HillmanImp Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 DAF is FUBAR. When we bought the car off Scooters there was a bit of an oil leak coming from what we thought was the crankshaft oil seal. Fine, we drove around in it, the leak was not too bad but a couple of months ago i decided to sort it out. The oil seal is still used on Alfa 159's so is pretty easy to get so i got one. Started working on it myself one evening and decided to tackle the union join myself. Spanner slipped and i bent the pipe on the oil cooler. (library image for illustration purposes only)Fucksticks. Not biggie though so decided to cut the pipe and fir a new bit of pipe on and it held well. All good. Then went on to replace the seal. Strange thing was that it seemed fine. There was not even much oil round there. But changed it anyhow. Put it all back together and the oil keeps pissing out of it here. Realised I had forgotten to put on a washer that had fallen on the floor so replace the washer tighten to approx the correct torque but when I turn it over there is still oil pissing out. So tighten again. Still oil pissing out. So tighten again. Still oil pissing out. So tighten agai.....fuck its gone loose. I obviously think I have over tightened it and threaded it. Not the bolt (its fine) the block. FUCK FUCK FUCK. As the bolt is a hollowed bolt that had oil going through it and also passes through a hole on the oil cooler I cant replace the bolt (cant explain it very well but i know what i mean) so cant tap the hole for a new bolt. Need a helicoil. Then ask the DAF forum what way the oil flows through. Turns out this hole goes into the engine so when drilling it out for helicoil we would have to stop metal going into the engine. Balls. But tonight whilst looking at it again we found this. I have just made it worse by tightening it again and again until it pushed apart and was proper fubar. As soon as we saw this and where all the oil had been dripping from before it made sense. Its always been coming from here, just not to this extent. Game over. Gutted. Really unfortunate. Scooters did not know (he was talking about buying back off me). Cant see a way out of this. If someone has an engine they might be able to put it back on the road but its looking like a spares car now as I dont think engines ate too common....... Sorry if this is not too well written i went straight to the pub after finding this.
M'coli Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 The pub is understandable after that, no-one expects a cracked block. Good luck with tomorrow's hangover.
warren t claim Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 Would a flat twin BMW bike engine fit? A 100bhp DAF sounds like fun!
mk1_4dr Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 Fuckstick. What sort of pressure is the oil at? I know its a bit bodge-tastic, but is there some sort of product that could at least see you until you find a replacment lump or at the very least until the end of the MOT? JBweld or somesuch?
Des Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 JB weld?Has the crack spread far and what's access like? How about drilling and tapping to take a big bolt with its centre bored and threaded to take your union, bolt head thick enough to replace the sticky out boss on the block.
jakebullet Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 Is it aluminium? Build it up bigger with those lumiweld rod things?
HillmanImp Posted July 7, 2011 Author Posted July 7, 2011 Would a flat twin BMW bike engine fit? A 100bhp DAF sounds like fun! That is a fucking brilliant idea. Anyone fancy an Autoshite group timeshare project? Put in some time/parts/supply booze and crack for a share in the death DAF? Fuckstick. What sort of pressure is the oil at? I know its a bit bodge-tastic, but is there some sort of product that could at least see you until you find a replacment lump or at the very least until the end of the MOT? JBweld or somesuch? I thought about fudging it but this is a pretty big crack. The oil is PISSING out now since I properly cracked it rather than how we think it was before. Maybe welding it up drilling out and fitting a helicoil again? I dont know. Des and MK1FD, I reckon the crack is too far in to weld shut. I suppose if i weld the end it might stop it splitting further. The opposite of doing up a zip?
HillmanImp Posted July 7, 2011 Author Posted July 7, 2011 I have a stick welder? Is that a TIG welder? Dont use it much (made a washing line for next door last week and repaired the chassis on my mates van last year). Quite good with it, so maybe with a thin stick i could sort that? Any ideas, does this seem reasonable?
CreepingJesus Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 Ouchy.Looking at that, I reckon you'd be chasing the thing around forever, trying to weld it. Instantly I looked at it I had a solution: bore the entire boss out, taking the cracked metal with it. Make up a sleeve, back to the correct bore and thread size, and weld that in. It's a proper bit of engineering, and as such wouldn't be cheap for a good engineer to do properly. But it would work, and would last, which as it's a fairly rare car, matters. Too pricey? There is a way.Get a college to do it. Lecturers love getting their students to do this kind of stuff. I should know, they did it to me!
HillmanImp Posted July 7, 2011 Author Posted July 7, 2011 Ouchy.Looking at that, I reckon you'd be chasing the thing around forever, trying to weld it. Instantly I looked at it I had a solution: bore the entire boss out, taking the cracked metal with it. Make up a sleeve, back to the correct bore and thread size, and weld that in. It's a proper bit of engineering, and as such wouldn't be cheap for a good engineer to do properly. But it would work, and would last, which as it's a fairly rare car, matters. Too pricey? There is a way.Get a college to do it. Lecturers love getting their students to do this kind of stuff. I should know, they did it to me! Just been on the DAF forum and thought about welding up the end to stop it splitting further and then fudging it? Will see. If a college wants to take it on i will pay them. Saves me doing it. however i once had my hair cut at a college and I am now bald......
CreepingJesus Posted July 7, 2011 Posted July 7, 2011 That's the hairdressers tho'. They're a different breed. I will qualify this by saying I Could Be Wrong (not having the piece in my hand an' all), but it seems to me that the bore itself is goosed, because the bolt inside was overtightened enough to distort it. Weld it 'shut' at the top, and there's a good chance the threads won't take the bolt properly, and oil will pee out once more. Des' oversized bolt suggestion does the same as my suggestion above; eliminates at least some of the distorted metal, and gets the threads on a solid footing again.With time, and patience, this is fixable. Just don't waste your time on an oval bore!
HillmanImp Posted July 8, 2011 Author Posted July 8, 2011 With the t'interweb being such a wonderful place, I have hopefully been offered a new block............for nowt. The chap is away until Sunday but is going to give me a shout when he is back. Woot! If I did read it right and it is free I will be turning up at his place with a nice bottle of single malt.
scooters Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 oh dear - that is bad luck...problem with Dafs is that every bit of repair work is a learing curve as everything is totally different from what you would expect on a normal car. I'm sure that somone in the Dfa club will have a spare block for you Scotty, there are loads of folk always keen to help out and more than any club I have been in they will bend over backwards to help you out on this. Matt and the gang at Essex Dafs have done a wonderful job of becoming almost a hospital for ailing dafs and they will tackle anything. Good luck with it and if you need any more intros to folk who could help good luck. Glad to see you have the offer of a block, there are more of these around than you might think and there have been several 44s scrapped recently. all the best, if I had known about this, you would not have been sold the car R
Mr_Bo11ox Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 What rotten luck. If you are up for the grief of swapping a block, the additional bother of repairing that is like a 5% service charge on top of the main bill. i'd be tempted to repair it rather than get another block as you might be installing bores that are more worn than your existing ones? (i'm assuming the bores are not separable from the crankcase?) PLus I dont think I could bring myslef to chuck away a healthy engine because of something as low-tech as that had gone wrong. I would get the engine out and dismantle it, in the meantime I would get a local engineering company to make a new aluminium boss with the right thread inside, maybe a bit beefier with a thicker wall than the existing one. Then carefully chop off the knackered boss (bosh a bit of blu-tack inside to stop swarf going in the oilway, fish it out afterwards) file the surface to something like flat and get the engineering shop to weld the new boss on. BONZER
scooters Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 What rotten luck. If you are up for the grief of swapping a block, the additional bother of repairing that is like a 5% service charge on top of the main bill. i'd be tempted to repair it rather than get another block as you might be installing bores that are more worn than your existing ones? (i'm assuming the bores are not separable from the crankcase?) PLus I dont think I could bring myslef to chuck away a healthy engine because of something as low-tech as that had gone wrong. I would get the engine out and dismantle it, in the meantime I would get a local engineering company to make a new aluminium boss with the right thread inside, maybe a bit beefier with a thicker wall than the existing one. Then carefully chop off the knackered boss (bosh a bit of blu-tack inside to stop swarf going in the oilway, fish it out afterwards) file the surface to something like flat and get the engineering shop to weld the new boss on. BONZER Mr B you are truly a flippin kit hero
red5 Posted July 8, 2011 Posted July 8, 2011 Could get that welded up and machined for you I suspect, but would need block to the sunny midlands - college Engineering dept ftw.
HillmanImp Posted July 9, 2011 Author Posted July 9, 2011 Ta for the advice Mr B. My first thoughts were to do it that way round but financial limitations initially steered me the other way. My mate is an engineer and knows places that should be able to do that though, so I might enquire about the price. I cant even pretend to understand things about bores being separable from the crankcase but will look it up on t'interweb. Volksy is going to look at it and will give his professional opinion (his PC is still knacked so has not been able to log on here for a while). Glad it looks like it is going to be sorted, myself and Eor who I own it with were full of doom and gloom the other night after we spotted the crack in the block. Ta for the offer Red but I will try somewhere nearer first but I may be in touch depending on the prognosis. I did have next week off work to do that spraying course but it was cancelled due to not enough people signing up so I still have the holiday booked so hopefully should get it sorted pretty quickly. Will update everyone on my progress.
Sam Glover Posted July 9, 2011 Posted July 9, 2011 Why not just clean it up with thinners and put the union back in with a huge blob of chemical metal? Mash plenty into the hole so it hardens around the thread of the union. If it doesn't work, you've lost nothing. But I'll wager it'll hold indefinitely. Aluminium braze would be an easy way to repair it properly: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/5-x-Aluminium-rep ... 27bb41d03b It really does work. But you'd have to strip the engine down to do it. Which ex-Palmer DAF is this? Sam
HillmanImp Posted July 11, 2011 Author Posted July 11, 2011 The DAF website is suggesting the chemical weld too........ I might give that a go. Have asked on there but how would I use it? Cover the thread and then tap a new hole? I suppose the best thing to do would be to weld the outside of the hole to stop it splitting further under stress and then do it though. Might get started on that tomorrow night and order the chemical metal. JB weld was suggested on the DAF site. Any other suggestions? Feeling a bit better about it now. I was all for flogging it for peanuts after a couple of bottles of wine when it happened.
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