Practical Engine Building: Step 2: Stripping & Inspecting
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Step 2: Stripping & Inspecting
31.53
| 00:00 | The next step of our process is to strip our engine bare ready for sending out for machining. |
| 00:06 | Now, this is a relatively straightforward process. |
| 00:08 | There are a few tricks that we'll go through with the K20 as we progress. |
| 00:12 | Realistically though what we do want to be mindful of while we are stripping any engine is inspecting the parts as we take them out and looking for any signs of wear, anything abnormal, particularly we're also looking for any signs of damage that could be a result of potentially a tuning related issue. |
| 00:31 | The reason that it's really important to look for these problems here and now is that particularly if we've got for example a tuning related issue, if we don't notice this and we simply rebuild the engine and reassemble it, put it back into the car, we're likely to end up suffering the same issue if we don't recognise it and make some adjustments to fix whatever's wrong. |
| 00:52 | So, that's going to be important as we go through this. |
| 00:54 | It's also a good idea as well, just as we're stripping the engine, just to generally check on the condition and look at the likes of the colouring inside of the cylinder head and the sump. |
| 01:05 | What we're looking for here, hopefully as we'll see, is a nice light honey glaze colour. |
| 01:10 | This indicates that the engine is in good condition or is at least generally being well looked after with regular oil changes. |
| 01:17 | What we are hoping not to see is something where we've got a lot of black sludge and built up carbon deposits, this would be indicative of an engine that really has had a hard life and has not been well maintained. |
| 01:30 | That's not to say we can't recover from that situation, but it is going to require a lot more cleaning work and generally in that condition, you're more likely to expect to see significant wear. |
| 01:40 | While we're stripping the engine, I will be putting all of our parts as usual into some small sandwich bags and labelling them. |
| 01:48 | This is just going to make it much easier to find parts and bolts and bits and pieces that we're going to need when it does come time to disassemble. |
| 01:56 | Alright, so let's get started, we'll begin by removing the centre cover here and removing our spark plugs. |
| 02:03 | We'll have a quick look at our spark plugs and see what those can tell us so let's get that done now. |
| 02:16 | Ok, we've got all four of our spark plugs out and while we're obviously going to get a much clearer picture of what's going on once we get the cylinder head off the engine, it's always a good idea just to inspect our spark plugs and what we're looking for here is any sign of damage or melting. |
| 02:30 | In this case everything's looking quite good, good colouration on the plugs, I've got no real indication from these plugs that we've got any tune related issues so far or any severe mechanical issues, which would show up on the spark plugs. |
| 02:44 | So, we can carry on here and we're going to remove some of the ancillary components on the rocker cover and then the rocker cover itself. |
| 03:04 | Alright, we've got the rocker cover off now so we can see that the interior condition of the cylinder head's actually looking pretty good, there's no sort of build up of carbon deposits or anything of that nature, so this is really what we want to see when we're stripping an engine apart. |
| 03:19 | So, we're pretty good for the condition of the rest of the engine. |
| 03:22 | Irrespective of the fact that obviously we are replacing the majority of the parts anyway. |
| 03:27 | What I'm going to do now is continue and strip some of the remaining external components off the block. |
| 03:48 | Ok, at this stage we've got the majority of the external components stripped down off the engine and we can now go a little bit further into removing the cylinder head. |
| 03:58 | Now, there's a couple of elements here that we do need to consider. |
| 04:01 | First of all, in order to remove the cam chain or at least the tensioner from the cam chain, we do need to remove this little cover off the side of the engine, that allows to get rid of the cam chain, but realistically in order to actually take the cylinder head off the engine we also will need to remove the front cover and that of course requires removal of the front pulley. |
| 04:22 | Getting that front pulley off can be problematic, particularly if it hasn't been off before. |
| 04:26 | The crank bolts are incredibly tight and while there is a Honda special service tool that locates into the hex on that crank pulley, of course most people rebuilding these aren't going to have access to that. |
| 04:41 | There's a couple of ways around this. |
| 04:43 | First of all, if you do still have the flywheel fitted to the engine, then we can use a tool to lock up the ring gear of the engine, that's going to stop the crankshaft rotating and then we can simply use a 19mm socket and a strong arm in order to undo that crank bolt. |
| 05:00 | Can benefit as well from the application of heat, but that does need to be done with a little bit of care. |
| 05:06 | In our case this is going to be a little bit more tricky because as we can see clearly we don't have a flywheel fitted to the engine, so I can't use that technique. |
| 05:13 | What I'm going to actually do is remove the sump and then we can use something to actually lock up the crank counterweight against the block. |
| 05:22 | Obviously, this needs to be done with care, we want to use something like a plastic or wooden handle so that it's not actually going to do damage to the crankshaft or the structure of the block so a little bit of care needs to be applied there, that'll allow us to then undo that crank bolt. |
| 05:39 | The other element here is that before we actually remove the crank pulley and before we start removing the cam chain and cams, we do want to make sure that the engine is located on top dead centre. |
| 05:51 | We've got our marks on the crank pulley here and we want to align our TDC mark with the little pointer on the front of the crank case cover, that's what we've got our alignment done to now. |
| 06:05 | So, that means that we are on TDC, we can also check with our cams to make sure that we're on TDC on number one firing. |
| 06:13 | So, that's important, making sure that we're not on TDC on number four. |
| 06:18 | So, once we've done that, the other element here before we turn the engine over and I start removing the sump, is I am just going to remove the two sensor plates off the back of the cam. |
| 06:28 | We're going to obviously be installing these onto our new BC stage two cams and I'm also going to just take the opportunity while our cam chain is still tight to also loosen the bolt for our VVT pulley on the intake cam. |
| 06:44 | This can be done at a later stage , but it's just simple to do now so let's go ahead and do that. |
| 06:56 | Now, while I have loosened that bolt I'm just going to basically do a back up finger tight just so there's no chance of that pulley falling off or coming loose at this stage, but it'll make it easy to remove at a later point. |
| 07:09 | We've removed the two bolts that hold those sensor plates on, but just right now with the cam still installed I can't actually get those off. |
| 07:16 | Again we could have done this at a later point, but very easy to do this right now. |
| 07:20 | So, we can check our alignment on our crank pulley again and at this stage I'm going to turn the engine over upside down so we can get access to the sump bolts. |
| 07:33 | While we're doing this of course even when the engine has been thoroughly drained of oil, it's always likely that we're going to end up with a little bit of additional oil that's trapped in the engine leaking out, so always good to have a drain tray or something of that nature around to catch any additional oil or water for that matter. |
| 07:49 | What I'm going to do now is go ahead and remove all of the bolts for this lower cast section of the sump. |
| 08:06 | Alright, now that we've got all of the bolts out we can break the seal with the sealant between the sump and the rest of the engine. |
| 08:13 | Before we attempt to do this, it is really important just to have one last final check and be absolutely confident that we have in fact removed all of the bolts. |
| 08:23 | I know this sounds like an oversimplification, something that we should be taking for granted, but very easy to miss one bolt and if we then try and pry this cast lower sump section free, we're going to end up cracking it and it's going to essentially be a throwaway item so we obviously want to be very mindful of making sure that that's not the case. |
| 08:44 | Done that now, what we will find is that in this particular location here, there is a little hollow that we can get a wide bladed pry bar into and we just want to gently pry that slowly but surely breaking that seal so let's go ahead and get that done. |
| 09:04 | Alright, with the sump now out of our way, we get another opportunity to get some insight into the condition of the engine. |
| 09:11 | And again everything is looking pretty good, we've got that nice honey glazed colour, no nasty carbon deposits, so everything's looking pretty good. |
| 09:19 | We do have the oil pump assembly in our way here, which does limit our access to the crankshaft , but what we can do is remove this rear section of the windage tray and that will give us enough room to get our pry bar or something in there to lock up that crankshaft and prevent it rotating so let's get that removed now. |
| 09:41 | Now, that we've got our windage tray out of the way, we've got access to our crankshaft counterweights and the outside of the block. |
| 09:48 | Now, how you go about this will just depend what you've got access to. |
| 09:52 | I'm actually going to rotate the crankshaft around and I'm going to use the handle of the plastic hammer I've got here just to lock up the conrod body against the outside of the block and the plastic handle of this is nice and soft so it's not going to do any damage to our component. |
| 10:09 | So, let's just rotate the crankshaft around now and we'll get it into the right location. |
| 10:14 | Alright, so we've got access to the connecting rod now, we'll get our handle of our hammer into location and rotate the crankshaft back against the hammer handle. |
| 10:26 | Now, these are very tight so they do require a fair bit of effort and sometimes an extension on your strong arm could also be beneficial, so let's try and get this undone now. |
| 10:38 | Alright, so that actually did come undone without too much effort. |
| 10:44 | What we'll do is we'll just remove our hammer back out of the block here and we can now rotate our engine block back over so it's upright and we'll carry on with the process. |
| 10:57 | OK we've got the block back upright so as I explained, we're now going to rotate that crankshaft back up to top dead centre before we undo and remove that bolt. |
| 11:11 | Now, we have partially tightened that bolt again just by rotating the crankshaft onto TDC, but because we've already loosened it the majority of the way, our rattle gun or impact gun will now remove that bolt nice and easily and fortunately it's actually relatively straightforward to remove the front pulley from the K20, we shouldn't need a puller in order to do that so we'll get the bolt and the pulley removed. |
| 11:36 | As you may have seen there, as I removed the crank pulley, the little key that locates it onto the crankshaft actually fell out. |
| 11:44 | Pretty common and it's something we want to watch for just to make sure that we don't lose this, obviously we are going to need that when it comes to reassembling the engine. |
| 11:53 | Now, that we've got the crank pulley out of the way, this will allow us to remove our front cover so we're going to remove all the bolts from our front cover, we'll also remove this little plate that blocks off or gives access to our cam chain tensioner. |
| 12:06 | So, let's get all of that done now. |
| 12:14 | Just as with our sump, we want to just be really mindful of making sure, double checking that we've got all of those bolts out so we don't end up cracking this front cover when we try and pry it off. |
| 12:24 | It is sealed to the block using a silicon style sealant, so it does take a little bit of effort just like that lower sump that we've already seen. |
| 12:32 | There are several areas around it where we can pry from, so I'm just going to use a pry bar with a wide tip and just gently pry that off, breaking that sealant. |
| 12:47 | Ok, now we've got that front cover removed, this gives us access to our cam chain, our cam chain tensioner and our cam chain guide so we're going to systematically go through and remove all of those components. |
| 13:10 | We've got our cam chain loose, but we can't actually remove it because of the top guide at this stage so we're just going to remove that now, so we can get the cam chain off. |
| 13:23 | Now, that we've got the cam chain removed, we can now remove our cams and this is just going to require us to go through and systematically loosen all of the bolts that hold the cams in. |
| 13:34 | Now, obviously here we want to be a little bit mindful of working these loose systematically, not just taking all of them out in order because otherwise we're going to end up with the cam under tension from the valves that are currently depressed. |
| 13:49 | So, let's go through and do that now. |
| 14:14 | Alright, now that we've got our cam caps all removed, and I should have pointed out as well that the cam caps are numbered and have a direction marking on the top of them, if we just grab one here we'll be able to see that. |
| 14:26 | So, this one says that it is number two and it's got an arrow facing towards the front of the engine so we don't need to worry about location, there's no chance of getting those mixed up. |
| 14:36 | Just before I do remove the cams, we will take the little sensor plates off the back of the cams and I'll also take the opportunity here just to undo the VVT poly again and remove that from the cam. |
| 14:51 | Again this could be done at a later point, but I just find it easier to do while we're actually working on the cams here. |
| 15:01 | Now, that we've got the cams removed, we can remove the sandwich plate that includes all of our rocker gear. |
| 15:07 | In order to do this we've got two 10 mm headed bolts at the back of the cylinder head and we've also got a cap screw here that will need to be undone. |
| 15:16 | Then we're going to have to gently pry the caps out of place. |
| 15:21 | There are plenty of locations to do this, so just another area we're going to be using a wide tipped pry bar so let's get that done. |
| 15:40 | Now, that we've got our rockers out of the way, we can go ahead and remove our lost motion springs and we're going to package these in one of our little sandwich bag as well just to make sure that they don't get misplaced. |
| 15:54 | Now, we can move onto loosening and removing our head bolts and as we mentioned, we are going to be replacing these head bolts with an ARP stud so there's also no need to keep these. |
| 16:06 | What I'm going to be doing here is using a strong arm just to initially crack them and loosen them off and then we'll use our impact gun to remove them the rest of the way and just speed the process up. |
| 16:16 | Once we've got those out of the way, we'll be free to lift the cylinder head off the engine block, so let's go ahead and get that done. |
| 16:44 | Alright, we've got all of the head bolts removed now so it should be a reasonably straightforward task of lifting the head off the engine block. |
| 16:51 | Remember, it is dowelled in two locations so we will need to free it of the dowels and we've also got the head gasket to deal with although that should stay put on the block. |
| 17:00 | What we do want to be mindful of here is making sure that we don't place the cylinder head deck surface down, because this can end up scratching it, so we either want to protect that with some rags or just make sure that we're not actually placing that deck surface directly on our workbench. |
| 17:16 | So, let's get the cylinder head removed now. |
| 17:22 | Alright, we've got the head removed there and just to make a liar out of me, the head gasket has actually stayed on the cylinder head , but really doesn't exactly matter where that goes. |
| 17:32 | So, this is another one of those areas where it's a good idea just to have a bit of a visual inspection and see what we're dealing with here. |
| 17:38 | What we're looking for is essentially any damage, first of all to the cylinder head, anything that would indicate that the head gasket has been leaking. |
| 17:46 | In this case a proper inspection of the head gasket will still be necessary, but everything does look to be in good order. |
| 17:52 | Next, on my list would be inspecting the crowns of the piston. |
| 17:57 | This can give us a little bit of a guide, particularly if there has been a problem with mechanical interference, say valve to piston contact, we'll see clear indications of that contact on the pistons. |
| 18:08 | It'll also give us an indication if there has been any problems with our tune. |
| 18:12 | Specifically what we'd be looking for here is around the outside of the piston crowns, we'll be looking for a sandblasted appearance, which would be indicative that the engine has been encountering knock. |
| 18:24 | So, in this case the pistons look pretty good. |
| 18:26 | There's a little bit of carbon build up, but really nothing that we wouldn't expect with an engine that has a little bit of running and mileage on it. |
| 18:33 | And the last element would just be inspecting the bores here. |
| 18:36 | What we're looking for here is any signs of scoring, deep scratching. |
| 18:41 | For our purposes, because we are going to a 20 thou, half mil oversize on the bore, it would have to be something fairly dramatic to really still be a problem. |
| 18:51 | We should be able to clean up any wear or light scoring with our bore and honing process. |
| 18:56 | So, I'm not too worried about that and at this stage everything looks good. |
| 18:59 | What we're going to do now is flip the engine over so that we can access the underside of it and we'll have a bit of a cleanup of the parts that we've got removed so far and we'll carry on with our disassembly. |
| 19:11 | Ok,now we've got our bench cleaned up a little bit, we've got our engine flipped back over upside down, we can begin with removing the oil pump and I will also mention here that one of the differences between the various K20 blocks is the oil pump assembly. |
| 19:26 | So, this oil pump assembly does look a little bit different to what you'd see on a conventional maybe EP3 DC5 type R based K20. |
| 19:36 | However, the principles still remain exactly the same and the installation and removal process is also the same. |
| 19:42 | So, irrespective of what engine you're actually dealing with, everything's going to still make sense and be useful. |
| 19:48 | We're going to begin here by removing our chain tensioner as well as our chain guide. |
| 19:53 | And of course with our build here, because we are moving to the daily engineering dry sump, none of this will actually be retained or required when we go to reassemble the engine. |
| 20:04 | Don't worry if you're retaining the factory oil pump though, we will talk about this as we go through the assembly process. |
| 20:11 | So, let's get our chain guides removed and our chain now. |
| 20:22 | We've got our chain guides removed, but what we will actually find is that there is still sufficient tension on the chain that makes it impossible to remove at this point. |
| 20:31 | That's ok though, we're going to now remove the bolts that hold the oil pump assembly onto the block. |
| 20:37 | Once we do this we'll be able to basically tip the oil pump assembly enough to release that chain so let's undo those bolts now and get the assembly out of the way. |
| 20:52 | Alright, we've got our oil pump out of the way, this gives us access to this little baffle plate or windage plate here, we're going to remove that using the two 10 mm bolts there and then we can begin removing the connecting rod and piston assemblies from the block so let's go ahead and do that. |
| 21:10 | With the piston and connecting rod assemblies, obviously in this instance we are not reusing any of those parts, so keeping them in order is not particularly important to us, but if you are rebuilding the engine and you're going to retain them, then it's a good idea to mark where they're coming from in terms of cylinder location and it's absolutely imperative that we keep the conrod cap matched to the body of the rods. |
| 21:33 | These have been honed as a matched pair so if we start swapping the caps to different rod bodies, that's going to dramatically impact our bearing clearance and we're very likely to end up with a bearing failure as a result. |
| 21:46 | So, again in our case, not very critical, but just good practice to keep that in mind. |
| 21:51 | What we're going to do, considering we have cylinders two and three here at bottom and centre, we've got good easy access to the rod bolts at the moment, we'll start with those rods. |
| 22:01 | What I'm going to do is just loosen those bolts. |
| 22:04 | The conrod cap will still be located fairly firmly on the body of the rods so rather than remove the bolts all the way, what I'm going to do is back them out a reasonable distance and then by giving a solid tap with a plastic hammer onto the rod bolt or even onto the socket that we've been using to undo them, that will free the cap from the body. |
| 22:25 | So, let's go ahead and get that done for our cylinder two and three now. |
| 22:39 | Alright, so at this stage we've got those bolts all wound out, probably around about 10 mm from the cap and now we'll just grab our plastic mallet and give a little tap onto our extension here and that'll just free the caps. |
| 22:52 | Alright, so our caps are now free, what I tend to do here is just reach down into the block and pull the body of the conrod back into location against the journal and then we can go ahead and remove those caps. |
| 23:08 | Alright, so we've got our first cap removed here for number two and when we're doing this, even if we are replacing all of the parts, still a good idea to just have a visual inspection of the bearing shell. |
| 23:24 | In this case the bearing shell looks really really good, it's in great condition there, we've got no scoring, no obvious significant wear. |
| 23:31 | Likewise we're also going to inspect the conrod, sorry crankshaft journal itself and again what we're looking for is any obvious signs of wear, any obvious signs of bearing pickup or any scoring and a good test to see if we've got significant scoring is just to run a fingernail across that journal and if we can actually feel something with our fingernail, then that's a reasonably significant scratch. |
| 23:55 | Anything else is generally relatively superficial and should be able to polish out when the crankshaft is with our machinist. |
| 24:02 | Alright, let's remove the conrod cap for number three and then we can push the connecting rod and piston assemblies down through the bottom of the block or the top of the block as it happens to be. |
| 24:17 | So, we can actually see on number three connecting rod bearing here, there is some very very light scoring or marking here. |
| 24:26 | Nothing particularly significant, nothing that I'd be too worried about at this stage and the reason I'm not too worried about it is because we can also see that there's no significant scoring or scratching on the journal of the crankshaft itself and that's what we're really more worried about here. |
| 24:43 | So, at this stage what we'll do is get our piston and rod assemblies pushed out through the top of the block, that's going to require us to rotate the crankshaft a little bit just so we can get access down in here. |
| 24:52 | This does tend to be a little bit fiddly, sometimes we may benefit from using an extension carefully to actually push the connecting rod out through the block. |
| 25:11 | Alright, so we've got our first piston assembly removed here so a couple of things that we want to be looking here at, even though again we're not retaining these parts, we're looking for any sign of significant scoring or marking on the skirt of the piston, in this case everything is looking just like it should on a piston that has seen a fair bit of mileage. |
| 25:32 | The other thing to also check is just to make sure that the rings are actually free in those ring grooves, we want to make sure that those aren't actually stuck. |
| 25:39 | This can again be a sign of detonation. |
| 25:43 | So, everything's looking great, which is exactly what we expect to see. |
| 25:46 | Let's go ahead now, we'll remove the remaining three piston and conrod assemblies. |
| 26:16 | Alright, at this stage we've got all of our piston and rod assemblies removed, everything is looking really good, we'd absolutely be happy to reuse the pistons and rods themselves if we were retaining those. |
| 26:27 | The bearings do have some minor scratches as I showed you, however there's really nothing untoward going on there, no reason for concern and most importantly the crankshaft journals all look to be in really good condition. |
| 26:40 | We can now move on and begin removing the crankshaft and in order to do that, that requires this lower sandwich plate on the block to be removed. |
| 26:48 | So, we have our main bearing bolt or main journal bolts here in the centre and then there are also a set of bolts around the outside, sandwiching that onto the block itself. |
| 26:59 | So, we're going to need to undo all of those first. |
| 27:03 | With this block I haven't actually mentioned this when we went through our planning step, but we will be retaining the factory main bolts. |
| 27:11 | Typically we would go to an ARP aftermarket stud. |
| 27:15 | However,, in this case, the bottom end is really nice and rigid on the K20. |
| 27:19 | It's only a naturally aspirated engine as we know, cylinder pressure is not going to be immense and we're also not going to be running it to anything really crazy in terms of high RPM. |
| 27:30 | So, the factory bolts are more than capable of the task. |
| 27:33 | So, not only does this save us a little bit of money in terms of consumables, we don't need to buy an ARP main stud kit, but just as importantly it also means that we don't need to have the block line honed to correct any distortion we'll see in that main bearing tunnel if we go to a stronger ARP fastener. |
| 27:52 | So, now we know what we're doing here, let's get all of those bolts removed. |
| 28:17 | Ok, we've got all of the bolts removed holding that sandwich plate to the block and again it's just important to double check and make sure, particularly the smaller bolts around the perimeter, just to make sure that we have in fact found, located and removed all of those, particularly the two right at the back of the block, very easy to overlook and that will make it impossible clearly to remove that sandwich plate. |
| 28:39 | Now, what we can do is use a wide tip pry bar or screwdriver, flat blade screwdriver and there are a couple of locations on the block, we've got one here closest to me and we've got another location up here at the front of the block on the opposite side so these are designed to get your pry bar in and pry that off, breaking the seal of our silicon. |
| 29:01 | So, let's go ahead and remove that sandwich plate now. |
| 29:07 | Just like as we were removing the connecting rods, we do want to inspect our bearings here as well as our crankshaft journals. |
| 29:14 | Now, if we look at the bearings on the sandwich plate itself, everything's looking reasonably good however there is a little bit of light scoring on our rear main journal. |
| 29:23 | That's not a huge concern, because I can see here on the actual crankshaft journal, there's no sign of any scoring, likewise that's essentially the same through the remainder of our journal so everything there is looking pretty good. |
| 29:37 | We can now lift the crankshaft out and get that onto our bench. |
| 29:42 | With our crankshaft out, this gives us the opportunity to have a look at the upper bearing shells, obviously the block is currently upside down so they look like the lower. |
| 29:55 | These generally should look pretty good if our lower bearing shells look good, because there is less load placed on these during the combustion process than there are on the lower. |
| 30:06 | So, again nothing really sticking out here, everything's looking pretty good. |
| 30:11 | The other thing we can inspect here is our thrust washers. |
| 30:14 | So, we get our rear thrust washer out, so this is the one that will be loaded when we've got our foot on the clutch in a conventional push style clutch. |
| 30:24 | We can see everything's looking reasonably good, there is some light scoring going on here. |
| 30:29 | So, what we want to do is also inspect the thrust face on the crankshaft just to make sure there's no scoring there. |
| 30:37 | This is really easy to overlook and if you have got wear on the bearings that's actually ended up going through the hardening on the crankshaft and damaging that thrust face on the crankshaft, we reassemble the engine without giving any attention to that, it's very likely we're going to end up with a reasonably rapid failure of that thrust bearing. |
| 30:55 | In this case we can see that that thrust face on the crankshaft actually does look just fine and again I can't feel any scoring on that thrust face with my fingernail. |
| 31:04 | Obviously, we also want to pay attention to the other thrust washer, but because this side isn't loaded essentially, we don't have this loaded when the clutch is being disengaged so it's very unlikely that we're going to see any signs of problems with that or the associated thrust face on the crankshaft and that is exactly the situation. |
| 31:23 | Let's finish off our task here, we'll remove those bearing shells and then we can remove those under piston oil squirters and we'll have all of our engine components stripped down. |
| 31:40 | Ok so, that brings us to the end of this step, we've got all of our engine components completely stripped, inspected and we're ready to move on with the next step of our process. |
