The Motor, completed. Sort of.
August 5, 2018
The last post – Death by a thousand delays – ended with more parts missing and some health issues for me, causing another delay. But, it turned out the time off from work allowed me to focus on the motor. And I got it out the door and off to Sacramento, to be tinkered with a tad and then, hopefully soon, dropped in the car.
With the washers for the head bolts sourced, I was able to finally install the head.
And then the drive belt and the pulleys.
Then the oil pan was ready to go on.
And then the rest of the rotating mass and the front covers.
Once the motor was assembled, I was able to take some time to appreciate the machine work. Here, the intake ports were gasket matched to the intake manifold.
And visa-versa for the intake manifold.
I made plans with Stu for him to bring his X5 down to my house and pick up the motor and the various parts. That meant next up for me was organizing the other parts. Got a couple or four bins of parts together.
And put the motor on the cherry picker.
Stu came and picked up the motor late one night, and after getting it to his shop, he had a chance to look it over. After looking at the intake manifold, he asked if it was ok for him to smooth the porting out a little. Of course! He also wants to pretty up the front covers and the harmonic balancer on the front crank pulley. Why not! I’m sure these will delay the project some more, but I clearly am not making my original goal of a late August debut at Monterey, so I have another year to get everything done.
For now the garage is empty, but for the greasy old Alpina motor.
When wrenching on that, something interesting was discovered. The warm-up regulator bolts to the block (on top of a manifold that has coolant running through it). When unbolting those for Stu to take to Sacramento, we found the bottom of the manifold is exposed to the sump, with a bore through the block and a nice rubber gasket to keep it sealed. Why? What does that accomplish? The m10 K-Jet doesn't do that and we can't figure out why the M20 does – so, is it necessary to bore out the new block? We don't think so, but if you know otherwise, feel free to let me know.
Next up is pulling the Alpina motor apart and figuring out what is in there and whether the head gasket is blown. Then I'll clean it up and freshen up the innards.