Lightspeed are being very careful and professional and not pointing any fingers.

I'm not going to mess around with regrinding the old crank and risking using the old oil pump. I'm ordering a new crank from the UK together with a new oil pump.

The old crank was worn 5 thou after only 1000 miles which is probably where I was loosing oil pressure.

John

Have you been keeping yourself busy through the winter rebuilding this thing John?

must be time soon when you and the coop haveto come home

I think the project is completed.. SEE HERE...

Engine started on 3rd of August, 2008

Hope to see John here soon

That's 2007, before the engine went bang and the same date this thread was started.

Ooooops.. yes it is 2007.. I must be

Hello,

Sorry for not writing sooner. It's a bit difficult to find the motivation to read the forum or talk about the car when the only state I seem to see it in is jacked up in the garage without an engine!

Lightspeed are slowly rebuilding the engine for me. There is no hurry as winter is here now and will be for some time. The weather doesn't start to improve enough to drive the car until about May.

I have a brand new 2.4 crank and oil pump. The exhaust valves have been replaced which required a new set to be custom machined. I have a new set of inlet valves from FIAT. The head has been cleaned and resurfaced. I'm waiting for a full update from Lightspeed. New pistons have been made by JE. I'm waiting to hear how they changed the design, what the new bore is and what they decided to use as the compression ratio. I've left all these decisions to Lightspeed. They know what they are doing and it'll be easier to map if they know the internals of the engine.

It's a little depressing to keep pouring money into something that seems to spend it's whole life broken. Hopefully this is the year when it all falls into place rather than apart again!

I've been keeping myself busy in the summer downhill biking and now that winter is here snowboarding. Silver Star Bike Park

My right shoulder is badly messed up. It was dislocating easily so I had surgery in 2003. However I crashed snowboarding in 2005 and undid the surgery. It's got progressively worse and last winter I crashed badly again on it. I landed in what can only be described as a one handed hand stand which hyper extended my shoulder. If I don't get it fixed it'll get even worse. There are numerous abmormalities with it. I'm aiming for April or probably May this year. That way I hope to get a good snowboarding season in and get the engine back in the car before I have the surgery and after the weather warms up a bit. Once I have the surgery I won't be able to use my arm for a month and it'll need about 4 months of physio. There will be no biking season this year which is a real shame as I really enjoyed it last year. With that timing I'm hoping that my shoulder will be strong enough to drive and the car will be finished for the summer.

John

Nice to hear from you John..

I hope that you sort out the Coupè problems soon and your shoulder heals quickly

All the best John

You seem to have a lot of spare time on your hands John. Do you ever work?!?

Good luck with everything.

Ouch, sorry to hear about the shoulder John!
Hopefully you and the car will be all fixed up for a late summer !!

Oooh, nice to see another coopster who likes a spot of biking and boarding. Funny - my best mate runs a Biking/Boarding business in the alps - he also has a coop! Weird...
Have a speedy recovery dude. I think even broken your coop is something to aspire to!

Best wishes mate .

Yes and that's exclusing the purchase price of the car.

I spoke to Lightspeed this week to get the latest news. The head is all finished. They didn't have to replace any valve seats just the valves and some of the guides and all of the seals. They've cc'd the finished head and it came to 9.5cc.

They rebored the block from 83mm to 83.5mm and this got rid of the damaged caused by the pistons falling apart. I asked about porosity and strength of the remaining cylinders and they said it was okay. However I remember seeing a discussion on here that questioned going that size. (2475cc)

The new pistons are a similar design with a slightly lower compression ratio of 8.5:1 compared to the previous 8.8:1 and a bigger quash area.

John

sorry not following much lately. But aren't exhaust valves sodium filled or something and are meant to be bought new and not custom machined?

good luck with all the pain and work needed!

V.

The exhaust Valves that Barbz supplies with the 2.4 head are Ferrea ones and I don't think they are sodium filled. I didn't have the specifications of the valves so we sent one off and they made a complete set for me.

I'll try and get hold of the specification off Lightspeed that Ferrea used.

John

They are sodium filled, that's why they are so expensive!

I just don't know how you guys find the time. I really don't....

I thought it was about time I wrote an update!

In summary, the detonation in June last year caused lots of bits of the old pistons to break off and scratch the cylinder walls, damage most of the valves and leave the head with impact marks. The crankshaft had damage caused by the rods walking up and down. The turbo blades were also mangled.

Rebuild comprised of 10 new intake valves from FIAT, 10 new custom made exhaust valves from Ferra, 5 custom rods from Carrillo, new crank from FIAT, rebore to 83.5mm and the head rebuilding.

I finally got the engine back off lightSpeed on 15th May. I was initially shocked to see the calculated compression ratio was now 9.3:1. Fortunately there was a 6 mistaken for a 0 in the calculations and the compression ratio is actually 8.3:1 which is what we wanted. As low as the pistons dictate to reduce chances of detonation with the fuel here. The quality of the engine build is very high. All finished very nicely with all the blueprinted details on two sheets of paper.

I eventually went for 120 and 107 for the timing of the intake and exhaust cams. We'll just have to see how she runs.

I spent an hour unloading the engine out the back of the Jeep Saturday morning and started to assemble the rest of the engine. A busy day, fitted:

Camshaft cover
Cambelt cover
Timing pulley
Front engine support bracket
Intake manifold
RPM sensor
Knock sensors
Oil pressure sensor
Driveshaft support
Oil breather
Rear bracket for wires
Oil dip stick
Thermostat
Water temperature sensor
Flywheel
clutch
Gearbox
Rear engine mount
Starter motor
Driveshaft

Unfortunatly I'm stuck now. I used a couple of the engine mounting bolts to hold the engine onto the engine stand. Lightspeed mounted the engine onto a different stand when it came back from machining and when I picked it up they couldn't find the bolts. I can't fit the engine into the engine bay without these bolts. Very frustrating as Monday is a holiday here and would have been able to make a substantial attempt and connecting everything else back together. Hopefully Lightspeed can fond the bolts on Tuesday but I'll order some from the UK as backup. Looks like another week delay.

Weather the last couple of days has been beautiful 24 degrees and sun. Didn't mind being in the garage through. Having say that we're expecting a high of 3 degrees on Monday and snow!!

I did find what look like cracks on one of the cam caps. It's the one that sits between cylinder 1 and 2 on the intake side. I'm not sure why this one is necessary because all the other caps are between each of the pairs of valves. What can be done about it?

Location in Head

Looking towards cylinder 1

Looking towards cylinder 2

not good, I'd ask GC. I wonder if it was ever in backwards or even the right cap as the journals would have been line bored so not as if you can really just replace it.

If you can get hold of an old cylinder head or at the very least the cam caps then you can try matching one yourself (or machine shop). I got lucky doing this with two broken caps, otherwise you are really looking at a new cylinder head.

Panic Over!!

I removed the cap and the bearing surface was perfect. I hand sanded the area around the cracks using some fine wet and dry paper being careful not to go anywhere near the bearing surface. After 10 mins the marks were completely removed from one side and substantially reduced on the other side.

Looking towards cylinder 1

Looking towards cylinder 2

Woohoo
When will you have it on the road?

Thought you might like to see some pictures of the progress. Spent 3 hours last night lifting the engine into place and refitting the front subframe. I'm itching to get going on it again, I can see the end in sight

Great work as ever!!

good work mate!

You are getting closer and closer, keep it up

Hope to see videos of her on the streets soon.

Lovely work. I'm dead jealous of your garage space....

I notice this thread now says 2.5 canadian coupe. Did the rebuild include a capacity increase/overbore?

Chris