Six Cylinders Motoring Notes

[Six-cylinder]

53 minutes ago, Heidel_Kakao said:

It's probably the Hairnut equivalent of a meh.

As long as it did not mean collect me from the station!

[Six-cylinder]

Looking though the Carlton paperwork today I found the original service book stamped up July 2003, 76,000 miles.

[DSdriver]

I was going to get the angle grinder out because I thought you were doing a Carlton decapotable

[richardmorris]

How did it go? Very cold and snowing in Surrey!

[Six-cylinder]

Today was the beheading of the Carlton, Talbot took his axe and sliced it clean off.

Turns out it was pretty straight forward and nothing was really stuck. In fact some bolts seemed quite loose. There is just a bit of corrosion on the head, but it should be fine again with a skim.

Talbot has stripped the head and the next stage is for me to get it skimmed.

 

[Talbot]

Definitely a bit of an odd one this.  Several items that I expected to fight me all the way were actually incredibly easy and required zero effort to remove.   As stuff was being disconnected, I was expecting to find the head gasket had been chaned within the last 3 years or so.  However, the HG itself was/is completely knackered and falling to bits, so either it's older than I think, or it's been run with seawater in the cooling system for the past few years and rotted everything out, gasket included.

Still, it came off without much issue, leaving a trail of brown mayonnaise everywhere.  Other than the failed HG, everything else looked in fine fettle.  The only slightly concerning point is the head corrosion shown in the last photo above.  The photo makes it look worse than it is, and I think a decent engineering workshop will be able to recover that head back quite well.  There's a fair bit of internal corrosion in the water channels (hence my comment above about it being run on seawater) but the head face isn't bad at all.

What's quite odd is working on an engine that was designed for transverse FWD applicaitons, and that I only know from transverse FWD applictions that has been shoved sideways under the bulkhead.  The distributor is completely and utterly inacessable on this installation, and the additional bits and bobs that have been bolted onto this engine to make it  work in a RWD application are quite amusing.  The best one is the "fake" water pump, which is about 100mm from the real water pump.  It's just a casting with a bearing in the end that the radiator cooling fan can run on, which then necessitates the massively long duct from the radiator to the fan.

You'd think Vaux would have just shoved an electric cooling fan on the rad and be done with it.  That said, the gap between the radiator and the cambelt end of the engine is absolutely comical, so I think they needed something to fill the space!

One thing that is really quite knackered on this engine is the belt covers.  The captive studs in the back cover have almost all ripped out, and the front cover is broken in many places.  I was wondering about asking on Mk2Cav.com to see if anyone has a spare set of covers.  Is there any other Vaux-based forum that might have someone who can help?

[Six-cylinder]

Has anybody got the cylinder head bolt  torques for a 1993 Vauxhall Carlton 2.0i cat?

A bonus would be the torque setting for the cam carrier and torqueing down sequence diagram for the head.

[Talbot]

2 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

torque setting for the cam carrier

The cam carrier is held down by the head bolts, hence the reason the cam carrier came off after the head was removed, so there isn't a separate bolt set or torque setting.

We'll definitely need the torque/angle information for the bolts.  The order of tightening I can work out/have an educated guess at.  It's not generally absolutely critical, just as long as the gasket is tightened from the centre of the block outwards, it's fine.

If anyone has a haynes for a MK2/3 Cavalier, or MK3 Astra the information will be in there too.

[Talbot]

Never mind.  Found it:

[Talbot]

On 4/11/2021 at 9:32 AM, Six-cylinder said:

Carringdale.

I though that sounded familiar.  I've driven past that site on-and-off for the last two decades.  Here's how it looks now, as seen in 2010:

It's been like that (boarded up with an abandoned filling station out the front) for as long as I can remember.  I can vividly remember driving past there in about 2001 and it being essentially the same, and I'm absolutely sure it had been like that for several years beforehand, so that Carlton was purchased there not that long (likely only a few years) before it closed down.

[Six-cylinder]

Back to the Carlton today after the head has been welded and skimmed.

[hairnet]

On 4/11/2021 at 8:44 AM, Six-cylinder said:

pheh?

YEAH PHEH

[Dick Cheeseburger]

57 minutes ago, hairnet said:

YEAH PHEH

Pheh? 

 

[DSdriver]

3 hours ago, Six-cylinder said:

Back to the Carlton today after the head has been welded and skimmed.

What is the bleb next to the waterjacket hole top right  and why is the next hole a different shape to all the others?

[Six-cylinder]

2 hours ago, DSdriver said:

What is the bleb next to the waterjacket hole top right  and why is the next hole a different shape to all the others?

The bleb is where the skim has not quite cleaned it off, but you cant feel it and the misshapen hole is from the welding. Talbot has inspected it and thinks it is just fine and did not need any more machined off. He is grinding the valves in and reassembling the head right now.

[Talbot]

Progress yesterday was good.  Got the head rebuilt, and then turned attention to the block.

Can you guess which cylinder had the OMGHGF on it?

Having cleaned up the block face, the old and new head gaskets were checked that they matched.

New gasket fitted:

Head on:

Cam followers on, with a smear of grease to hold them all:

Cam carrier on:

Bolts all in and then torqued.  3 stages of 90° is fairly hard work. All in now, and the rest to re-assemble.

 

[Andyrew]

A Cracking effort sir. 

Well done. 

 

 

[mitsisigma01]

On 4/12/2021 at 6:31 PM, Talbot said:

Carringdale.

I though that sounded familiar.  I've driven past that site on-and-off for the last two decades.  Here's how it looks now, as seen in 2010:

It's been like that (boarded up with an abandoned filling station out the front) for as long as I can remember.  I can vividly remember driving past there in about 2001 and it being essentially the same, and I'm absolutely sure it had been like that for several years beforehand, so that Carlton was purchased there not that long (likely only a few years) before it closed down.

It was a fishing tackle shop on the front and a body repair shop in the old workshops at the rear for a while 

[Talbot]

The amazing* all new* next adventures of reassembling a woefully under-cylindered Carlton:

With fresh eyes this morning, I looked at the engine bay and though "which buffoon pulled this lot apart?  Oh yes, that would be me.  Best start shoving it back together:

Exhaust mainfold back on. 

 

Next was the timing covers, timing belt and inlet manifold.  The old belt has been re-used as this is a non-interference engine, so it's not so much "Cambelt routlette" as "Cambelt snapped.  Meh, shove another one on."  Also, the cambelt on these is tensioned by rotating the water pump, as the drive is eccentric, which pulls harder against a spring-loaded idler wheel.  Looking at the water pump, I don't think I really wanted to disturb it, so it was much more sensible* to just shove the old belt straight back on along with the auto-spring-tensioner.  The handy little pointer on the spring tensioner was fairly close to the marker where's supposed to be, so I didn't worry about it:

 

Next problem.  The sump is still full of mayonnaise, but I can't get under it far enough to reach the sump plug.  I need the car in the air, but have very little to work with.  So, using some drive-on ramps, a hand-ratchet and the Merc as an anchor, this happened:

So then this happened:

(I was moving the camera about to try to get it to see what I was seeing.  Initially it looks not too bad, but eventually the angle/light is right and it's fairly clear how bad the OMGHGF was)

After a quick dribble through of some fresh oil to sluice a bit more of the ick out of the sump it was in with 4 litres of sacrificial oil, a new oil filter, the "fake" water pump nose, rad, hoses, and anything else needed to get it to run.  (eg fuel!) Actually looks like an engine bay again:

At which point there was both good news and bad news.  The good news:  It started and ran on the first turn of the key.  Bleddy amazing!

The bad news:  It's got a bad misfire, which is causing a fairly nasty knocking sound.  It sounds *exactly* like pre-ignition, just while the engine is idling and being gently revved.  However, it's not regular, and it's not a heavy metallic noise. Initially it sounded like the hydraulic tappets needed to fill with oil.  It's not that.  Then we looked at firing order and any other ignition related issues.  None found.  Next was to see if it's cylinder-specific, and it IS.  Pulled the lead off cylinder 1, and sure enough it runs on 3 cylinders, but the intermittent knock is gone.  It revs up smoothly on 3, no issues.  Re-connect plug lead 1, and sure enough it's still running on about 3.2 cylinders, with various random knocks and bangs coming from it.  While the lead to Cyl 1 was disconnected, it was sparking against grounded bits nearby where it was hanging, so I don't think there's any issue at all with the ignition.  I also had all the plugs back out again, cleaned and gapped them and played mix-n-match with them, so I don't think the plugs are an issue.

Next test was to unplug the injector for cylinder 1.  Sure enough, again, it runs smoothly on 3.  Reconnect it and the knock is back.  We *think* that it's a blocked injector on cyl 1 which is causing a very weak mixture, which only burns every now and then, and when it does it pre-ignites rather than burning in a controlled manner.  I'm not entirely sure how to confirm that diagnosis and would welcome any advice.  This is a very simple/basic injection engine, and as far as I know, whilst it is multipoint injection, the injectors all fire together.  Other than that, it's just an 8V OHC engine with just a crank position sensor to drive the ignition system.  Nothing fancy at all.

The other thing to note is that when it's knocking, if you rev the engine up to 2500rpm, it knocks on the way up and while holding, but when you release the throttle (and hence the injection stops injecting), the knock is gone, only for it to come back again when the engine starts to add fuel again to control it's idle speed.

Initially I was really worried I'd done something horribly mechanically wrong, but it appears not, and would seem to be some issue with the fuelling on Cyl 1.  Possibly.

so... PARTIAL SUCCESS!

 

[Zelandeth]

Pull the injector and swap it to another cylinder...see if the symptom follows it.  Wouldn't surprise me if some gunk has been dislodged while the head work was ongoing.

[Talbot]

7 hours ago, Zelandeth said:

Pull the injector and swap it to another cylinder...see if the symptom follows it.

That was/is going to be my next diagnostic move.  Unfortunately we ran out of weekend to do any more on it. 

[Andyrew]

8 hours ago, Talbot said:

 It sounds *exactly* like pre-ignition, just while the engine is idling and being gently revved.  

*VIVID FLASHBACKS* 

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

(That was exactly why i sold this Carlton to ian the previous owner of the carlton you are working on!) 

[Talbot]

... did you find out what was wrong with it?

[Six-cylinder]

A big thanks to Talbot for all his efforts.

How tight.

It is good to have a ride aboard Mechanic who can double as a bonnet emblem!

 

Yes there was tea drinking.

[Andyrew]

The carlton above would knock/clatter if you built up the revs slowly.  Blip the throttle and it was perfect and idled okay. 

Even tho it was really a good car id just had enough at this point and ian purchased it.  He stripped the top end down and it was a stuck lifter. It was gummed up and keeping the valve open.

He cleaned out the lifters and reassembled them and the top end and it was perfect.  So based on that id pop the rocker off and see if you can compress the lifters. Maybe a few taps may free it up. 

[Andyrew]

10 minutes ago, Talbot said:

... did you find out what was wrong with it?

We had also changed the injectors from the donor car we had and put them into that blue one and the noise had still persisted, 

Id definately start with the lifter myself. 

The blue carlton had about 33k on the clock, and ran lovely. But had spent alot of time sitting in barns etc etc The rattle just devoloped after i had racked up a few thousand miles of daily driving. 

[Talbot]

I'm not sure that's the issue here, as this one will not idle smoothly, nor will it rev up smoothly when you blip the throttle.

I did have all the lifters out, cleaned them out and re-lubricated them, so I very much hope that they're all working OK.  If you take the oil cap off when the engine is running, the cam and followers are quiet and look to be working properly.

Also, I really don't want to be investigating that, as taking the cam carrier off means undoing the head bolts.

[Talbot]

Thinking about it... a compression test would find that immediately wouldnt it?  That might be one of the next tests to do.

[Talbot]

35 minutes ago, Talbot said:

I really don't want to be investigating that, as taking the cam carrier off means undoing the head bolts.

... but what I wasn't aware of is that there are camshaft removal tools that (I assume) push all the valves open at the same time, thereby allowing the camshaft to be removed without affecting the head bolts.  With the camshaft out, the followers and lifters can come out.

Edit:  No.  None of this can be done on this engine, as it has to come out on the distributor end of the engine.  On a FWD car that means across the top of the gearbox, where space can be made.  In this, it would have to go through the bulkhead.  Arse.

I hope not to have to do that, but it does sound better than having to take the cam carrier off.  The lifters were all working correctly beforehand, and the followers all had barely any wear to them at all.  I'm still leaning towards a fuelling issue at the moment, although can't quite rationalise why that's making it knock.

[Andyrew]