Hello. I've got an engine build I've been working on... for far too long really, but still going strong. I've had a dream of building a 2.2 liter DOHC engine and after I got a steady job I got things rolling. I also had a 626 Wagon that had a pretty old and tired turbo DOHC, and wanted to have a replacement engine for that.
December 2007
I purchased an R2 crank from a wrecker. The R2, for those not "in the know", is a 2.2 liter version of the RF diesel, which itself is a derivative or the FE gas engine. Thus the dimensions are identical to the FE engine, but the crank is invariably forged, unlike the usually cast FE cranks.
The differences in the crank are: The flywheel bolt pattern is 8-bolt instead of 6-bolt, the oil pump is driven by splined gear instead of keyed shaft (Diesel oil pump is better, but unfortunately can't be made to fit the FE block) and, unknown to me at the time, a considerable difference in oiling channel arrangement that needed to be taken care of.
February 2008
The Tragedy Block
I picked up the engine from the storage (it had been stored the for 10+ years). I was SUPPOSED to be a dry storage room, but this is how the engine looked:
So, obviously it had been in contact with the water. Not a promising start, but for a while, thing looked good, the bottom end was in good shape:
Unfortunately, the feeling sank immediately I got the head off:
The cylinder were rusted through. The pistons didn't even budge; only after going through the cylinder walls with rotary brush and then leaving the cylinders filled with chloric acid over a weekend released the piston! (and then only by pounding them with a mallet and a wooden peg). With slim hope of rescuing the block, it was crated and shipped to the machinist to be inspected.
The Head Trauma
Actually, things went a lot better with the head. I knew it wasn't cracked, it had never suffered detonation, and obviously, not rusted. It did look quite nasty at the first glance, though. Here's the deal:
After some scrubbing with a toothbrush-sized brass and nylon brush and heavily alkaloid cleaning solution, the head looked like this:
I knew the HLA's were dirty and needed cleaning. A price for one was 120$ at the dealer, so I decided to service the old HLA's; service manuals say not to, but I did. The HLA bucket comes apart with a few deliberate bangs on a wooden surface, and here's how they they were:
The HLA's were filled with sludgy oil, those probably would have ticked like hell in use. I used a jeweller's ultrasonic cleaner to clean out the parts with water and the alkali detergent (instructions tell to use one part of soap to fifty parts of water... I used fifty-fifty ) and here's how they turned out:
In all, the process took me about 45 minutes in total. Ofter buzzing the parts in the cleaner, I used a hot air gun to heat up the parts, gave a good spray of CRC-556 (the same as WD-40 really) to prevent any remaining water to cause rust, and reassembled them. Back then I planned to use original cams, so I didn't treat the bucket tops, instead I just arranged them in order I could put them back into the head in the same order.
March 2008
Blockbuster
I took the block to the machinist and the block was basically sentenced to death at the spot, not to my surprise. The end result was grim; after 0.25mm oversize, the rust pores were basically intact. There was no way the 0.50mm overbore would've cured the problem, the pores probably ran all the way through.
pretty fly...wheel
I wanted to have an alloy flywheel for the engine, since the old one was unusable due to bolt pattern differences and the diesel flywheel weighed like heck. I commissioned a local parts machining shop to make me one.
I spent the month cleaning parts in alkali bath.
April 2008
New Block
As soon as I received a new block, I sent it to the machinist. The problem was I hadn't gotten my pistons yet, so he couldn't bore it yet.
Now, since I was building a stroker with 8mm longer stroke, I couldn't use stock pistons. There was a bulk buy going on at the time for SCAT rods (which is slowly moving on this site, now, as I'm writing this) which ended in a big ball of drama. Since those were for the stock rod length, (150mm), I was looking for pistons with 32mm compression height. Nissan SR20DET pistons did fit the bill on that repsect, but since they didn't have valve pockets and were meant for 2.0 engine, they gave too high compression ratio. I had to specify my very own pistons and for that I started dealing with Wiseco dealer.
The Flywheel
In the last days of the month, I received my alloy flywheel, and that did look great:
It had quite a few problems still, but those came up much later. As May started to press on, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to meet August 2008 goal for this build...
December 2007
I purchased an R2 crank from a wrecker. The R2, for those not "in the know", is a 2.2 liter version of the RF diesel, which itself is a derivative or the FE gas engine. Thus the dimensions are identical to the FE engine, but the crank is invariably forged, unlike the usually cast FE cranks.
The differences in the crank are: The flywheel bolt pattern is 8-bolt instead of 6-bolt, the oil pump is driven by splined gear instead of keyed shaft (Diesel oil pump is better, but unfortunately can't be made to fit the FE block) and, unknown to me at the time, a considerable difference in oiling channel arrangement that needed to be taken care of.
February 2008
The Tragedy Block
I picked up the engine from the storage (it had been stored the for 10+ years). I was SUPPOSED to be a dry storage room, but this is how the engine looked:
So, obviously it had been in contact with the water. Not a promising start, but for a while, thing looked good, the bottom end was in good shape:
Unfortunately, the feeling sank immediately I got the head off:
The cylinder were rusted through. The pistons didn't even budge; only after going through the cylinder walls with rotary brush and then leaving the cylinders filled with chloric acid over a weekend released the piston! (and then only by pounding them with a mallet and a wooden peg). With slim hope of rescuing the block, it was crated and shipped to the machinist to be inspected.
The Head Trauma
Actually, things went a lot better with the head. I knew it wasn't cracked, it had never suffered detonation, and obviously, not rusted. It did look quite nasty at the first glance, though. Here's the deal:
After some scrubbing with a toothbrush-sized brass and nylon brush and heavily alkaloid cleaning solution, the head looked like this:
I knew the HLA's were dirty and needed cleaning. A price for one was 120$ at the dealer, so I decided to service the old HLA's; service manuals say not to, but I did. The HLA bucket comes apart with a few deliberate bangs on a wooden surface, and here's how they they were:
The HLA's were filled with sludgy oil, those probably would have ticked like hell in use. I used a jeweller's ultrasonic cleaner to clean out the parts with water and the alkali detergent (instructions tell to use one part of soap to fifty parts of water... I used fifty-fifty ) and here's how they turned out:
In all, the process took me about 45 minutes in total. Ofter buzzing the parts in the cleaner, I used a hot air gun to heat up the parts, gave a good spray of CRC-556 (the same as WD-40 really) to prevent any remaining water to cause rust, and reassembled them. Back then I planned to use original cams, so I didn't treat the bucket tops, instead I just arranged them in order I could put them back into the head in the same order.
March 2008
Blockbuster
I took the block to the machinist and the block was basically sentenced to death at the spot, not to my surprise. The end result was grim; after 0.25mm oversize, the rust pores were basically intact. There was no way the 0.50mm overbore would've cured the problem, the pores probably ran all the way through.
pretty fly...wheel
I wanted to have an alloy flywheel for the engine, since the old one was unusable due to bolt pattern differences and the diesel flywheel weighed like heck. I commissioned a local parts machining shop to make me one.
I spent the month cleaning parts in alkali bath.
April 2008
New Block
As soon as I received a new block, I sent it to the machinist. The problem was I hadn't gotten my pistons yet, so he couldn't bore it yet.
Now, since I was building a stroker with 8mm longer stroke, I couldn't use stock pistons. There was a bulk buy going on at the time for SCAT rods (which is slowly moving on this site, now, as I'm writing this) which ended in a big ball of drama. Since those were for the stock rod length, (150mm), I was looking for pistons with 32mm compression height. Nissan SR20DET pistons did fit the bill on that repsect, but since they didn't have valve pockets and were meant for 2.0 engine, they gave too high compression ratio. I had to specify my very own pistons and for that I started dealing with Wiseco dealer.
The Flywheel
In the last days of the month, I received my alloy flywheel, and that did look great:
It had quite a few problems still, but those came up much later. As May started to press on, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to meet August 2008 goal for this build...
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