Abacus
That helpful B4 guy
I had an intermittent coolant loss from the system being pressurized, and the small amount of soot in the reservoir bottle told the tale despite ruling out the other avenues first. So, after putting it off until the pain-in-the-rear factor overrode my procrastination, I decided to jump in. I was going to have it done by one of the guru's, but limited funds and timing interceded instead. I think we all know how that goes.
Since it was a head gasket but the car did have almost 400K on it, I thought: why put the same head back on the car when I have a spare engine in the barn? So I sent the spare AHU head to Franko6 for a refresh and a reprofiled cam, cleaned a spare intake spotlessly, and drilled/tapped the exhaust manifold for a future EGT sensor, and painted it with ceramic high temperature paint. I cleaned everything else and made sure it would not be a problem so I could install new or freshly cleaned parts and start the mileage clock over again, since I want the car to last as long as it can.
I admit I was a bit nervous since the engine had never been apart and it had 393,150K on it, in New England where there is less salt in the ocean than on the roads.
The only issue I ran into was the turbo bolts, which broke despite trying to be easy with them. Even after they broke and we removed the head, they didn't want to come out with 1cm of protrusion above the deck. We got one out with the blue wrench after about an hour, but the other, while moving, did not want to be evicted from its place of residency. We had to remove the turbo to finally get it out, so I decided to take some pictures. Kroil, PB Blaster, and even the old candlewax trick didn't work. The threads stripped off the bolts and were jamming it from coming out. We chased the turbo threads with a tap afterward and they suffered no damage.
The intake vanes look weird to me, like they have been wearing on the housing, but there is no apparent wear on the housing. Do these look normal? You can see where the ends are scalloped slightly. The shaft has maybe 1mm of axial movement and would produce fine boost to 18 psi with no issues. I do note some erosion on the leading edge and religiously change my air filter, so I'm not sure what that's from. Still works fine for now with little to no oil blowby, but I don't lug the car either.
The exhaust side looked untouched and I noticed less movement on this side, not that there was much on the intake.
We could find no apparent breach on the head gasket, but it was pretty messy.
I dry wiped the top of the pistons since a tiny bit of coolant got on them, and some debris from the head removal. I did not clean them otherwise and was surprised to still be able to read the writing on them!
There was no lip at the top of the cylinders like I expected to see, and everything was much cleaner than I thought it would be. I guess my elixir of 1 oz TC-W3 2-cycle oil and 1/2 oz Power Service per gallon diesel is working just fine. HermTDI told me he recommended adding it to every tank and I have done so for many years, but I never knew what effects it was having on my engine. Now I know, and I will keep adding it. The injection pump and turbo are still original as well.
I was also surprised at how clean the old intake was, but 94x did swap a clean one on at a GTG a few years ago. Just goes to how you what having your EGR disabled will do.
I'll update with more pictures when we finish the install today, we had to leave it due to the lateness of the hour and the fact we ran out of beer.
Since it was a head gasket but the car did have almost 400K on it, I thought: why put the same head back on the car when I have a spare engine in the barn? So I sent the spare AHU head to Franko6 for a refresh and a reprofiled cam, cleaned a spare intake spotlessly, and drilled/tapped the exhaust manifold for a future EGT sensor, and painted it with ceramic high temperature paint. I cleaned everything else and made sure it would not be a problem so I could install new or freshly cleaned parts and start the mileage clock over again, since I want the car to last as long as it can.
I admit I was a bit nervous since the engine had never been apart and it had 393,150K on it, in New England where there is less salt in the ocean than on the roads.
The only issue I ran into was the turbo bolts, which broke despite trying to be easy with them. Even after they broke and we removed the head, they didn't want to come out with 1cm of protrusion above the deck. We got one out with the blue wrench after about an hour, but the other, while moving, did not want to be evicted from its place of residency. We had to remove the turbo to finally get it out, so I decided to take some pictures. Kroil, PB Blaster, and even the old candlewax trick didn't work. The threads stripped off the bolts and were jamming it from coming out. We chased the turbo threads with a tap afterward and they suffered no damage.
The intake vanes look weird to me, like they have been wearing on the housing, but there is no apparent wear on the housing. Do these look normal? You can see where the ends are scalloped slightly. The shaft has maybe 1mm of axial movement and would produce fine boost to 18 psi with no issues. I do note some erosion on the leading edge and religiously change my air filter, so I'm not sure what that's from. Still works fine for now with little to no oil blowby, but I don't lug the car either.
The exhaust side looked untouched and I noticed less movement on this side, not that there was much on the intake.
We could find no apparent breach on the head gasket, but it was pretty messy.
I dry wiped the top of the pistons since a tiny bit of coolant got on them, and some debris from the head removal. I did not clean them otherwise and was surprised to still be able to read the writing on them!
There was no lip at the top of the cylinders like I expected to see, and everything was much cleaner than I thought it would be. I guess my elixir of 1 oz TC-W3 2-cycle oil and 1/2 oz Power Service per gallon diesel is working just fine. HermTDI told me he recommended adding it to every tank and I have done so for many years, but I never knew what effects it was having on my engine. Now I know, and I will keep adding it. The injection pump and turbo are still original as well.
I was also surprised at how clean the old intake was, but 94x did swap a clean one on at a GTG a few years ago. Just goes to how you what having your EGR disabled will do.
I'll update with more pictures when we finish the install today, we had to leave it due to the lateness of the hour and the fact we ran out of beer.
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