Eric's Mtech2 Vert

[Cabriolet]

Well it wouldn’t be a Christmas without pulling my engine out with my dad. Thank you victor reinz, for the lack of quality product, so I get do another head gasket.
Last year my dad and a bunch of my friends helped me rebuild my engine, manual swap, e36m3 ps swap. But after 50 miles of driving the head gasket started to seep oil.

Prepping the head to get pulled, surprised to see how clean my head stayed in the inside.

After my dad pulled 7 heads in the junkyard to get a good one for his project, he has become a machine. With me working the exhaust side and him on the intake, the head was ready to be lifted off in 45 minutes.

Making sure my peons: “work work”

Here is the issue. On the oil return passages the head gasket was under torqued, from the bolts stretching. It lifted the head enough to let the oil seep out. Here you can see that there was no bonding of the gasket to the block, even though it was fully done to spec.



I chose to set the head on the soft grass to dismantle the manifolds, as to not accidentally damage any valves… I really need a better work space for this crap.

/cry

Took the head over to a friend’s house to lapp the bottom to remove any gasket material, also a killer easy way to check the flatness of the head, as it is obvious if the goop sticks to the holes/waves.


FML, never noticed this before. I have some crap aftermarket head… AMC branded, anyone know anything about these heads?

4 hours in and we started reassembling the head.

Block deck was cleaned and all the stud holes cleaned.

Finished product. Ahhh so tasty!


Driveshaft gets pulled tomorrow

[smooth]

if you're just going to daily driver the car the AMC head should be fine. But if you have the money for an 885 might as well replace it while it's easy

[Cabriolet]

i need the car to be running as a DD, but i do push it pretty hard at autox. how much worse is the amc head?

[Cabriolet]

if you're just going to daily driver the car the AMC head should be fine. But if you have the money for an 885 might as well replace it while it's easy

advice taken

Monday, day after christmas must have been my luckiest day ever.
8am 32F outside, I was under the car, pulling the drive shaft. After that was off 25min later we took it over to south bay drive line. Where they removed the stupid balancer and replace the joints with 330Z u-joints. While that was in the shop we hit pick’n pull and picked up a real bmw head for $50.

I then disasembled it and preped it for lapping. The surface was slightly warped so I knew we had a lot of work ahead of us.

Mean while my dad got his new starter in that we had picked up before the junkyard run. Doing a starter on an automatic is way harder than doing it on a manual. –airbox in and we were ready to roll.

My engine is waiting for its new head.

It took almost 2 hours to lapp the head flat. The surface is soooo perfect now.

[catuned]

I would kill for a Mtech Alpine Vert.. Love it

[Cabriolet]

My drive shaft was so shot it was frozen solid. o.O made my drive to Archiefest hell. Well that is now fixed. For a little over $350 south bay drive line replaced the u-joints and cut off that stupid weight off the drive shaft, in under 3 hours.



After the drive shaft went in I returned to cleaning and reassembling the head. We had lapped it smooth 2 days ago and all the compound didn’t come out in the tanking/parts washer, so I used soap and hot water to get the rest out.


All done and ready to put on.

So we put the suds in and then tried to drop the head on and found that the head can’t clear the firewall. After we pulled all the stuns out. Then we dropped the head on and then put the studs into the head. Torqued to 25lbs then 45lbs and then let it rest for 45minutes in the 50F temp. after we came back and did a final torquing to 62lbs. BMW head gasket! So so so worth it. If you are considering refreshing your m20, only use the BMW gasket.



Next morning inspection. You jelly? residue let over from previous leak.

Found a trick to get that stupid pipe in without swearing. Zip-tie.

All done, cranked and started at first try.



After a quick detail and double check she’ll be fully operational tomorrow.

[IronmanE30]

Congratulations, nice job!

Cheers,

Jim

[smooth]

nice job...now come help me with mine :)

[Cabriolet]

nice job...now come help me with mine :)

thx man, my whole body is sore from the job, but if you were closer id totally lend a hand.

[JrCamacho]

Great work! This is definitey on my list of threads to check out when im doing the same thing.

My Autotragic has finally crapped out on me (more like the torque converter) and I'm swapping to 5speed. Seeing what you did with the engine makes me want to overhaul it as well.

Couple questions:

as far as rebuilding the head.. did you replace the valve guides and all that jazz? if you did, how do you know which to order? Did you just measure the valves themselves when it was all disassembled?

what was your total working hours getting this completed? Im doing this mostly by myself, but i have 6years experience as being a automotive technician. And the cars i worked on are wayyy newer (2006+ lexus') usually.

[Cabriolet]

Backed by popular demand I got vlad to paint my car.

Na I kid, I had Oliver paint 8 pieces of my mtech2 kit and IS deck lid for me this week.
No more stupid third brake light and we'll see how the mtech2 spoiler looks on a vert. my guess is that it will be a tad big.
I also picked the Dinan cat back so now I have the ten points. I'll put that badge on the new deck once it is here.
My front speakers, the Pioneer TS-D1320C also came in, but I won't be installing them until my Alpine MRX-F30 Amplifier comes in.
here is the pics of the progress.
Naked car… and you can see my dad's in the back ground that I have been driving this week.

2012-04-13_17-55-14_766 by Eric Berger, on Flickr


you can see what i found when i pulled the plastics off.... they were hiding frame/body damage THX PO I HATE YOU..
(damage in front of the passenger door.)

2012-04-13_17-55-25_509 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

Freshly painted parts

2012-04-13_17-55-34_108 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

2012-04-13_18-09-03_926 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

2012-04-13_18-14-40_510 by Eric Berger, on Flickr


New speakers. Hope they will fit :/

2012-04-13_19-53-30_118 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

2012-04-13_19-53-40_129 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

2012-04-13_19-53-45_799 by Eric Berger, on Flickr

[craiggroves91]

Nice work! You sure did a lot of it!
I'm currently putting a 2.8 m20 into a 318is and it would be nice to have an m20 master (you're probably pretty close to one by now) come tell me what else I need.

I just realized you're in San Jose, what part?

[Cabriolet]

Campbell is where i live and south SJ is where i do teh work

[craiggroves91]

Campbell is where i live and south SJ is where i do teh work

I'm right by Campbell in Willow Glen. Maybe come by sometime and shoot the shit?
I know I'm missing a lot of the little vacuum hoses and other things. Maybe when I'm closer to putting the engine in or I have it in you can come by.

[robrez]

Nice job. If the full m-tech wing is too much, consider modding it to use just the bottom portion. I think that would look sweet. Congrats on the ten points. How do they add up?