Practical Engine Building: Step 4: Block Preparation
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Step 4: Block Preparation
14.07
| 00:00 | Now, that we've got all of our parts back from machining we can move onto step four of the process, which is preparing our K20 engine block. |
| 00:06 | And the key aspects that we're going to be focusing on here are deburring any sharp edges on the block. |
| 00:13 | Given the casting process for this alloy block, it's actually a relatively clean casting, we're not going to see the levels of casting flash that are so typical on a cast iron block. |
| 00:23 | That being said it's still good practice to clean up any sharp edges. |
| 00:27 | From here we're also going to be cleaning up all of the threads in our more mission critical fasteners, namely the fasteners holding the main girdle onto the block, as well as of course the cylinder head. |
| 00:39 | In this case these are both the same thread, they're both an 11x1.25 metric pitch. |
| 00:45 | We're also going to be dealing with some aspects with our oil pump and I'll actually deal with this in reverse order, we'll deal with the oil pump aspects first. |
| 00:54 | Now, as we already know, we are converting to dry sump and I am aware that this is a relatively unique situation, probably not too many people building a light to moderately modified K20 will be going down the route of a dry sump system. |
| 01:09 | So, I'm going to cover some of the things that you do need to be aware of with a wet sump system and what you need to be doing. |
| 01:16 | As we've already seen earlier in this worked example, this is the oil pump that came off our K20, remembering that this is the CL7 Euro R block. |
| 01:27 | Now, this is exactly the same oil pump that you'll find on a K24, so what we're going to be doing here is relevant to people building a K24 build as well. |
| 01:38 | This particular pump here is quite large, bulky, cumbersome and heavy. |
| 01:43 | And that's because it incorporates a pair of balance shafts. |
| 01:46 | On top of this, these balance shafts can rob a small , but measurable amount of power. |
| 01:51 | So, for a performance application, if your engine did come with this style of oil pump, it's very common and certainly preferable to switch across to the K20A2 PRB style oil pump, which you'll find on the likes of the DC5 Type R Integra as well as the EP3 Type R Civic. |
| 02:11 | This oil pump, as we can see, much smaller, much lighter, no balance shafts. |
| 02:15 | Other aspect that's important to keep in mind is that the gearing ratio for these two pumps is also different. |
| 02:22 | So, there are going to be a few tricks involved in switching to the Type R style oil pump. |
| 02:28 | First of all what we need to understand is that this isn't going to be a bolt on for our Euro R block and the same will go if you're fitting this pump to a K24. |
| 02:37 | The reason being that we can see across the cradle, we have this raised section of the cradle in between the bolts for our main cradle. |
| 02:46 | On the other hand if we were dealing with a K20A2 block, we'd actually find that this is completely flat across here. |
| 02:53 | So, when I attempt to bolt this into place, what we can see is that the oil pump actually fouls on the cradle. |
| 03:00 | In order to rectify this, what we want to do or will need to do is cut out this section here until we end up being able to bolt it on with no clearance issues. |
| 03:10 | This is relatively straightforward and pretty quick to do if we've got access to a die grinder, so not a lot of difficulty there. |
| 03:19 | Our job's not quite finished though. |
| 03:21 | We'll also see that at the centre of our cradle, we've got this little jet. |
| 03:26 | So, this is an oil jet that supplies oil to the oil pump to lubricate the balance shafts. |
| 03:32 | And if we are switching to the Type R style oil pump, this will just be pumping oil straight back into the sump and more likely will actually pop that jet out, resulting in a significant loss of oil pressure. |
| 03:44 | So, what we're going to need to do is extract that jet, which is just an aluminium jet that is sealed in there with an o ring, so relatively straightforward to remove. |
| 03:54 | So, let's go ahead and do that. |
| 03:56 | And all I'm going to do in order to do this is use a self tapping screw. |
| 04:00 | I'm just going to tap this into place. |
| 04:04 | And often that will actually be enough to extract it. |
| 04:08 | However,, we can also give this a little bit more purchase on that jet and we should be able to pull the entire jet out , which we can see we've done here. |
| 04:18 | So, we can see the way the jet is designed and this little o ring is what seals it and essentially holds it in place, of course once the oil pump is in place, then it can't come free. |
| 04:28 | Now, if you're running a conventional wet sump, the process of blocking this off is relatively straightforward, there is actually an M8 thread inside this hole already so my process for doing this is just to take a bolt with either a copper or aluminium sealing washer and we can just thread that in and the aluminium or copper washer will seal against the cradle, preventing any oil leakage, job done. |
| 04:53 | So, that's what you're going to need to do for a conventional wet sump. |
| 04:57 | However in our application we've got a very low profile billet sump and this actually sits flush across this part so we're not going to be able to get away with that particular modification. |
| 05:09 | In our case what we're going to actually do is tap this particular hole here and install a 1 1 8th BSP pressure plug and that will be sealed with thread paste. |
| 05:18 | I won't show this during the worked example because it's only relevant to such a small percentage of people. |
| 05:26 | There's one more modification that we'll also need to do for our dry sump application. |
| 05:30 | We can see at the front of the block we've also got another oil gallery here and we're going to need to blank that off, otherwise again we're going to end up with a significant leak and that's going to result in low oil pressure. |
| 05:45 | Technically, again that I'm going to use, exactly the same, we'll just drill this out, then tap it for an 1/8th BSP pressure plug and again that will be installed with some PTFE thread sealant, blocking that gallery off. |
| 05:57 | But again you do not need to do this if you are retaining a wet sump with the Type R style oil pump, that will actually block that hole off quite nicely. |
| 06:08 | One last consideration if you are remaining wet sump is that you will need to consider purchasing a Type R style windage tray. |
| 06:17 | With the larger oil pump that incorporates the balance shafts, we end up with this smaller section of windage tray that sits at the rear and there's essentially an incorporated windage tray underneath the oil pump. |
| 06:29 | So, when you move to the Type R style oil pump, you'll also want to purchase or source a Type R style windage tray, which is a full length windage tray. |
| 06:40 | While you're sourcing a replacement Type R style windage tray, you're also going to need the matching Type R style oil pump chain drive. |
| 06:49 | That's because with the different size of the gears, the length of the chain is different so these aren't interchangeable. |
| 06:56 | Now, that we've dealt with our oil pump situation, let's remove our cradle and we'll have a look at the remainder of our block. |
| 07:04 | Alright, so what we're going to do here is start by running a clean fresh tap through our main bolt holes for our cradle. |
| 07:13 | And as I mentioned these are an 11x1.25mm pitch. |
| 07:17 | And what I've selected here is a bottoming tap and this is simply going to allow us to tap right to the very bottom of these blind holes. |
| 07:27 | And while a starter tap is easier to get started, the taper on it means that we're not going to actually be able to clean out those holes all the way to the bottom. |
| 07:34 | So, we'll get our tap located into our handle here. |
| 07:38 | And what I'm going to do is just use a lubricant, a cutting lubricant here to help maintain clean threads in our holes. |
| 07:48 | So, let's get started here at the front of the block and what we want to do is just gently make sure we've got that tap started, nice and square to the hole and we can wind this in, we shouldn't expect too much pressure and we can see the tap is going in really nicely by itself. |
| 08:03 | Once we're starting to get a little bit of resistance, the technique is to turn the tap in maybe one to two turns and then back it off half a turn, that'll just clean out the threads of the tap. |
| 08:14 | And once we've got to the bottom of course we can then remove our tap. |
| 08:17 | And we'll be able to inspect and see sort of how much debris is in the flutes of that tap. |
| 08:22 | And you can be surprised even with a relatively clean block, just how much material will be removed. |
| 08:29 | Once we've got that out, we'll inspect everything, this one actually does look quite clean. |
| 08:33 | We'll give it a bit of a clean down with some brake clean here, lubricate it and we're going to repeat this process for the remaining nine holes. |
| 09:08 | Alright, so now that we've got all of our threads cleaned out for our main cradle, we're going to flip the engine block over and we'll repeat this process for our head stud threads. |
| 09:19 | The process that we're going to use here is exactly the same as what you've just seen. |
| 09:22 | However, the threads are recessed quite a long way down into the block. |
| 09:25 | So, this can make it difficult to reach the bottom with some taps. |
| 09:29 | There's a variety of ways you can go about extending the length of your tap if required. |
| 09:33 | Another helping hand here is to temporarily remove the two locating dowels that locate the cylinder head onto the block. |
| 09:41 | Because these protrude around about 10mm proud of the deck surface and this can just make it a little bit more tricky to get your tap to the bottom. |
| 09:48 | So, let's go ahead now and we'll clean out these threads. |
| 10:11 | At this point we've cleaned out all of the threads for our mission critical fasteners. |
| 10:14 | However, it is just worth mentioning that if you've got a block that's perhaps in slightly poor shape, maybe showing signs of corrosion, then there can be benefits in running a tap through essentially all of our threaded fastener holes. |
| 10:27 | The reason for this goes a little bit beyond the scope of just building the engine. |
| 10:31 | And it can come to pass that when you go to install the engine and perhaps bolt a engine mount onto the block, then this can result in a bolt actually snapping off in a bolt hole and this can waste a huge amount of time and cause a lot of frustration. |
| 10:45 | So, consider that if you do have a block that's maybe a little bit corroded already. |
| 10:50 | Next, we're going to address deburring any sharp edges in the block as I've already discussed. |
| 10:56 | Now, on our deck surface here of the block, this has already been decked by our engine machinist and typically this can leave sharp edges, particularly in some of our oil drain back holes and the like. |
| 11:07 | In this case, our machinist actually appears to have gone ahead and deburred these sharp edges for us, there are no sharp edges that I can run my finger across, there's no sign of any small amounts of aluminium swarf that could break off. |
| 11:20 | So, there's nothing for us to do here, but this is probably the exception, not the norm. |
| 11:25 | There's a couple of ways of dealing with this, particularly for our round holes, I like to use a metal deburring tool like this and simply all we need to do is run that through the inside of our holes and that will just break down any sharp edges and make sure that A, we don't have those sharp edges remaining and B, that nothing can actually break off and go through the block. |
| 11:49 | Externally the other tool, which you'll see me using shortly on the other side of the block is just a die grinder and this one is battery powered, but typically most people have access to a pneumatic die grinder and all we're going to do is use that to just run across the sharp edges on the block, deburring them. |
| 12:07 | As I mentioned, nothing really for us to deal with here on the deck surface of the block, so let's flip the block over and we'll go ahead and deal to the underside of the block. |
| 12:17 | Alright, we can actually see, or more to the point feel, on the underside of the block, there are still some sharp edges here, so we're just going to use a combination of our die grinder, as well as our deburring tool to go ahead and break down any of those sharp edges. |
| 12:31 | So, let's get that done now. |
| 12:33 | Now, obviously, it should go without saying here, we do need to be very very careful with the die grinder that we don't end up slipping and we end up contacting a surface that we shouldn't be touching, particularly the main bearing journal here. |
| 13:00 | Alright, we've dealt to most of those sharp surfaces with the die grinder, I'm just going to use our deburring tool and go around the round holes in the block here as well. |
| 13:12 | Alright, that's completed the majority of our deburring on the block itself and again this block, while it's actually in pretty good shape from our machinist, obviously this is going to create a lot of swarf between the threading of the holes that we've just done, as well as that deburring process , but we're going to deal with that when it comes to our parts cleaning step. |
| 13:31 | Of course, I've only shown the operation of deburring on the block itself. |
| 13:35 | With our split girdle here, we're also going to need to repeat that process on the mating surfaces of our girdle and essentially anywhere else there's sharp sections of aluminium which we want to break down. |
| 13:46 | However, it's a repeat of the process that we've just seen here on the block itself. |
| 13:51 | At this point we've got our block prep complete, remembering of course that we are dealing with an aluminium block so there's no need for us to actually paint the block to protect it from corrosion, we're ready to move on with our next step. |
