Engine rebuild

Posted by ambaraj / at 2:36 AM / /

As the car was being set up round the new ECU and engine loom the engine suffered a big end failure and Luke, being the dedicated and technical wiz that he is, took the view that it needed sorting, and got on and did it. A major engine rebuild started with a strip down and diagnosis. There was a lot of debris in the oilways in the engine and even from a brief inspection it was clear that there had been oil starvation in the past which has caused the big end failure.

Luke guessed that the crank would also be bent and proceeded to quickly strip and assess the engine before re-assembling it. The block was cleaned and painted and the original pistons were re-used with new rings. A new crank was specced and new Cosworth big ends and main heavy duty bearings were used. New conrods were installed with ARP2000 con rod bolts and new Ford gaskets were used throughout.

The head was warped so it was sent to be skimmed and reinstalled with an ARP stud and nut kit to hold it in place. The valve seats were re-cut and the valves ground to match. A new alloy drive pulley was installed as well as a 36 tooth motorsport pulley which the ECU uses for timing. As the distributor is now redundant the hole has been plugged. Luke also painted the cam pulleys and installed a bling cam cover in blue.

The end result of the engine work is a reliable and solid race engine designed to produce a sensible amount of power. Reliability is the key here and the engine should work well for sometime.

Spark plugs are NGK BCR 8ES. Oil is Valvoline 20W 50 black racing.

Some shots of block, head and engine in car: