a few hours stripping them down to their individual pieces, because 5 of the 16 would not squeeze when pressed, making the engine tap like mad. Needless to say I got them working now, only for them to go into the bin.

  I will post up how I refurbished them, as I went quite a bit further than most of the tutorials like 'building the exocet', brilliant videos, but mine would still not work after following these steps.

 A second hand engine is out of the picture. Given that one oil pump can wreck an entire engine I am not going to risk it. If anyone is up for taking a bit of advice, please replace your oil pump as a matter of course. I know that its a lengthy job just for one pump, but its cost me a lot of money in machining, gaskets & bearings etc. If it was not for my engine being slightly smoky, I would never of pulled the cylinder head to do the valve seals, meaning that I would never of found the marks on cylinders 2 & 3 (I was lucky that the pistons were in a position to see the marks), which ultimately led to the rebuild.

 If I went for a super fast build, my engine would have seized in the first 100 miles or so. I could have ignored the symptoms & put in some Wynns stop smoke. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but when you are gambling a lot of time & money that you may not have, don't risk it !

 I have a fair few hundred pounds in parts & machining already for this engine, with this new information, I will have way over a grand in the engine alone, but it will be perfect. The question is, do I sell the parts that I already have & junk the engine ? or do I go the zetec route ? I really don't know.

[jason82]

On dismantling the engine I noticed that 5 of my 16 hydraulic tappets / lifters would not operate by hand. The other 11 would operate perfectly, but the other 5 would just not squeeze. So after a bit of a youtube binge on how to fix the problem I came across a few videos which showed you how to strip down the lifter & put it back together again. After following the instructions perfectly, my lifters would still not operate. So I went a bit further & got the job done. I have also included a video from my youtube site to try and explain how I managed to get the job done & save the best part of £200 on new lifters.

Incase you don't want the hassle here is the link for new ones : www.mx5parts.co.uk/hydraulic-lifter-motorsport-mk1-p-3407.html   individual lifters are also available, but remember that they will still need bleeding, so you will get mucky anyway.

In this picture you can see down the left hand side the parts that are inside a lifter.

I then put the parts through my parts washer to get rid of all of the oil. This stuff really stinks, but came off really easily, I then got some strimmer wire & pushed it through the hole in the side of the lifter to make sure that the way was clear.

After the parts were cleaned & re assembled, the lifter would still not operate when you squeeze the plunger on the bottom of the lifter. I did not pre lube the plunger as I know that they can get hydro locked, stopping the plunger from operating. I prefer to do one final bleed at the end.

  So with the plunger still locked, I took it back apart with my long nosed mole grip pliers. After looking at the parts, it appeared that the little plunger came apart again, so I set my phone on to record so that I had a record of how the parts were dismantled, so that I could put them back together again. Then very slowly I dismantled the parts further. Initially I had 4 parts to my lifter, but after my 'experiment', I now had 7 pieces. This included a ball bearing, tiny dinky little spring & a retaining cap.

Click on the images to enlarge them, they do have titles explaining the order that they came apart. As you can see from the waterproof mat I was using, this job gets very messy, so make sure that you are ready !

 

You can only just see the tiny little spring in the photo, its so small, to handle it I used the tip of a pencil to move it around. Now with the plunger in 7 pieces, the hidden parts were in really bad shape, not mechanically, just stuck together with old congealed engine oil. Very carefully I washed them & started to rebuild them. The parts now all worked perfectly ! So I was really happy with this, take note that on the second smaller barrel, there is also an oil way that needs to be cleaned out, I done this with a sewing needle.

Including stripping the parts completely, cleaning them, rebuilding & priming all 16 lifters, it took roughly an hour. The parts were assembled completely dry, then submersed completely in a jug of engine oil with the hole in the side of the lifter facing up. You then operate the plunger continuously until the air bubbles stop coming out. If you listen carefully, the sound of the plunger operating changes pitch when its fully bled & the plunger takes slightly longer to return to normal.

 I then put the lifters straight into the cylinder head. I would like to say that all of the lifters were marked to make sure that they went back into the correct location. Here is the video on how I done the process, it might make more sense to actually see it rather than read about it.

[jason82]

I have finally finished refurbishing my cylinder head. Its surprising how one little chunk of metal can have so much time invested into it ! Before I started to install the cams, I put some pieces of flat wood underneath the bottom of the studs for the intake & exhaust manifolds to prevent the valves from hitting the table & bending as I fit the cams.

 I then got my camshaft bearing caps lined up in order to put on, all in the correct orientation as they came off originally, only put through the parts washer & the bearing part coated in assembly lube. I then coated all of the surfaces of the cams in assembly lube, dropped them into their correct locations, put the camshaft bearing caps on & tightened them down initially in the correct sequence, but only hand tight, once this was done, I finally torqued the caps down, I think its around 10 ftlbs from memory, not very tight at all.

 Just before the final torque was added to the bearing caps closest to the cam pulleys, I removed the pulleys so that I could replace the cam seals, putting a smear of assembly lube around the middle of the seal, and pushing them home by hand, I then put rtv sealant between these caps & the cylinder head, then the final torque was done. The bearing cap for the cas sensor also requires a bead of rtv sealant between it & the cylinder head (new cas o ring sensor fitted prior to this).

 Before you re fit the cam pulleys, remember to fit the front thermostat housing & then fit the camshaft timing plate. I then fitted my nice shiny adjustable timing gears. Make sure that you put the pin in the end of the crankshaft into the correct location on the pulleys, i.e. inlet manifold has the pin going to the 'I' location on the cam & the same with the exhaust cam. If you don't, your timing will be well off.

  Finally with cas sensor, it only fits one way as the pins are slightly off set. If you are a bit like me & just attacked the engine without marking the position of the cas sensor against the bearing cap, chances are you will need to get your timing done, as your ignition timing will more than likely be out of line. Its one of those learning curve things, which now means that I need to buy a timing light .

  On a side note, I purchased my head gasket set from David Manners group. The gasket set was around £50 from memory, and appears to be of good quality, however, the cas o ring rubber seal & the front thermostat to head rubber seal were ever so slightly too big, resulting in me having to order genuine replacements from Mazda as I don't want any repeats. Pattern parts really have been a thorn in my side on this build, its caught me out a few times, so now I only buy off MX5 parts, Mazda or MX5 heaven. This way I know that everything fits first time, as I have used these guys with my other 5's with no problem. I then gapped my spark plugs, 1mm gap according to the Haynes manual & installed them into the head, hand tight.

  With the head finally finished, I then wrapped it up in newspaper & put it in a huge plastic tub with a lid. I think that it will be a while before it meets its mate (the cylinder block) as I am waiting back in the que at Race developments to get the crank ground & the head of the block skimmed. The block skimming was not even on my mind until I decided to drop a straight edge across the surface in different directions to check for a true surface. Unfortunatley for me, diagonally between cylinders 2 & 3 I can fit a 5 thou feeler gauge between my spirit level & the block. Thinking about it, my cylinder head had a fair amount shaved off it to get it true again, so I should have checked.

 The block also requires a hone, which I will do myself as I already have the tool. The block is worth doing as the thrust measurements were well within tolerance. If it were marginal I would have scrapped the block. The crankshaft requires a grind, as scratches are visible. The flywheel will also get a resurface, as its got some hot spots on it, I did not even know that this was an option until speaking with a friend, so hopefully it will turn out ok, saving me a few hundred quid.

  Given how big the MX5 community is, I am really surprised that there is not a company in the uk that offers crate MX5 engines, or exchange engines. These cars have a huge following & I truly believe that there is a gap in the market. To be honest, I chose the mk1 MX5 as a donor as I loved its simplicity, my car is now 22 years old, so I knew that it would need work, but there is hardly any of the original car left ! The only thing that I have not had to do work on is the steering column.

  My quick build has drastically changed from a quick cheap build, into pretty much a full blown restoration, only without the shell. I have learned so much on this journey & I have gained a real sense of achievement. I think that my biggest hurdle has been my ignorance as to how big a challenge kit car building can be. I have given up chasing the budget of 6k all done, I passed that milestone a while ago !

[jason82]

I finally got around to honing my cylinder block today. Its been a job that I have been putting off for ages now as I have been worried about getting it wrong & damaging the block. So with a practise run on an old vw beetle barrel I got stuck in. The first thing that I found out on my trial run was that a mains powered drill was quite hard to keep at a slow speed, & as a result just left horizontal lines on the barrel. So I switched over to an 18v cordless drill & immediately noticed the difference. I kept the speed around a turn a second, not much, but it left a nice cross hatch pattern.

 After watching loads of youtube videos first, I got together my 3 legged grinding stone hone, a bucket of warm soapy water, a jug of engine oil & loads of old rags & a roll of white tissue paper. I put a some oil on the three grinding stones, closed the legs up with my hand, & pushed it slowly into the cylinder with it rotating slowly. I moved it up & down slowly for around 30 seconds then gave the bore a quick wipe out to check the hatching. Every now & then I would rinse the honing tool off with the soapy water, cover the stones in oil again, and continued until I had the desired cross hatching pattern in all four cylinder bores. I then wiped them all out with a rag to get rid of most of the rubbish, before switching to white toilet roll, this way I could make sure that each bore was spotlessly clean.

  Once I was happy with how clean the bores were, I then poured roughly 1/4 of a pint of oil into a jug, soaked a piece of toilet paper with the oil & thoroughly covered the cylinder walls with the oil to protect the cylinder from the elements. The block will be going off to the machine shop on Monday for a bit of a skim, as posted previously, I could fit a five thou feeler gauge diagonally between cylinders 2 & 3.

  Whilst the block was sat on the stand all ready, I thought that I would measure the piston ring gaps, just to make sure that everything was good. This was another bit of a worry, I know that the cylinders were previously checked that they were good to be rebuilt, but still I wanted to double check. With one of the pistons in hand (fully cleaned, with no rings on), I pulled the top rings out of the box, with my rings, I have a 'tp' on each ring, which must face up, I carefully pushed the top ring into each cylinder, I then used the crown of the piston (the top of the piston) & pushed it into the block from the top down, to get the ring in each cylinder square, ready to be measured with a feeler gauge.

The Haynes manual gives the following gaps for the piston rings (MK1, 1.8)

Top ring: 0.15 to 0.30mm                   my gaps was 0.279mm on all 4

service limit : 1mm

Middle ring : 0.15mm to 0.30mm         my gaps were 0.229mm on all 4 

Service limit : 1mm

Oil control ring (bottom ring) : 0.20mm to 0.70mm

Service limit : 1mm

 

So that's made me a very happy chappy, while the block is away, I will get the rings mounted in their correct orientation on the pistons (which are numbered with the corresponding cylinder bores i.e. cyl 1 & cyl 2 etc.) all ready for them to be fitted on its return.

 The engine shop will also be grinding my crankshaft & flywheel, so when I have the new measurements I will get the new bearings ordered. My oil pump will finally be here on monday, so hopefully I can finally get the engine back together.

Oh, I forgot to mention, before you hone the cylinder block, make sure that you remove the oil squirters from the bottom of the engine block as they will be in the way. I also had my main bearing caps, bearings & crank removed to enable me to do the job.

 I had sent an email off to the IVA technical line to confirm whether the projector headlamps are iva acceptable or not. A day later I had the response that they are perfectly acceptable, as long as you have dlr lights fitted which are 'e marked'. There are loads of dlr's listed all over the place, but not very many mention if they are e marked or not. Then finally I came across the Phillips daylight 9 dlrs. I paid £61.99 for them off ebay, and they come with all of the wiring, a control module & mounting

brackets. I will be mounting them off the bottom of the headlight mounts which I have made. 

[jason82]

Its been a really busy week. I have had to find a new machining shop to do my skimming and grinding due to my main man having a lot of work on, so I found a company called Teyron in Lydney, Gloucestershire that came to the rescue. To skim my cylinder block cost £40 with vat & they managed to perform a light skim on my flywheel for a massive £5 ! They had my bits for 3 days and had the block done, but I have to wait a bit longer for the flywheel, because they are squeezing me in around jobs. The flywheel was quite blue & marked up from all of the abuse that it received. I could not find a new standard MX5 flywheel anywhere, lightened ones are around £250 - £300, but don't come with the centre pilot bearing. So this has saved me a lot of money, I already have a standard pilot bearing for the flywheel, as it came with the 4 piece Exedy clutch kit from MX5 heaven. I will post pics etc when I get it back.

 One purchase that I made was on a small torque wrench. My usual 1/2 inch torque wrench started at around 25nm, so it was useless for most of the engine torque jobs. I needed a torque wrench that would go as low as 10 nm for the camshaft bearings & oil feed tube etc etc, so I could only find a Draper 64534 black edition 3/8 drive with a range from 10nm - 80nm. I paid £28.49 for it from Amazon.

Being completely honest, I have never used torque wrenches apart from on cylinder head bolts, but given the amount of money that I have sunken into the engine alone, I did not want to take any chances. I really surprised myself as to how loose 10nm actually feels !

Fuel rail install

Despite labelling everything thoroughly, and putting fixings into Chinese takeaway tubs, I managed to loose a fuel rail spacer & I had forgotten how it went together in the beginning. The fuel rail requires 3 spacers which go between the head & the rail & I had 2. Autolink came to the rescue with a genuine Mazda item, part number : B675-13-158 which cost me £4 plus delivery, an expensive bit of plastic, but I needed it & I could not 'just make do' this time.

I started off by pushing my little injector rubber seals into my cylinder head (they came in my injector rebuild pack), I rubbed a bit of clean engine oil around the inside of the seal first, then slid them into the cylinder head, with the terminals horizontal & facing down. Then the 3 injector spacer seals simply rest into the head where the fuel rail bolts to, I then smeared a thin coat of engine oil around the top seal of the injectors before popping the fuel rail on. This simply rests on top of the injectors, then gets bolted down. Incase you have misplaced your injector rail bolts, they are M8 x 35mm bolts, which get torqued down to a low 22nm.

I will be replacing the hose between the return line & the regulator as this hose is the original & may perish due to its age. As previously mentioned, the feed pipe from the tank goes onto the front connector & return hose goes on the rear.

One further check that I have recently discovered is a resistance check on the injectors. There are two terminals on the injector & according to the Haynes manual, a good injector will have a resistance between 12 - 16 ohms. My injectors were 14.1 ohms, so I am happy.

Cylinder block

With the cylinder head now back from machining & back on the stand, I remembered that I needed to buy new head locating dowels, as I had to remove them to get the block skimmed. To remove the old dowels all you need to do is clamp them with a mole grips, squeeze them in slightly & wriggle them from side to side. Once again, Autolink came to the rescue, you need 2 dowels, the part number is : B630-10-306 & they cost about £2 each if I remember correctly.

In this picture the dowel is just resting in the block. To fit them, get them as straight as possible in the block & tap them gently into the block until they bottom out. Both dowels are fitted down the intake side of the engine. The block requires another good clean after it got skimmed, then I can get stuck into rebuilding the bottom end. It should be pretty quick from here now really as I have all of my parts.

Oil pump

To cut a long story short, I now have two brand new oil pumps, but as this project will eventually get sold, I have kept the Boundary pump for my other project & have purchased an original oil pump from MX5parts for this engine. Before you order a pump, make sure that you are getting the right one, as the 1.6 & the very early 1.8 engines had a different, more expensive pump. In this case, I have the thankfully cheaper oil pump, part number : B6S8-14-100J. This is a standard oil  pump which cost £157.33 including vat & delivery (I had a 10% discount for subscribing to their news letter), & the oil pump comes in a kit which you need to assemble somewhat.

 Along with the pump, you also get the fuel pick up pipe to pump gasket, part number : B6BF-14-248, a rubber o ring for the top corner of the pump where it joins to the galley in the block & a machined metal plug part number : 9930-71-000. My Boundary pump came fully assembled, but this kit came in a box with absolutely no instructions, so I had to make a few calls.

 After a brief call to MX5parts, they confirmed that the metal plug is an interference fit. I knew where it went, but did not know if it required some kind of sealant or locking agent to stop oil flowing up through it. It goes into this port in the front of the oil pump.....

 

As you can see, the little plug has a slight taper to it. You simply tap it in to get it to seal. According to the supplier, this pump fits various other engines & this port was for a dipstick in another car.

 

Make sure that the oil pick up basket is cleaned thoroughly, & make sure that it is free of old gasket material. I used a Stanley knife blade & dragged it across the mounting face to remove the old gasket, then used a bit of 320 grit sanding paper to smooth the mating services out. Sealant is not required between the gasket & relating services. The bolts on the pick up pipe & the nut on the arm of the pump get torqued down to 10nm.

If you can remember, in the old pump there was threaded pins sticking out of the housing, where the crankshaft timing cover bolted up to using M6 bolts, but in the new oil pumps, they come pre tapped to M6 thread.0

Incase you brake one of the sleeves or you do not have threads cut, the part is called split roll pins. It took me ages to find out what they are called, here is an ebay listing below, they come pre threaded. If you re fit your old oil pump for any reason, you may need these..... (if you have purchased a new water pump, they also come with an m6 thread cut into them, I checked after seeing the pump).

The new oil pump gears rattle around inside the oil pump when you shake it. Priming the pump has always been one of my concerns, my engine is getting really expensive & I don't want a dry oil pump to wreck it. I can not find any official

notes on priming the pump, or even if the pump actually requires priming. I watched quite a few videos on priming oil pumps, using various techniques from pouring engine oil into the pump, using Vaseline to pack the gears, or even fit the pump dry & turn the engine over on the starter with the ht leads removed or fuel pump relay unplugged to stop the engine firing.

 I am not a mechanic, but I know that a dry pump will do nothing but pump air around the engine on the first dozen rotations or so, before oil comes through it. Yes I have loads of assembly lube everywhere, but still, a dry engine turning over cant be good. I could not find any torque specs for the rear of the oil pump cover plate, so taking the back off & priming it was out of the question, or so I thought.

 I decided to get my new baby torque wrench out & my T30 torx bit, & came up with the idea that I would set my torque wrench on 10nm & my intention was to keep tightening up the bolts on the back plate until the torque wrench stopped clicking, then the last time it clicked would be my torque setting. I did not have to wait long & my torque wrench clicked on 10nm of pressure, which was surprising as my original oil pump had Phillips screw bolts, and were really tight. But maybe this was down to the heat generated from when it failed.

  With the back of the oil pump off, I removed the cogs & coated them with loads of Vaseline. Once they were individually covered, I put them back into the housing (they have a dot on each cog, which indicates the side which should face up) & then completely pack the housing in Vaseline & then pushing as much as possible down the port of the oil pump where the oil pick up pipe bolts up to, until the housing would not take any more. I then removed the split pin retaining the pressure relief valve spring, pulled it out & rubbed assembly lube down the bore. Then finally I used the split pin on the inside of the prv to push the plunger up so that I could finish lubricating the valve housing. After working the valve with a long nose pliers to get the assembly lube all of the way throughout the bore, I put the spring & retainer back in, followed by the split pin.

 Finally I wiped the excess Vaseline off the mating surface where the oil pump back cover meets the housing, then screwed the plate back down, to a final torque of 10nm. Before finishing, I wiped a smear of assembly lube around the crank nose seal.

 

As is always the way, a few hours after finishing priming my oil pump, I find the diagram below on another forum, showing the various lubrication points & associated torque settings. It says to use engine oil, but I am happy with the Vaseline method, quite a few builders have used this method, and apparently the Vaseline is better as it creates a vacuum as its pulled through the pump giving quicker priming, and it dissolves into the oil without any issues. Personally, I think that the oil will run back out of the pump while the engine is being built, where the Vaseline will not. The diagram gives an oil pump back plate bolt torque spec of 5.9nm - 8.8nm. My torque wrench begins at 10nm, I torqued it to 10nm, so that will have to do. I am not going to purchase yet another torque wrench for 1-2nm of torque.

Finally, I have built up my new standard suspension kit from MX5 heaven. It came with everything but the top suspension mounts. I had a brief heart in the mouth moment as I knew that most stuff on this car has been junk, I thought that these would be the same. They are stupidly expensive at almost £60 each, with 4 required. Lady luck gave me a wink, and my mounts were like brand new ! so that was a nice surprise, the only issue was getting them off the vmaax coilovers. My spring clamps would not fit between the coils & so I decided to use the spring clamps in a slightly un orthodox way. The top claw of the spring clamp I put on the top coil & the bottom claw I put a piece of bike tube over, then clamped down onto the bottom of the spring mount. This worked an absolute treat ! the clamps did not slip once, & within 45 minutes I was completely done.

 Here is a picture of how I done it. The picture was taken after I removed the springs, as I forgot to take pictures, so you will need to imagine the bike tube on the bottom claw & the top mounts being on, but you get the idea !

I have made a video on how I built up & primed the oil pump, as soon as it has uploaded I will post it on this thread. It kind of makes it easier to understand & makes the job a lot less overwhelming.

[jason82]

As previously mentioned, here is the video on how to build up & prime a genuine Mazda MX5 oil pump straight out of the box. Its easier to explain how to do things through seeing rather than reading.

[jason82]

I have had my flywheel back from the machine shop & was quite shocked to hear that it needed 1mm shaving off it to make the surface true again. Now 1mm is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but after building my very first engine & dealing with thousandths of an inch, 1mm is a lot. When I first removed the flywheel & clutch, I found that both of the surfaces appeared to be blue in colour, with the metal work in the clutch plate being almost purple. This was caused by excess heat from the car being abused.

Bob the oriental is protecting my flywheel from the kids .

In the picture above is the old pilot bearing. It would not rotate at all, so required replacing. This was not a problem as one came in my Exedy clutch kit. To remove the pilot bearing, I got a piece of steel tube with an o.d of 35mm, which rested perfectly on the bearing housing & slipped nicely inside the flywheel. You do not need to hit the tube hard to press the bearing out.

With the old bearing removed, I gave the flywheel edge a quick scrub with some scotchbrite.

I then used the tube to tap the new bearing into place. With the flywheel in the orientation shown, the pilot bearing gets tapped in flush with this surface. Another way to replace the bearing would be to simply hit the old bearing with a socket & hammer, then use the old bearing to put on top of the new bearing to tap it home. Do not hit the new bearing directly with a hammer or something with a smaller o.d. than the pilot bearing o.d otherwise you could damage it.

Onto the rear crank seal, I took the old seal off the engine completely. Then I used a hammer & drift to hit the old seal from the inside edge out. Just make sure that the housing is secure, otherwise you could snap it & I don't think that they are available new. I then cleaned up the edge of the housing where the seal meets it with some 320 grit sandpaper, removed all of the old RTV sealant & degreased it in the parts washer.

 To fit the new seal, I pushed it squarely into its housing, covered it with a bit of rag, then used a rubber mallet to tap the seal home using the 12,6, 3 & 9 o clock sequence. It goes in fairly easy, I then got some assembly lube & rubbed it around the inside edge of the seal where the seal will meet the crank.

NOTE : with the seal & housing in this orientation, the seal should sit level with the face of the housing.

Once that's done, I turned the seal over & ran a bead of rtv sealant across the mating surfaces. I must be honest, I had put a bit too much on in this picture & used my finger to spread the sealant out & disposing of the excess. The two longer seal bolts go on the outside edges & the two smaller ones go in the middle, they then got torqued down to 11nm or 8 ft lbs.

As my engine is on the stand, I had to use my hoist to lift the engine off the engine stand as the mounts get in the way and you cant torque the seal down. Once I was happy, I turned the crank over a few times to make sure that the seal was sat properly & not folded back on itself. I also put assembly lube onto the end of the crank itself to help get the seal on.

  Fingers crossed, by sunday I should have one fully rebuilt engine, ready to be bolted up to the gearbox. It should be fairly quick build now as I am only bolting brand new or refurbished parts onto the kit. One major delay that I do have is that my rear diff seals are still on back order from MX5parts. They were ordered just before Christmas & after contacting them yesterday, I was told that they will be with me in the next 6 to 8 weeks. I am not too happy, but they have been amazing to deal with so far, so I will use that as a deadline to finish my kit.

 Further progress has come in the way of me painting both my rocker cover & intake manifold with VHT black wrinkle plus paint. Its come out looking absolutely amazing, which is an experience which I am not usually used to when I attempt to paint something. Basically I de greased both parts, masking taped all of the sensors and ports off, keyed the metal work with 320 grit sanding paper & then layed down 3 heavy coats of paint, as described on the tin, the 3 coats must be sprayed 2 minutes apart, with each coat being sprayed in a different orientation wherever possible. The paint does not wrinkle straight away, the tin says roughly 2 hours to wrinkle, then basically its touch dry in 24 hours & ready to put parts back onto it in 48. This stuff is fairly expensive for a tin of spray paint, but I am happy with the results. I bought the paint from Frost restoration, the paint does not appear to be widely available.
I finally ran the sump through the parts washer, a job that I have been dreading due to the size of my parts washer. Once it was clean & dry, I replaced the o ring on the dipstick tube (the tube pulls out of the sump) & then replaced the copper washer on the sump plug.

[jason82]

Well I have had a busy day, it's surprising what you can get done when you book a day off work. The engine is now fully rebuilt & ready to go into the kit. I have now ordered everything that I need to complete my kit & have just finished filling out my iva forms. Hopefully I can get a slot at the end of February or the start of March.
It's nice to finally have a shed back & my wife is over the moon that engine 1 has departed the kitchen lol.
I am pretty sure that my forms are all properly filled in, I think that my total build cost is more than what I have put on my signature line lol.

[jason82]

In case anyone is interested, I torqued my chassis down to 54 foot pounds. I got this figure from www.engineershandbook.com, the bolts are all 12mm with an 8.8 on the head. Here is the chart if anyone would like to see the various values.

(You may need to double click on the image to enlarge it).

[kiwicanfly]

I would look for another torque table if I were you, the bolt threads are not standard metric coarse on that one.

M8 should be 1.25 pitch
M12 should be 1.75 pitch.

The torque value might well be correct for those combinations but I'm always way of "standard" charts that start off with non-standard entries.

[jason82]

Thanks, I will double check. It's a pitty that the torque specs are not in the build manual, it would be a very welcomed addition.

[kiwicanfly]

Problem about putting such detail in the manual is when someone changes a bolt grade.

Even worse is when someone chosen to use stainless, that's even harder to pin down consistently.

I compared a number of charts until I was confident I found a consistent set of figures then used those only.

Note also the change between dry and lubricated figures.

[jason82]

This has been quite a head screw to be honest. It appears that there is lots of torque charts on Google, but none of them match ! I got my initial figures from a site that I have visited a few times over the years, more through familiarity really. The specs that I gave were for dry bolts, it's weird how these people release charts for wet bolts, surely it's the same steel no matter how they are used ? Regarding the thread pitch, all that I could find consistently was that a finer pitch thread has a few ftlbs taken off the torque figure.
Thanks kiwicanfly for the help, it's really appreciated. It's weird how a straight answer from a technical book can provide so many different figures !

[kiwicanfly]

When you tighten a bolt up you are trying to put an element of tension into it and the bolt will actually stretch a small amount, in fact there are bolts that are perminantly stretched when correctly tightened and should not be reused.

However with a normal bolt you stretch it to a point where it will return to its original length when untightened, the stronger the bolt the more force required to do this.

One of the major things that needs to be overcome when tightening the bolt is friction, imagine if the thread was damaged it would take a lot of torque just to overcome the damage yet, if the damage is severe enough, you might not impart any stretch into the bolt.

Even a nice new clean free running bolt has to overcome friction when tightening though, just from the bolt threads in the nut plus there is the friction of the head rotating on the fastening surface.

If the thread is dry the friction plays bigger part, if lubricated friction is reduced. Torque is being used to overcome the friction and stretch the bolt, but all you are really looking for is the stretch so the lower the friction the lower the measured torque.

A more accurate way to fasten the bolts is a combination of torque and angle, the bolt is "snugged" to a low torque then the bolt turned another 'x' degrees thus ensuring the exact stretch is achieved.

Finer pitch bolts need lower torque because it is easier to stretch the bolt with a finer thread, imagine pushing something up a ramp, less effort is required to push up a shallow ramp than a steep ramp.

The reason I queried the table though was because if it states an m8 course thread has a 1mm pitch then how can you trust the rest of the chart. The figure for the m8x1 might well be correct but I bet you don't have any M8x1 bolts on your car. If it is indeed correct for m8x1 and if you use that ttorque  figure for m8x1.25 you will be under-torquing.