moto time

With the tranny now happy, it was time to working on the inline 4. I plan on cleaning and painting everything, replace most seals and gaskets, and do the rod bearings. As I get into it we'll see if anything else pops out.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been stripping the block of various bits and rehabbing and replacing those as I go. Now I'm down to just the main block. After cleaning, wire brushing and prepping, I applied a layer of Eastwood's ceramic motor paint to the main block. Since the car is at the body shop I can tell you that the color is actually Ford Blue, but you didn't hear that from me. And if you ask me when it's stuffed into the car I'll tell you it's an OEM BMW color. I swear officer!

I applied it with a foam brush and I'm happy with how it came out. It flowed very nicely and has a nice finish. Looks better than the silver I used on the 944 motors.

Once the main block was done, I moved on to more tasks. I pulled the rocker cover to take a look.

A closer view shows a little hottie, a Schrick 292 cam to help digest all that gas from the DCOE 45 Webers.

Started pulling the timing chain covers on the front of the motor. They'll be cleaned and repainted, and reattached with new gaskets.

Both covers now off. A friend of mine who works on American Iron remarked" "That's a long timing chain!". There's a 2nd chain on the pulley at the bottom going to the oil pump.

And of course, the timing covers headed over to the Alpine Garage's state of the art, paint booth.

But enough of that artsy cosmetic stuff, we want to see moto guts. Lets rip off the sump pan and get exposed.

Is that a con rod in your cylinder, or are you just happy to see me?

Luckily this is a 18 or older blog, as it's all in the open now.

New rod bearings - or as the British say, Big End Bearings - for the lady lump. Before moving on though, I first measured each bearing's clearance to make sure it was within spec. I used a tool called PlasticGage. A very thin wire made out of plastic. You put a small piece on the crank, add the bearing and torque to spec. This squishes the thin piece of plastic. Remove the con rod shell and bearing and then measure the width of the flattened plastic using the scale on the side of the PlasticGage. This tells you the bearing clearance. All rods were with spec.

You can see the green smushed line on the crank

And my favorite part of the weekend was torquing down the connecting rod bolts. Why you say?  Because I got to use my brand new Snap-on electronic torque wrench. What an awesome tool! Dialup the torque (in ft/lbs, newton/meters, etc) and have your way with that bolt. When you reach the spec, it vibrates in your hands and sounds an tone. It also tells you exactly what the final torque spec was. Too cool, it excited my inner tool geek. And just like when I got my first GPS and it told me exactly, when I wanted, how much further it was to my destination, you can watch the torque being applied in real time. Awesome! What can I say, I'm a cheap date ...

Tool porn