Adam's '99 Facelift Legnum

[Barlow]

Well, in that case they will probably have the same spacing as the Colt/FTO etc.

Ahhh, yeah i forgot about the piston marks. Do you not think a machine shop could machine them out without breaching the strengths of the piston?

Anyway, can't wait to see the outcome of this! You'll become a legend to all Mitsubishi lovers if you pull this off mate

[Adam.Findlay]

I work at a cam grinding workshop which is tagged on the side of an engine reconditioning business so have acess to the machinery. its early days yet so I cant say if there will be any piston to valve issues and if so how much.. can only find out by measuring it which I hope I can get to doinh tomorrow. like I said this engine will get and always has been planned to get custom forged pistons but if I can get it running on a stock 6a13 bottom end so I can run it and smooth out the kinks with the rest of the car before I really start pushing some serious horsepower out of it, that would be great.
fingers crossed I get the time tomorrow to have a muck around with it

[wintertidenz]

If you are going to have valve to piston clearance issues, could you not get made up a thicker engine gasket to assist with this?

I suspect this would only help if it was a couple of mm of clearance that was the issue.

[Adam.Findlay]

If you are going to have valve to piston clearance issues, could you not get made up a thicker engine gasket to assist with this?

I suspect this would only help if it was a couple of mm of clearance that was the issue.

Could fix it with a thicker head gasket but although it would solve any possible clearance issues It would de-compress the engine and at 8.5:1 I don't want to go any lower.
plus the cost of getting somwhere like cometic to manufacture thicker head gaskets would be prohibitively expensive. As chris suggested a few posts back I will take the stock pistons into work and if possible machine some small valve reliefs into the stock pistons. Unfortunatly I was very busy this weekend and didnt get the time to play around with my motor so am yet to get to testing clearances

[WOODY72]

How do you measure the clearance Adam, with plasticine?

[Adam.Findlay]

How do you measure the clearance Adam, with plasticine?

you got it!
then cut the plasticine in half and measure the thickness of it.
hopefully this link works
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater
just like that and the next three photos to the left of it in that album

[WOODY72]

What is the minimum clearance you need taking into account rod stretch etc Adam?

[Adam.Findlay]

What is the minimum clearance you need taking into account rod stretch etc Adam?

not 100% sure yet around .8mm should be ok possibly a bit less if need be

[Adam.Findlay]

Put the cambelt on this afternoon. my eye-crometer guessed pretty well at 25mm for the spacers under the idler. All tensions up perfectly. the Idler bracket is close to the heads but does not touch

Next I need to find a stock piston and rod from the dark realm of the mess under the bench in the garage..

Here are the pics of the self locating 25mm alloy spacers I made on friday night

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...909_170520.jpg
http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...909_170552.jpg
http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...909_170611.jpg

And where the idler sits in its new position

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...909_170513.jpg

and finally the belt on and all tensioned up. the grenade pin is loose so perfect!

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...909_171714.jpg

[SEAN-NZ]

pictures dont appear to work Adam

[Adam.Findlay]

pictures dont appear to work Adam

how about now

[SEAN-NZ]

still nothing, maybe its just my end having a moan

[Badger_01]

still nothing, maybe its just my end having a moan

Did you click the links?

[SEAN-NZ]

working now, must have been having a tantrum

[Niran]

Nice thread man! Very interesting read

[WOODY72]

Looking good Adam.

[Adam.Findlay]

cheers guys things are looking good to have a running motor together in the next few months depending on funds

[Adam.Findlay]

Last night after realising I had binned all my spare stock rods and pistons except for the ones still fitted in engines I went so Scott's place and grabbed one of his spares.
Then today I got some free time between classes, so managed to get to an arts supply shop and buy some modeling clay for testing piston-to-valve clearances.

I grabbed the used 6A12M headgasket off the motor and put it onto the 6A13TT block along with the single piston and rod I had grabbed off Scott. Then squished some black modeling clay onto the crown of the piston

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_121729.jpg
http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_121713.jpg

Then quickly bolted the head down with a few bolts, whipped the top section of the head on with the cams etc along with a rocker cover for timing marks etc timed the crank to TDC and lined all the cams up with the marks and tensioned the cambelt.
I did two full crank revolutions which gave no resistance
Next step was to lock Mivec on..
this was a lot easier than I first thought.
The pins that are used to engage the big lobe when the Mivec solenoid is switched, simply have a thread inside them. so all I had to do was screw a 3mm bolt into the pin and hold it up by hand.
I did inlet and exhaust valves separately just because I dont have 3 hands.
First I did the Inlet valves, screwed the 3mm bolt into the pin and held it up while I put the crank through 4 revs (thus cycling the valves twice)
the engine turned over no problems didnt feed like there was any piston to valve contact so far so I repeated the process for the exhaust. and again it felt fine.

I removed the cambelt, head and head gasket then whipped out the piston and rod so reveal this..

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_151856.jpg
http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_151814.jpg

took a knife to the clay to reveal a more than adequate clearances

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_152410.jpg

The intakes
first is near the edge of the valve and the second is in the center as you can see from where I had cut it from the above image

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_152321.jpg
http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_152336.jpg

and the exhausts barely touched the clay so that will be fine

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_152400.jpg

http://i693.photobucket.com/albums/v...910_152352.jpg

[Adam.Findlay]

Finally got around to spending some time working on the car itself today. instead of just poking around with the motor.

Mounted my new relay holders and found a place to put the new fuse holders which will be replacing the big ugly stock fusebox which usually sits next to the battery in the engine bay

here is what the dash looks like currently




Then the relay holders mounted back to back behind the ashtray/cigarette lighter on a thin alloy strip is



Decided to put the new fuse holders inside the DIN slot under the headunit, they are not mounted yet but this is roughly where they will sit inside the slot.
plan on having a big plug at the back of this DIN cubby so I can just unplug it and remove the head unit and DIN slot easily.




Then I got onto running my battery to boot cable.
I am going to be mounting the battery under the rear quarter. where the AYC pump used to be because I don't want a big ugly battery box clogging up by boot space. It is a wagon after all, and I do use it for shifting shi*t around a lot.
I also used the existing tab that the AYC reservoir mounted to to mount my circuit breaker. all in all quite happy with how it turned out.





and then lastly I realised that I will probably have to make a custom top alternator mount as the top bolt for the alternator screws into a bracket bolted onto the side of the head.




as the Mivec heads are taller this bracket may need to be changed to suit. so once I get the heads back home again ill plonk them onto a block and dummy fit an alternator to see what the deal is

[Anderz]

Very interesting read