My grey GTE

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

4 litres every 1000 miles

Now that's some full on rust proofing going on there

Tell me about it. Wish I'd known about the other leak as i would have attacked that at the same time.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Car's parked up in my dad's garage for the time been. It started to tap/knock on the motorway. Only does it under load. Not looked at it probably won't get around to looking at it either till after xmas now.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Had a spare 1hr this afternoon. Car's running on 2 maybe 3 cyclinders. Checked it for compression and cyclinders 1 and 2 get cracking compression however 3 and 4 are not so good. They do however appear to hold what little compression they get. Going to remove the head and go from there.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Spent an hour on the car today. The head is ready to be lifted off ran out of light called it quits till tomorrow. Forgot to take the camera with me so didn't get chance to take any pictures. Saying that though I'm pretty sure we've all seen a head been removed by now. Whilst the head is off going to check the pistons. And look at replacing the rings whilst it's half stipped down. I'm also going to use the time to replace the oil pump gasket.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Well got the head off this morning. Headgasket has gone between 3 and 4. Will upload a pic later.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Still not uploaded the picture of the gasket Anyway more has been done. I've removed the piston's and made a start on lapping all the valves in on the head and cleaned the pistons. Ordered headset, rings, bearings and cambelt kit from autovaux. They have all arrived so it's just a case of building the engine back up now

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Still not got around to uploading any pictures Anyway Head's half done. Lapping the valves in and replacing the valve stem seals. Forgot to mention that it looks like only 1 cylinder was burning oil as no. 2 cylinder was very badly coked up with carbon where as the other 3 had no deposits on them. Same with the head and valves no.2 full of carbon deposits. Not got round to doing the stem seals on this that half of the head yet so don't know if they were to blame. One thing I did notice when removing the piston was the bottom ring was not in brilliant condition.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Well spent a good 3 hours on the head. All the valve stem seals have been replaced. Valves have all been lapped in. Started to clean the matting face up. There's residue from the head gasket on there still.

More importantly I've took some pics and uploaded them

Here's the head gasket. it's the wrong way round on the pic as in the hole was between 3 and 4 not 1 and 2



Valve stem seals. Old vs new as can be seen the center hole is quiet a bit larger compared to the new one. Also the rubber part of the seal seamed very brittle in comparison.



It looks like somebody has tried doing some work on the head. The inlet valve throats all seamed to have some attempt at smoothing them.

Not to clear on these pictures



All the inlet valves have cleaned up nicely. With a bit of elbow grease.



Going to finish cleaning the head up tonight and then building the engine back up over the weekend whilst the weather is meant to be a bit warmer.

[laney]

Re: My grey GTE

woo, i have seen a few blow between the bores, i would advise that you have the head faced, just as a precaution.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

No pictures from today's work. Anyway the following has been done.

Cleaned the mating faces on both the head and block. Checked the head where the gasket had blown and it's all fine Fitted new rings on the pistons and fitted them back in the block. Engines back in the car Just need to fit the head and sump. Hopefully will be done tomorrow.

[richie00boy]

Re: My grey GTE

Good luck John. How did you hone the bores? Yourself with one of those things that fits in a drill or did you take it to a machine shop?

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Good luck John. How did you hone the bores? Yourself with one of those things that fits in a drill or did you take it to a machine shop?

Fingers crossed. I've getting abit fed of removing and refittings engines now though. As for the bores I mate has one of those tools. So gave it a quick going over.

On the down side I can't find where I put the big end bolts I bought from F'astra. So at the minute it's built up using the old bolts. All I remember is I put them in a safe place.

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Well started late today. Found the big end bolts So they have been fitted torqued down and the old ones removed. Got the head on and it's been torqued dow. Got fed up of the cam cover been painted in Red hammerite. So I've made a start on cleaning it up. At present it's now in grey primmer. Will be spraying it mistral grey hopfully in the next couple of days. Will get pictures whilst thisi is done.

[Mr-G]

Re: My grey GTE

Making good pregress matey, keep it up

[johnl]

Re: My grey GTE

Making good pregress matey, keep it up

Cheers Hopefully willl be running next weekend. Not going to be able to touch it much this week. Due to work and taking the kitten to the vets bottom jaws to short and his top fangs are digging in to his bottom lip.

Anyway here are pics of the covers. Only in primer at the minute. Just waiting for it to dry so I can get rid of any imperfections.