Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 01:02 pm, by: Paul Fitzsimmons(Oztif)
I recently had a similar problem with my Suzuki Swift GTI. The pulley that the harmonic balance bolts to had chewed out the keyway in itself and the crankshaft.(Had moved at least 15 degrees) Now, not wanting to strip the motor and replace the crank i bought a new pulley and key and put the whole lot together using Loctite Liquid Metal. 10,000k's later no problem. I'm not suggesting this as your fix, just stating that i am very impressed with this product.
Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 01:21 pm, by: Matt Meiers(Oldschool)
cool, well i will try and get that sorted as soon as possible! at the very least it is one more thing i can eliminate from the possible list of defective mechanisms in my lovely little sh*tbox. LOL it seems that the general consensus is the cams being out of sync and i have a lot of faith in neil even without other people backing him up! :D
Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 01:43 pm, by: Gavin Thiele(Ndgcpr)
its things like this that really annoy me with cars sometimes. Like how the heck are you meant to go "oh sht my car has died, it must be that the harmonic balancer has slightly shifted resulting in my cam timing adjusting the double sideband suppressed carrier waveform injection into the side of my throttle body, which in turn has resurrected the disbelief that i should have started the car this morning anyway". "Easy!"
Hence why i never became a mechanic, this is all slightly over my head. My condolences matt and i hope to be soaring with you soon...
Sunday, January 01, 2006 - 02:25 pm, by: Chris Davey(Chris_davey)
This is very interesting.
I think you should do a leak down test as that way you check with a screw driver (handle end) that the piston is infact at TDC. This tests how much leakage there is in each cylinder. It is like the reverse of the normal compression test but if both are done correctly the results should correspond. e.g. For a regular sort of stuffed engine you may have 150 psi in 5 cylinders and 50 in another. The leak down test may come up with 9% leakage in 5 and 50% leakage in the one with 50psi. If you do the leak down test it will measure the amount of leakage from exactly TDC. If the number is really high, double check you are at TDC as even 1-2 deg will change the number dramatically. You need compressed air and the leak down tester which I usually borrow from my mechanic.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 09:35 am, by: Matt Meiers(Oldschool)
ok people, i went out to the car just now and got the help of my lovely assistant susan. what i did was set the motor on TDC on the marks on the harmonic balancer and wound the motor over by hand. I had Susan holding a screwdriver gently on the top of piston 1 and had her tell me if the screwdriver was rising or falling when i wound. when the motor was on "TDC" and i wound it the screwdriver went down. then to make sure i put it back on TDC and wound the opposite direction and still the screwdriver fell. Does this mean that the TDC on the harmonic balancer is in fact TDC? and if that was the case and the harmonic balancer was still at fault wouldn't that mean that the results from my crude test indicates that the cams are either in the correct position and the problem is something else. Or that the cams are exactly out of sync with the crankshaft by 180 degrees? what are the chances of that? should i still proceed to remove the harmonic balancer this week? are there any other suggestions of simple tests i can carry out bearing in mind my car is in the middle of a grass lawn and it is really friggin hot up here. Any major work needing to be done would probably require a tow into town and the use of a mates hoist but i can't have my car sitting there for extended periods of time as it is not fair on him to constantly be pushing my car out of his way! thanks again matt
Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 11:53 am, by: Matt Meiers(Oldschool)
in case anyone is interested had the motor stripped down! when it overheated the pistons have gone an ovular shape and spat rings out (killing one turbo) the pistons have rubbed/grabbed the bore of the cylinders and therefore fubard it self up pretty darn good! so looks like i am going to be pimping myself on the street to get another 1J cheers to those people who responded and tried to help matt
Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 12:18 pm, by: Chris Davey(Chris_davey)
Damn man! How long was it overheating for?
When you finally finish a conversion you just want to drive the bastard and sometimes it isn’t the best decision. I know exactly how you feel when you have got it done and just want to use the thing.
Good luck finding a cheap short block. (I am not being sarcastic)