Sri Lankan Cricket Fans

So I've taken up a project for the winter and possibly for the spring too, wanted to rebuild a car with my kid at home at never had the opportunity. Now he's 11 and feels the right time to get him involved.

Lately I've been looking at mini coopers and decided to bite the bullet and give it a go, I've been on hunt for a good quality car which has nice interior and body but with a faulty engine/gearbox.

Managed to find a real clean car on ebay which had a misfire and oil leak as the description. I've been reading quite a lot on these cars lately and there are few known issues with these engines so I  know it's within my ability.

Got it transported as the car is not drivable  It's a 13 year old car and I got it for pretty cheap due to the fault, if I can get this fixed I can end up with a decent car for very cheap money.

I'm planning to keep a record of each day of my work done in this car here, as a way of keeping track of the project.

If you have questions please feel free to ask

 

Day 1

So from first glance the engine has a very prominent misfire and oil slushing everywhere , I been told it went to dealer and they tried to repair the leak by replacing seals and stuff but I feel this oil leak could be something to do with the misfire , this could be due to a head gasket failure or a burnt piston which these engines are known to have from time to time, so if there is a hole in a piston or compression leaking from head gasket to then all the compression will leak to the engine and that pressure has to come out from somewhere so I assume this is what happening with the oil leak.

At this point I I'm hoping for a head gasket fix as it would be the easiest and cheapest of them two

Took out spark plus and right most one is covered in oil the others are dry, so I feel I'm on the right track.




At this point I decided the cylinder head has to come out so I started stripping the front of the engine out to give me more access.


Removed the front bumper




got rid of the whole front section but kept the AC condenser because I don't have tools to remove the refrigerant 




Then I removed the exhaust manifold to find out the same cylinder which was wet is very wet on exhaust port too




At this point I lined up timing marks on the flywheel and found out the exhaust cam was few degrees out, you can see the ruler not sitting flat on the right camshaft. definitely something isn't right so I'm on the right track.




I started stripping few more things then found there are metal filings on the Vanos Solenoid, at this point I felt this is not just a head gasket , this is much more serious.



I finished the day by stripping off everything around the cylinder head, making it ready to be taken out the next day. 

Day 2 

Started the day by removing the driver side wheel and removing engine mounts so IC an move the engine up and down when removing the timing chain, had to get wife involved at this point as I needed extra pair of hands.

With bit of struggle managed to undo the bottom crank bolt which was very tight , after removing the chain it was just a matter of removing head bolts and pulling the head out.





Well, bad news as I suspected it's a hole in the right most piston but the hole is very near to the cylinder wall and it 's damaged the wall as well, so not just in needs a new piston it will need a engine block as well.

 






Now with this news the rest of the engine needs to come out , as you can see from images I'm working in a very awkward  place and I'm very strapped for space in our stamped size garden, to pull the engine out I will have to use a engine hoist  which I can borrow from a friend of mine, that means I will need at least 1.5-2 meters towards the front of the engine at the same level where the car is parked at, but due to steps I will have to make some sort of temporary wooden stage which will be my next thing to do while I source parts.  A used engine  block isn't hard to come by but I don't want to rush and get a bad one so I will shop around for a decent quality one.

Since it needing the block replaced I will strip every single piece out and rebuilt the engine from scratch, I will be doing that in my shed but it will be a struggle to take the engine in and out of shed as well as you an see it's also tight with the car and to make things worse it's also on a level, I'm thinking I might have to use some kind of chain hoist attached to shed door and pull the engine in and out, shed won't be able to take the weight of the engine at it's current state so I will have to add some reinforcing.

Shed too is not that big I had to use every single inch possible when building it, it's barely 8x8 but it gives a nice work area to rebuild the engine. Will upload some pictures of the inside of the shed later once the engine is in it.

Cant see the images.

Fun initiative though

Sorry , should be ok now? it was on my cache and I couldn't see they were missing .

I came across a stripped down engine on ebay which seem to be in decent condition, complete engine but it's in pieces so I can see the parts I need are good or not easily, trying to negotiate a deal and if things work out I will go and pick it up tomorrow or day after.

Good stuff JB. This sort if skill is pretty valuable. I'm not a car person but this should be enjoyable. You can knock back a good bottle of home made wine from last year

I'm only a drive-car type of person not build-car guy, but good stuff.

(12-08-2020, 04:24 AM)mugatiya Wrote: [ -> ]Good stuff JB. This sort if skill is pretty valuable. I'm not a car person but this should be enjoyable. You can knock back a good bottle of home made wine from last year

Whoa below the belt attack from pinky what's happening Admin Panel rivalry again I think.

Cheers guys , managed to find second hand parts needed and will be picking them up this weekend, will update the progress as I go along.