So, a number of years ago I helped a friend buy his 524td. It had originally been a barn find in Fresno. At the time he bought it had 180,000 on the clock, but the odometer stopped four years earlier. It was leaking a lot of oil and fuel. Fast forward to now and the oil leaking out is exceeding the input by him. Time for an engine rebuild!
I will be posting pictures as we work, there are a lot of mystery sensors. So far everyone and their kid sister has told us that we are completely insane!
"Custom" jack stands
"I ask you, who the F*&K loops the engine wiring harness through the intake flanges?!"
At TDC
Took a quick look in the manuals I have and I didn't see how the heater comes out. I want to say mine looks different than yours anyway. Wild guess, I'd expect an expansion plug situation, either the thing unscrews some to release or it has a bolt through the center to expand a rubber plug.
Sorry for the absence. We have been having trouble sourcing some parts. We had the stock pistons and rods on order with BMW but they back ordered them with no ETA... so I'll just have to make them myself.
Heat block finally out, the manually lied. It took some generous swings of a dead blow hammer to remove.
So update, we are back on track after some issues. First we sourced original Mahle pistons out of Ukraine (don't ask), I replaced my wife with a dog, and I'm currently designing new connecting rods. Shouldn't be long now.
In the mean time we have baked and shot peened the block. He choose the color not me, though it might change based on his expression
gadget73 wrote:Please tell me that isn't Chevy Orange.
Looks nice though. Honestly less bland than the black paint job mine sports. Its black or its just a sheen of old diesel oil, not completely sure.
Why are you designing new con rods?
It is Chevy Orange . After inspecting the rods we found the bore parallelism out, the big end out of round, and PE bore oversized. It make sense to get new ones, and we the facilities to make new/better ones.
good deal. What happened to that poor engine to make it so messed up, just lots of miles or was it abused?
mildly scared whats going on inside mine. Odometer says 195k. The car does not look like a nearly 200k mile car but I have nothing else to go by. It doesn't need oil between changes, so I suppose thats a good sign.
All the cracks were found between the intake and exhaust valve seats. Using a sonic thickness gauge we estimate they were up to .050" deep. Not great but would have still run for a long while.
Captain obvious here, COVID sucks! Many delays later we were able to assemble the head. Sourced the new head from ECS, and intake/exhaust valves and rocker arms from Schmiedmann. The camshaft and all other seals/gaskets from BMW. As soon as equipment is available I will hone and deck the block. I also have to get the connecting rods made (because I can)
Does the oil feed tube have pinholes in it so it works as a sprayer or is it just a tube? I honestly didn't check that out on mine when I had the cover off. Just wondering how the cam lobes are meant to lube on these.
the cam "sprayer" tube. has holes every cam lobe. it kinda just puts a stream over the lobe as it spins to give it some lubrication. I know you did not ask me, but hey. -Paul
kingoftarmace2004 wrote: Sep 21, 2020 10:40 AM
the cam "sprayer" tube. has holes every cam lobe. it kinda just puts a stream over the lobe as it spins to give it some lubrication. I know you did not ask me, but hey. -Paul
Answers is answers, I'm not picky who they come from. Thanks. Next time I happen to have the cover off mine I'll make sure the holes are clear.
kingoftarmace2004 wrote: Sep 21, 2020 10:40 AM
the cam "sprayer" tube. has holes every cam lobe. it kinda just puts a stream over the lobe as it spins to give it some lubrication. I know you did not ask me, but hey. -Paul
Answers is answers, I'm not picky who they come from. Thanks. Next time I happen to have the cover off mine I'll make sure the holes are clear.
Interesting side note, during the disassembly we noticed that two of the cam lobes were badly scored. Turns out the holes in the "sprinkler" for those lobes were blocked. If you are going to clean the holes use vacuum, do not push the blockage back into the tube, it will just flow to the next hole and block it. You can check if you have a blockage fairly easily by running the engine with the cover off and observing oil flow.
Thats kind of what I was wondering. I may just pull that tube off and give it a good flush next time things are apart to prevent possible future issues. My cam is in really nice shape and I'd like to keep it that way. I have no idea what the maintenance history is on this thing but everything I've seen so far makes me think it was pretty good.
So as I began designing the connecting rod I found something interesting (not unexpected, just interesting). The amount of edge loading at the 6 o'clock position on the pin end was excessive. Just as a sanity check I took a look at the original rod and sure enough excessive edge loading can be observed. There are a couple of design changes I will have to make, ideally I would change the pistons as well but I already have new OEM ones
also that is the "load side" of the pin. i know round objects should have really no load side but. in theory, just mybe it was engineered or intended to accept all that brute force that the diesel produces. just my two cents -Paul
. After inspecting the rods we found the bore parallelism out, the big end out of round, and PE bore oversized. It make sense to get new ones, and we the facilities to make new/better ones.
