Oh boy what a weekend! Let me just get this out of the way, I was ultimately thwarted by
spark plugs. More on that later. After everything else it is just laughable at this point, but fuk it! I made so much progress this weekend, I'm just pumped. Had to work friday night so got up saturday, put the heater on in the garage and let it warm up. It was about 15° outside, and by the time I finished, later that night it would be a balmy 8°. Snowed a good 6" the night before so I shoveled for a solid hour too, good way to get the blood pumpin!
...and started unpacking all of the tappets, fully expecting to be fubar'd immediately. To my surprise, one of the ones that was not going to be in until monday was in the bag! I took a whack at putting all of them in, and to my surprise, every valve but two was in spec, and one was only out of spec by .001". I swapped a few tappets around and corrected it, and then voila! Happyness! I cheered with glee!
I decided to torque w/ torque wrench to be sure....soon thereafter I swore the 2nd loudest I ever have in my garage. 107 inch pounds is the spec, I need to get a torque wrench that actually reads that low:
Gezus fuk. I then spent a few hours finding a thread repair kit.....only to break another bolt....Rosey and MattD helped me out and ran all over town finding 16 new unstretched bolts to put the cams in with. So yea, nervous time with a drill and carefully covered *everything* on the head, I got things back into happy time funland, and then got the timing chain on
Was a learning experience, but not too much different than doing a timing belt on a 4G63. Probably easier actually, no balance shafts to bother with! Finally after hours of dinking around, timing and valve cover securely in place! Thanks to spaz and lomker for the help!
Damn seems like its ready to fire up? Gah still a ways away. I got back from dinner and headed back into the garage, maybe around 9:30pm? Anna called me to come pick her up from her sister's place, I was shocked to see it was 1am. But, I had the intake manifold and all associated sensors bolted and wired, injectors seated and fuel rail bolted down!
The next morning trevor came to give me a hand. We threw down and put on everything needed to turn the thing over w/ a key & starter and not a wrench and hand
IC pipes, fuel lines, intake, ecu, passenger axel, filled all fluids, etc.
I hopped in and primed the motor with spark plugs out and injectors unhooked. She turned over smooth and easy, I was so proud! I hopped out and snapped this pic, the car ready to fire up. All it needed was
spark plugs. Wait, spark plugs!??! OMFG! They were in the head when I gave it to DB and probably set aside during the rebuild. Last time I looked, plugs for the X weren't available anywhere but the dealer, boo. I ended up finding some, but won't be able to get them until tomorrow (monday).
Note the spark plug wrench I even got out in preparation to put them in. DOH!
To make matters worse, the coolant pipe that runs under the exhaust manifold that I had *specifically* left attached to the water pump assembly so as to not have to replace the gasket....mofo was dripping coolant. Gah! Classic. So instead of losing sleep over all of the problems, I just drained the coolant and dried everything out (yippee had to pull the tstat housing back off too
), put some rtv on the gaskets and put it all back together.
I had been purposefully waiting to put some of the suspension and pass motor mount back on in case of other problems, but I figured what the heck, and basically got the car ready to go. Bumper cover on (no crash beam yet, more problems with my angle grinder), all suspension sorted pretty much everything else. All it needs is coolant, spark plugs, and snow tires
One last thing actually, I can't get the fourth bolt into the turbo from the manifold. It is a tight tight spot and I am just going to risk an exhaust leak for now to get the car running.
Ready to rock
Yeti Long Shot: Porpoheus Champion!
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