The Delphin Rat

[BBY1104]

Nice work so far

[Hallen]

Thanks!

I got the car back from the mechanic today. I had him pull the flywheel and pressure plate back out because of the nasty vibration the car has. It turns out that both were badly out of balance... pretty much what I figured.

Not all the vibration is out of the car and it is still noisy as hell. But the worst of it is gone now. I think most of the rest of the vibration is just due to the nearly solid engine and transmission mounts.

I will be taking the car up to Portland on Monday for its first track day. I am looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, it might be the first and the last track day for the car.. at least with me driving it. My position at work has been "eliminated". After 15 years at the same company it was a bit of a shock especially since my products are still selling fine considering the economic conditions. It is just internal politics causing the problem and has nothing to do with me... except it was my job. I will be working there for the next few months and then I either have to take a demotion and move to Colorado, or hit the streets. The Delphin Rat may have to be sacrificed if that is the case.

[Farbin Kaiber]

Thanks!
....

Srry to hear the bad news. I went thru a similar situation. Been jobless the last few months, it's put all the projects on hold.

[Hallen]

Well, the car hit the track for the first time yesterday.
Wow, what a fun car to drive. I will do a more detailed writeup on the blog later on... probably this weekend as I will be out on business travel for the rest of the week.

Unfortunately, I was unable to run the last session, which is a shame. I didn't get any good video of the dry session so I was hoping to get some on the 4th session. But, the car was losing oil at a prestigious rate.

I noticed after the second session that the oil was down to the bottom mark. I had topped it off before I left home. I used the remained of that quart of oil to get it back up to the top mark. After the third session, I was back down to the bottom mark again. That is almost 2 quarts used up in one 20 minute session.

I didn't seem to be burning oil. If I were burning that much, I would be leaving a huge smoke cloud behind me. The car is definitely running rich though. It will belch out black smoke when I get on the gas.

I didn't burn any oil that I could detect on the way home. The oil level didn't really drop any. So this leads me to guess that the g loads on the track are part of the equation. There was some oil puddling under the car, but it wasn't huge, about 2 inches in diameter after an hour on the asphalt. I am thinking maybe the oil pan gasket is bad and when I am cornering hard, the oil spews out there? Any ideas from anybody on this? I will post this question in the track / autocross section too.

The rich fuel mixture is probably due to old injectors. I might try some seafoam to see if that helps. I have the stock ECU in the car. The PO had a ProFormance eBay chip in it before which I removed. The spark plugs looked OK before the track day when I put in new stock ones. I have not checked the plugs yet and probably won't get to it until this weekend.

[Hallen]

Two new entries on the blog...
Finishing Touches

Track Day 2 (the first for the Rat)

[AlarmedBread]

Very cool, I've enjoyed watching your build and reading your blog. Hope you get the little problems sorted out. I finally got my delphin out on the track for the first time last weekend aswell in what sound like similar conditions. Such a fun car, I can't wait for the next schools. :)

[Hallen]

Cool! Out on the track, you can really start to see what brilliant little cars the God's Chariot really is.

[Hallen]

Latest Post

Well, I haven't posted in a while because I have had most everything on hold because of my job situation. I did make a post about the second track day in the car and I posted some video from the first track day.

The upshot is that in one 20 minute session, I lost around a quart of oil. That is way too much to lose. In high g corners, I could be starving the pump for oil and then things would really get bad. Plus, if it was leaking out of the car, I would be oiling the track badly.

I did take the car down to my mechanic to have him clean the engine up some and to take a look. He is pretty sure that it is blow-by at high revs. This means that the rings are bad. The oil fouling on the plugs is extensive and happens quickly when I am driving hard. He can't see any evidence of a major leak of any kind.

So, I might look at doing a poor man's rebuild. Drop the pan, pull the pistons, check for clearances and any other problems, put new rings on and new rod bearings and call it good.

The sad thing is that the PO claimed to have had the engine rebuilt before. It had less than 30k miles on it. He said there was a problem after the first rebuild that he had done at a shop, so his Dad re-did parts of it. Well, since nothing else was done right on the car, I guess I shouldn't have expected that the engine rebuild was done right. However, there could be something else going on in there that no rebuild will fix. We'll see.

I still want to try and get a few more track days in the car before the end of the season, so I think I am going to try and get it fixed quickly.

[Hallen]

My mechanic looked at the car and decided it was getting a lot of blow by and it was most likely the rings and maybe the valve stem seals. He wanted $3000 to do the job.

I got in contact with the PO and got some further details. It was nice of him to help out.

It seems the engine had been "rebuilt" prior to his buying it. He then found a problem with it. The person who did the rebuild had left a metallic clamp of some sort in the plenum and it had gotten into the #6 cylinder. The PO's dad pulled that piston and replaced it with the rings. The piston and rings are of unknown manufacturer, but most likely are BMW. The piston had been damaged by the object.

At the same time he had the head pulled off and got the valve seals done and the head machined to flatten it out and he had the cam ground.

The #6 spark plug is definitely the least fouled of the bunch, but it is still getting some fouling.

So, whoever did the rebuild before has screwed something up, didn't replace parts like they should, or really didn't know what they were doing.

I am borrowing an engine hoist and engine stand from a friend. I will start work this weekend on pulling the engine out. I will take it apart and see what we have. I am guessing the block needs to be honed and I will probably have to go up a size with the rings.

No. Before you ask or before you say it, no. I am not doing a stroker or a swap. I will replace everything that I need to replace and I will do the job right, but I am not going to spend a ton of money on this. Plus, I have other reasons for not wanting to make it a stroker.

We'll see though. If the block is unrecoverable or is so out of round that I have to go up a size in pistons after it is honed, who knows? Maybe I will have to explore other options.

Depending on how much everything else costs, I might also look at getting the head ported a bit.

Wish me luck:D

[Hallen]

The engine is now out of the car. It took me way longer than it should have and I had a few setbacks and things that I did wrong (like not draining the block of coolant), but overall, things went pretty well.

I took the engine and transmission out as a unit. You have to angle the hoist at a pretty steep angle to get it to work. But, it does come out pretty easily. I had the car up on my ramps to get enough clearance under the car to swing the transmission down. You have to have it up enough to get to the driveshaft and shifter anyway.

It looks like lining up the drive shaft when putting it back in will be a pain. I may actually need a helper for that part. Or, I may have to drop the center support bearing to get some clearance. Anybody have any tips?









Now I will start taking the engine apart. I don't know exactly what is wrong yet, but I suspect I will find it when it is all in pieces.

I hope I will be able to get it all put back together properly.:mrgreen:

[e30polak]

Very nice job you have done there. It's quite impressive that you've done it all on your own, and with such great speed. Hopefully your little issues get solved quickly. O yeah, and best of luck with the employment situation.

[Hallen]

Very nice job you have done there. It's quite impressive that you've done it all on your own, and with such great speed. Hopefully your little issues get solved quickly. O yeah, and best of luck with the employment situation.

Thanks. The engine is still on the hoist tonight, but I needed to clean up the garage and get the car out of the way. I buttoned things up and then noticed the driver's side window was down. Oops. No power. I hooked up the battery and still no power. I had unhooked the main power line in the engine bay, so when I hooked that back up, I got power to the windows again. I didn't want to leave it outside with the window down. There is still a decent stereo in the car and I didn't want some kid getting any ideas.

Some things are difficult to do on your own. But, you just have to take your time and make sure your stuff is all lined up and you have a backup plan if things go wrong.

Funny, in that last picture, you can see my ghetto power steering rack bypass hose. I just modified one of the power steering lines with the right fittings and looped it around from the inlet to the outlet. It seems to work. It saved me from trying to find the right size bolts to plug the thing up permanently. :-D

There is definitely some oil leaking out of the valve cover. But there is also oil in the transmission bell housing. The rear main seal was replaced when I had the new clutch put in, so it shouldn't be leaking. With the out of balance flywheel, it could have ruined the seal though. But, I am hoping that it is just oil from the valve cover leaking down into the bell housing.

[alpinaclone]

I just finished reading through your blog, I enjoy your writing style quite a bit. I think that I also enjoyed it because I have done many of the same jobs recently and have encountered many of the same snags. Best of luck with the engine and the job, I hope that neither holds any large surprises.

[Hallen]

The engine is out and I have stripped most everything off that needs to come off.

When I pulled off the intake manifold, I could really see the mess that was there. I know these engines will suck some oil into the manifold, but I think this is a bit extreme.



When I dropped the oil pan, I found a tiny nut in the bottom. It wasn't there when I did the pan gasket a few months ago. Anybody know where it came from?




It would get worse...

I pulled off the timing belt and other accessories on the front of the engine. When I pulled off the cam shaft sprocket, you could see where some of the oil on the exterior was coming from. Let this be a reminder to all that when you replace your timing belt, you should replace the cam shaft seal too.



It was pretty ugly when I pulled the head off. The tops of all the pistons were caked with baked on oil. The head was in a similar condition.






When I took a look at the cylinder walls, I was disappointed to see some ugly vertical scratches. This is the worst one, but all of the cylinders showed some scratching. Anybody know what could have caused this? Does it look like it is repairable?



You can see where somebody had the cylinders honed at some point. The engine was supposedly rebuilt, but it looks like it may have been done as cheaply as possible. You can sort of see what looks like the original factory hatching, but it is mostly gone.

It is really hard for me to tell since I haven't worked on this type of engine before, but have these cylinders been sleeved?



Thanks for any comments.

[TwistyTunedE30]

IMO those are wristpin gouges ... but im not sure how high up in the block that the piston will travel in a m20 to make a gouge that high