When looking at this restoration, you have to remember that this is a car which has driven seven times around the world, and is well on its way to an eighth. It's never had an easy life; commuting into London, cheerfully driving to Berlin or the north of Scotland without a thought. I recall one weekend when we thought "let's drive to Strasbourg for a couple of days" and did...
It's on its second engine and gearbox - the original engine threw a belt at 45k (a fortnight before it was booked in to change it!) and it was never the same after; eventually it killed a big end and bent the conrod halfway up Glencoe on Christmas Eve... one of the very few occasions when it has 'failed to proceed'. The replacement was sourced from a crashed coupe of similar mileage in the days when you scoured the small ads rather than via the internet.
So you'd expect a certain amount of wear and tear...
We started with the gearbox. Before the 20th anniversary trip to Turin, a faint click had become obvious from underneath the car, once per rev of the right hand front wheel - obviously something with the differential.
And eventually we get to the culprit:
Actually, two broken teeth on the output drive pinion, for some reason at opposite sides of the gear. This has been cheerfully driven flat out for several thousand miles since it was first evident, and who knows how long before... The original plan had been to replace this differential with a 16vt diff and trade acceleration for improved fuel economy, but it requires changing the final drive spur gear which is right at the back of the cluster. Plan B was to drop in the diff from a replacement NA box, but it makes more sense just to replace the entire box; we'd have to strip the replacement as far as this one anyway and given the absence of any visible wear it's a pretty safe bet just to drop it in as is.
So, on to the engine. We already know the exhaust cam shaft needs replacing, so off with the inlet manifold and the rocker cover:
Over the years, both the sump and cam cover gaskets have seeped, though the head gasket and compression are excellent. Neither have been changed until now.
There are no bearing shells for the camshafts, just lots of machined carriers and a seal at the belt end. There was some very mild scoring on the inlet cam bearing surfaces but for now it's going back in; it can be changed without having to remove the engine. New exhaust cam is required, though.
If we'd thought about this first, we'd have removed the crank *before* we removed the cams, because then we wouldn't have had to put the cams back in to stop the bucket followers and shims falling out. Doh.
There are a lot of bolts holding the sump on; they're pretty tedious to remove. Driving along the same farm tracks as tractors to paragliding launch sites tends to have an impact on the shape of the sump...
Not metal swarf but bits of sealant from somewhere or other. For the miles it's done, that's a really clean engine. Here's a question: where are the only 14mm headed bolts on a coupe?
Crank removed along with main and big end bearing shells. The oil pump and clamping plate have to come off first - six bolts each, some well hidden in the grease (which has preserved the bolts as if new!). There are two thrust bearings at the gearbox end.
None of the big ends show anything other than expected wear; there is light scoring on the two outside mains which will be reground before refitting. One of the big end shells had an obvious high-spot (I forgot to photograph it) caused in the factory; there was a tiny bit of swarf stuck between the shell and casting which will had caused a high-spot of a couple of thou...
This many nuts and bolts go into a 16NA engine:
The oil pump is in excellent condition:
The plan of actionEngine mounts are on their way to me; the existing mounts are submerged in releasing fluid in the hope that they might not need grinding off!
Shopping list going together for replacement parts; we've sourced a camshaft and the inlet doughnuts but we need to add up all the gaskets required. The same source we hope can provide a couple of water pipes. The thermostat is only five thousand miles old. A couple of water pipes may be replaced with silicone as they're just right-angle bends.
I'm looking largely for originality on the engine so don't expect any bling, but a number of parts will be airblasted and powder coated including the radiator support and the oil heat exchanger water pipes and the crankcase breather pipes, and anything else that looks as if would benefit from some rust-proofing.
It will probably be a couple of weeks before the next update.