EA81 Overhaul thread

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Mon Jul 11, 2011 1:32 am

Good effort!

Home stretch now... Don't stress about the dizzy alignment, it's not as daunting as you're making it out to be!

Simply remove the cam cover for cylinder 1, rotate the engine until both rocker arms are movable (could be tight without having adjusted them properly yet - both should be level with eachother) and the timing mark is near TDC.
Now you know you're on the compression stroke, like the timing mark to TDC then install the dizzy as described above.

Hooking up the wires etc is pretty easy, just have a look around to see where they fit and you should be right. Subaru are really good at using different plug shapes so that you can't cross them over...

Cheers

Bennie

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 5:51 pm

Once again, probably going to spend all weekend under the bonnet, but this time I might have a car at the end of it

Going to get oil and coolant first though, don't want to be caught without it. I also need some hoses and clamps, that heater ducting stuff from the exhaust to the air cleaner. Looking forward to it!
Just thought I'd share something else albeit small. Remember my sump plug was completely rounded? should have taken a before pic, but here's the after:

Couldn't be buggered making an all new one, so just chucked it up in the NC mill and ran the hex cutting program with a 6mm end mill, cut it down to 16mm dia not 17. It was so rounded it still didn't clean up completely, but I didn't want to go down to 15. Nice and shiny now too

Hopefully my next update will include an engine running (or dying) video

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 7:49 pm

Get your machine to make up a matching spanner too? Nice job. If you spot old auto trannies, think they shared same sump bungs - of course I forgot when I tossed a tranny a few times - three in total now

Putting silverbullet on the list of (C?)NC machine access

littlewhiteute · Post by **littlewhiteute** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 7:52 pm

Just fill it with water to start and change to coolant when you know you have no leaks.

I have seen coolant wasted so many times.

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 9:10 pm

Thanks for the tip Gary, will do. I meant to ask, is there anything else (in regards to initial startup/ running in) that I explicitly should NOT do? Anything that is an absolute must? anything that might not be immediately obvious I mean. I'm a bit worried about oil getting around to everywhere in time, how can I get it circulating totally before I start it?
Also air-locks in the water system, any chance of that being a real problem? This is all providing it starts, runs and doesn't still make that banging sound

Jonno, I maybe half on that list, dunno if the boss would let me use up the machines time on little stuff

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 10:31 pm

littlewhiteute wrote:Just fill it with water to start and change to coolant when you know you have no leaks.

I have seen coolant wasted so many times.

Did just that today, the wiser option, and scored a hole in the water pump to rad hose, saved the green blood for later. Only got the turbo pipes to go for rust!

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Fri Jul 15, 2011 10:35 pm

I have bled air out by parking up an inclined angle with rad cap at top corner, and oil pump prime trick with oil filter off you will see a hole that is not the centre hole. That cheap clear PVC hose at the hardware? One size fits in there, shove a funnel at the other end higher and dribble some oil in, bleeds back to oil pick up eliminating those stressful air blocks in the pick up. Forgotten if you also need to turn engine over by hand when doing so - think not, fill funnel and watch it prime

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 1:40 am

I'm looking forward to hearing of the result from this coming weekend

All the best!

Cheers

Bennie

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 11:18 am

Get yaself one of these for next time , only a few bucks from SCA, great to bubble in your coolant or water. I wraped some electrical tape around base to fit tight in Subie neck, fill and leav to bubble its way in with engine not yet going. Squeeze the odd hose, shake the car, bounce it, level goes down.
Oh, you scared me wth first glimpse of the sump plug, thought you were tryng to say you'd left something out or asking what is this leftover?:)

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

YouTube · Post by **El_Freddo** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 12:28 pm

steptoe wrote:Get yaself one of these for next time , only a few bucks from SCA, great to bubble in your coolant or water. I wraped some electrical tape around base to fit tight in Subie neck, fill and leav to bubble its way in with engine not yet going. Squeeze the odd hose, shake the car, bounce it, level goes down.
Oh, you scared me wth first glimpse of the sump plug, thought you were tryng to say you'd left something out or asking what is this leftover?:)

I find a coke bottle does the same for me

Costs a couple of bucks and comes with some coke - which goes well with some rum

Cheers

Bennie

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:43 pm

good radiator cleaner too I hear. This funnel just good as it is bright yellow so not easily lost, does not get used for putting stuff like Coke in and good heat resistance unlike the thermoplastic PET bottles that start out life as a threaded test tube blown to shape with hot air in the bottling factory.

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 5:46 pm

Well, here it is.

I swear to god, hand on heart this is the FIRST TIME I tried to start it after the rebuild. I disconnected ignition and turned it over with the starter to get things moving around first. Then reconnected it and shot this video. Funny thing that might make me sound a bit weird; I had two consecutive dreams about this moment and they both went exactly like this

What can I say?

One thing though, there is still a noise coming from the engine, although it is definitely nowhere near the death knocking it was before, just sounds like tappets. We did adjust them again today (they were out by a mile since I did them with the engine on the stand) could one of them have gone out of whack again after the startup?

Thankyou everyone, I couldn't have done this without you. In fact, I wouldn't have done this without the support of this forum. Although I'm not out of the woods yet, I'm a little optimistic after the way this whole thing has panned out.

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 6:48 pm

waiting for it be available on youtube

Well done, it's gonna be the first of many isn't it?

Post by **TOONGA** » Sat Jul 16, 2011 7:24 pm

I get taken to a link saying that the video is unavailable

but great to hear you car is running again

TOONGA

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 12:14 am

Bloody hell, wanted the vid to do the talking but nooo youtube is being silly. It said upload complete, but said do not leave this page and got stuck there for a good 10 minutes. Now it's unavailable because of "upload aborted"

Uploading it again but here's the gist of it

The engine just fired right up, like nothing had ever happened on the second or third rotation, on the first try. I couldn't believe it to tell the truth

No leaks, no smoke (apart from the fresh RTV sealant on the exhaust burning) and it idled like a champ, almost perfect speed with a little choke, no timing problems. It couldn't have gone much better.

I like to think of it as the car had just woken up from her major heart surgery, and the surgery was a success so she went straight back to running beautifully

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtK_LP2mSfc

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 8:32 am

Has anyone improved on "a picture speaks a thousand words" to modern day audio visual?

"that's just tappets" , I tend to agree. I hate the 10 and 12 thou specs for these, esp with my reground cam. Think the above is cold set. I ended up running to operating temp, qucikly riping into things and set both inlet and exhaust to as fine as 4 thou HOT to stop that chaff cutter audio.

Funny thing is the engine in my Brumby now has 460,000km on it and been in there 90,000km and Ive not done a thing to the tappets in all that time. Before fitting it i fitted new rocker gaskets and oil seals front and back and oil pump, oil filler and dremeled and wax and grease removed the entire engines exterior.

And you never found the source of your knocking rattle nose did you?

littlewhiteute · Post by **littlewhiteute** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 8:45 am

There's many reasons for sloppy tappet clearances.

10 and 12 is certainly noisy, may have been ok when the rocker arms were new, but a worn rocker contact face gives a false reading and we need to allow for this.

Somewhere progressively tighter from 10 to give an "acceptable tick", solid valvetrains MUST have lash, too tight is just as bad as too loose.

Post by **TOONGA** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 10:08 am

the FSM says .25mm (10) for inlet and .35mm (14) for exhaust, gregorys say .23mm- .27mm for inlet and .33mm-.37mm for exhaust.

I've come across engines running fine with the inlet at .17mm and exhaust at .30mm

and another with over .50mm on the inlet and nearly 1mm on the exhaust it ran but not real well

TOONGA

Silverbullet · Post by **Silverbullet** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:00 am

Watching the video again, this engine has made tapping exactly like this before (before the "incident"

) And if I remember right, adjusting them to specs made no difference at all. Could be the system is worn and needs custom specs

So where should I start? Yesterday we adjusted them to .010" inlet and .014" exhaust (cold engine) Interesting idea Jonno of running it up to temp and them adjusting them, that sounds good if the something is worn and needs it's own settings. Gary did you mean go progressively down from .010 (inches)? Might try that as well, gives me a good chance to see if the oil pump is working

Sounds like there will be a lot of idling in this engines immediate future, will this do any harm to proper break-in procedure?

Oh an no, I never found what made the horrific banging noise either. Must have been some little gremlins that got turfed out during the tear down

steptoe · Post by **steptoe** » Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:53 am

That is how I got to my 4 thou by gradually reducing op temp gap until reasonably quiet, just enough gap to allow for a hotter op temp. The tappets do get noisier at idle, as soon as a load comes on quieten down a bit or do in mine (suspect it has hydraulic but as it was Oz delivered does not) I have no idea what they are set at in this engine. The 4 thou was an engine I rebuilt fully 40 thou oversize pistons etc and Watson race cam. Revved its tits off for 180,000km before it developed a main bearing knock that turned into a vibration at high revs - mushrooming the block where the bearing shells sat

That was solid lfters too set to 4 thou.

Best not to idle long on new rings, chaff cutter sound may do while you bed rings in or just tighten clearances a bit, 1 thou at a time?