2.4E Engine rebuild. The Good, bad and expensive news

TheEasyLife · Post by **TheEasyLife** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:19 pm

Good news, bad news and expensive news

1: The Good news: The future Mrs Easylife is expecting our first child in April.

2: The Bad news: I've stripped down the top end of my engine last weekend to find out why compression is down on 2 cylinders. I.e, How much damage did the bolt we found in the inlet manifold do when we converted it to EFI?. We expected to find that a top end overhaul was required, but the reality was far worse than this.

3: The expensive news: see first 2 points!!

So onto the pics:

The engine in its current state:

Whats left:

Valve to Piston contact? Check:

Missing metal on an inlet? That will buff out #1:

Valve seat corrosion? That will buff out #2:

Valve seat corrosion? That will buff out #3:

Valve seat corrosion and dents in head? That will buff out #4:

Lots of scraped metal in cylinders? Check:

Corroded valve? Check 1:

Corroded valves? Check 2:

Corroded Heat exchangers? Check:

I'm devastated as it was running so well and pulling the best it ever has but deep down I knew that something wasn't right after we found the bolt in the inlet manifold when we did the EFI conversion. Surprisingly that appears to have done little damage other than the valve to piston contact visible on that piston but I wasn't aware an engine could run so well and be so knackered at the same time. The heads are the worst my garage has ever seen.

A cunning plan is being formulated to get the car back on the road as soon as possible for the least expenditure as I'm being told I need to buy baby stuff now and not to spend money on engines

. As you can imagine the budget I had for the top end rebuild is woefully inadeguate for the bits I now need to replace. I'll be listing some of my spare bits in the For Sale section over the next few days to help fund this rebuild.

Cheers

James

hot66 · Post by **hot66** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 4:14 pm

congrats on the baby

210bhp · Post by **210bhp** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 4:45 pm

James

Congratulations on your good news.

More bad news

Come April you are going to have to change your name on DDK because the easy life will be no more

Regards
Mike

bjmullan · Post by **bjmullan** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 4:59 pm

James

Also congratulations on the baby and you thought Porsche's were expensive!

As for a knacker engine running well you should have seen mine when we took it apart (every piston holed and top rings missing) but it was running (if a little/lot smokey)!

butzsi · Post by **butzsi** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 6:30 pm

Hi James,

Congratulations on the news of the baby - enjoy your sleep while you still can!

The missing metal is actually on an exhaust port and I think was damage caused by something other than a bolt.

The scraped metal parts are fragments from the head gasket or CE ring - the gasket had blown and the combustion gasses had fragmented it, the bits fell into the cylinder when the heads were removed.

I may have some used valves etc ,let me know what you need.

Chris

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 6:52 pm

Congratulations and commiserations in equal order!

Now is not the time to plan an engine rebuild

I bought my 911 when my first was 6 months old and stripped it to a shell when the second was -2 months

It can be done, it just takes careful planning

Other than the exhaust port damage I would imagine you can recover those heads. The seats can be recut, and the little dents? Well, I would take the worst of the sharp edges off and ignore

My old Golf ingested a nut from the air filter housing the evening before a hillclimb event, so a rapid head job (

) picked the worst of the bits out of the piston and head, cleaned it up, back together and as you were...

Good luck getting it back together and having No.1 with your mortgage still intact!

butzsi · Post by **butzsi** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 7:17 pm

Other than the exhaust port damage I would imagine you can recover those heads

It can be repaired by welding easily - do not worry.

Chris

haasad · Post by **haasad** » Fri Dec 03, 2010 8:14 pm

Nothing a little creative thinking wont fix cheaper than you imagine ( thats only the baby

, seriously congatulations )

New seats if they are beyond re cut . don,t sweat the dents, weld up and reshape the port , dont write off those pistons do some measuring

Cylinders may go again too measure first .

Set of valves are pricey but again only replace whats worn or damaged beyond use and don;t be shy of looking for used parts,

Guides aren't too much hassle to remove and fit new yourself ( just don't use the oven to heat up the heads if the sunday lunch is being cooked

Heat exchangers are nearly a service item if they're steel but they don't have to be pretty to work if the exhaust tubing is ok treat them like a body repair??

Don't loose heart I've been at it 8 years it will be fine in the end.

andy

DeRRis · Post by **DeRRis** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 9:02 am

Congrats on the bun in the oven

The metal scrappings look to me like the product you get when you cut sheet metal with one of these. Don't know what the english word is though

A knibler?

jb · Post by jb » Sat Dec 04, 2010 9:12 am

congratulations on the good news
remember the 911 may be less important than the family!

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 9:32 am

Congratulations on the good news.

Shame about the engine, but good luck with getting a resolution.

Mick Cliff · Post by **Mick Cliff** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 9:42 am

DeRRis wrote: A knibler?

Close - a nibbler, for cutting sheet metals

Mike Usiskin · Post by **Mike Usiskin** » Sat Dec 04, 2010 10:23 am

congrats on the baby mate, save your pennies, get some sleep, Bet you wish you'd never open that engine up huh!!

m

TheEasyLife · Post by **TheEasyLife** » Mon Dec 06, 2010 7:15 pm

Thanks guys. The cunning plan is now taking shape and hopefully being put into action this week with a view to me being back on the road before xmas. I need my car to be usable or the missus will tell me, not for the first time, to sell it. She just doesn't 'get' old cars and me spending a fortune on it at the moment isn't helping.

The plan is to replace the current tired B&P's and heads with used parts of a known quantity that I have rapidly acquired from various sources. The B&P's are 2.4S Mahles and will give me half a point compression increase over the old 2.4E ones. At some point in the future if I can find some used 2.4S cams at a sensible price I'll snap these up so that I have an almost 2.4S spec engine on EFI. Anyone got any 2.4S cams gathering dust that they want to sell at a sensible price on a deferred payment scheme?

Sadly I don't have the time, patience, space or skill to rebuild it myself so am going down the chequebook restoration road. The engine is being built by my local porsche independent garage who has a good reputation for engine rebuilds and I shall be looking over his shoulder learning things when not being the teaboy/gofer. I have also realised that the engine number on my E is a very low production number, and would probably have been on one of the first 30 1972 E's built based on the figures on the 911E registry.

More details and maybe some build pics later in the week.

Cheers

James

Gary71 · Post by **Gary71** » Mon Dec 06, 2010 7:19 pm

That's Tim rebuild out the window then

Good luck with the build, glad you are getting it sorted.