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Practical Engine Building: Step 7: Short Block Assembly

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Step 7: Short Block Assembly

1.10.09

00:00 - In this step we're going to complete the assembly of the engine short block.
00:03 We've got all of our parts back from our machinist, everything's been cleaned and prepped for assembly.
00:09 Now the first part here is just checking on our measurements.
00:13 We'll already recall that prior to sending the parts off for machining we had the ability to check some of our key clearances such as our big end and our main bearing clearances.
00:22 We were comfortable with where those were so there was no need for our machinist to make any adjustments or modifications.
00:29 So we don't need to recheck those, they're going to be the same as what we've already measured.
00:33 What we do need to check though now that the block has been bored and honed, is our piston to cylinder wall clearance.
00:40 Making sure that they are within the tolerance or specification from JE.
00:44 Now the specification itself, we can see on the JE information is 0.0042 or 4.2 thousandths of an inch.
00:55 And the other point that's really critical when it comes to measuring our piston to cylinder wall clearance is the point on the piston skirt that we're going to measure.
01:03 While it may look like the skirts are parallel from top to bottom, that's not the case, there is a barrel shape machined into them so there is a reference point where we need to take that measurement, this is called the gauge point.
01:16 And if we again reference the information from JE, it shows us that that point is half an inch up from the base of the skirt.
01:24 So I've already gone ahead and actually made some marks on both sides of the piston just with a Sharpie marker just to give me that reference of where abouts I need to take that measurement just to make sure that I am getting an accurate measure.
01:38 So what we want to do now that we know where we're taking our measure is we want to take our micrometer, in this case I'm using a 3-4 inch micrometer and we can go ahead and measure the skirt, so let's get that done now.
01:54 Once we've taken our measurement there we can lock our micrometer up and of course the next task is to use our dial bore gauge.
02:01 So our dial bore gauge needs to be zeroed between the two anvils of our micrometer.
02:06 Once that's zeroed, we can then place it in the bore, that's of course going to show us the difference between the outside diameter of our piston skirt and the inside diameter of our bores.
02:17 In our case there's going to be a few other pieces of information we can take out of this as well.
02:22 We're not just looking at our piston to cylinder wall clearance.
02:25 By taking a measurement at the top, middle and bottom of the bore, we're going to be able to see if there's any taper or any belling in the bores.
02:33 Ideally we of course want those bores to be perfectly straight from the top to the bottom.
02:37 Likewise we can check in two planes perpendicular to each other, this will tell us if there's any out of round in the bores.
02:45 Now ideally we should have no out of round showing or measurable as well.
02:50 The workshop manual does give us some absolute limits for any taper or out of round that we can use as a guide.
02:58 I will just mention here as well that if the cylinder block has been bored and torque plate honed, then we really do need to make these measurements with a torque plate installed because that distortion will affect our measurements, our results in exactly the same way as it affects the boring and honing process which is why we use it in the first place.
03:19 Today just for simplicity I'm not doing that with the torque plate in place because it is going to make it just a little bit easier for us to demonstrate.
03:27 Alright so let's get our micrometer here and we'll just get the dial bore gauge between the two anvils here and we want to basically just rock it backwards and forwards here and make sure that it is properly zeroed.
03:42 This can be a little bit tricky and we will need to make a few adjustments to that in order to get it exactly on that zero point.
03:49 Now once we have got that zeroed and we're comfortable with that, it's simply a case of inserting that into the bore.
03:57 So for a start we'll insert it in line with our thrust face, put it down about an inch from the top of the bore and we can rock that backwards and forwards and remembering we're looking for that 4.2 thousandths of an inch.
04:09 And in the moment, what we can see is as I'm rocking this backwards and forwards we're just a touch over 4 thousandths of an inch.
04:17 We only have intervals here at half a thou so it's a little difficult to be accurate down to a 10th of a thou but in this case we're just about a needle's width beyond that 4 thou, comfortable that that is on our specification.
04:33 Now I'll just mention briefly that actual specification there because 4.2 thou is actually reasonably generous for an 85.5 mm bore.
04:43 That is however because of the skirt coating that is applied to these JE pistons so that coating is actually part of the allowance there.
04:52 Alright what we're going to do now is just check our clearance a little further down the bore and we'll check for our taper or belling so let's get that done now.
05:01 As I move down the bore, we're in about the centre now, we've got exactly the same measurement there which is always refreshing and we'll check the bottom and again essentially identical there, no more than about a 1/4 of a thou at the absolute most and again remembering we are measuring this without the torque plate installed so I do need to allow some tolerance for that.
05:22 Now we'll just check again perpendicular to our original measurement and again we can check the top, the middle and the bottom of the bore and again all of those measurements check out perfectly so we're comfortable with that, of course we've only measured number 1 bore here and we would complete the measurements on the other 3.
05:43 Once we're comfortable that our cylinder piston wall clearance is OK, our big end and main bearing clearances if we are rechecking any of these once the block comes back from machining, we can move on and look at gapping our piston rings.
05:57 To do this we're just going to rearrange our studio a little bit.
06:01 When it comes to gapping our piston rings, we obviously need to start by understanding what we're aiming for for our piston ring end gaps.
06:07 So we start here with the documentation that comes from JE with our ring set and we can see for our street with moderate turbo or nitrous which is essentially a pretty good match for what we're doing, for our top ring it's recommended to go with our bore diameter multiplied by 0.005 of an inch or 5 thousandths of an inch.
06:28 Our second ring gap should be 5.5 thou per inch of bore and our oil ring rail should be a minimum of 15 thousandths of an inch so let's start by taking about our oil ring rails.
06:39 Typically 99 times out of 100 we're going to find that these are already over the minimum recommended gap, straight out of the box.
06:47 Of course we can't make assumptions here and we do need to check.
06:50 I've already gone through and checked those and the gaps were sitting around about 18 to 19 thou so no work to do there and again, that's pretty typical.
07:00 Our top ring and our second ring though we do need to calculate what we need there so we're going to use the calculator function on my phone here and we start by entering our bore diameter which is 3.366, we multiply that by 0.005 and that gives us our top ring gap at 16.8 thou.
07:21 With this, I always tend to round up so we'll call that 17 thousandths of an inch.
07:26 We'll repeat that for our second ring.
07:29 This time the gap recommended is 0.0055 and we can see that's 18.5 thou.
07:35 Again we'll round that to 19.
07:37 So now we know what we're aiming for here, 17 thou on our top ring and 19 thou on our second ring.
07:45 Now I've already gone and installed the second rings in the block and when I'm doing this as well you'll notice at this point I'm not wearing my gloves and nitrile gloves, while they're nice when we are working on the engine on anything that's going to be oily, obviously it stops us potentially causing damage to parts such as our valve springs and any high end fasteners that suffer from hydrogen embrittlement, I find when we are gapping rings, it does get a little bit tricky because when we are installing the rings into the top of the bore which we're going to be doing a number of times, the gloves tend to get stuck between the ring and the bore so this is one of the tasks that I do like to complete without gloves on.
08:28 Before we can take a measurement here, we're going to use our ring squaring tool and we're going to go ahead and just square all 4 of those rings into the bores so let's get that done now.
08:42 Alright we've got our rings squared and moved down from the top of the bore and remember if you don't have a ring squaring tool you can achieve exactly the same aim by temporarily installing one of the rings onto a piston and using that upside down in the bore to square the rings.
08:57 Once we've done this we always want to start by just visually inspecting the ring end gaps and we're looking to see if the ring end gaps are parallel because if they aren't, that's something we're going to need to correct and here looking at this visually, it actually looks pretty good.
09:11 We know that our ring end gap target for our second ring was 19 thou so let's just start and see where we're at.
09:20 We'll start with a 17 thou feeler blade and just see what we're like for our gap there.
09:25 So 17 thou feeler blade is really loose, we've basically got no tension on the rings at all so we know that we're already above 17 thou.
09:33 I'll just jump straight up to my target there of 19 thou and see how we're looking there and with our 19 thou, got a good amount of tension and a small miracle, it looks like the second rings have actually come in pretty much on our target gap with a little bit of a variation there in terms of the friction between all 4 rings but essentially we're all within the target there of 19 thou, probably a couple of them a little bit looser, meaning that they are slightly above 19 thou but this is a problem of course because we can't gap them any tighter than that, that's as delivered out of the box.
10:11 So at this point there's no more work to do with our second ring so we'll get these swapped out and we'll install our top ring.
10:23 Alright we've got our top ring installed now, we know that our target ring end gap here is 17 thou, again a quick visual inspection and it looks like those end gaps are reasonably parallel so that's a good place to get started.
10:38 Let's get our feeler blades out here and we'll start with an 11 thou feeler blade and just see what we're looking like here.
10:46 So with our 11 thou feeler blade, got a little bit of tension already so I know we're pretty close to that.
10:52 Probably maybe 12 thou as they're installed at the moment so we do have a little bit of material to remove.
10:59 Let's jump up to our 12 thou feeler blade and see if that guess turned out to be correct.
11:05 Get our 12 thou feeler blade.
11:08 And yeah we've got a good amount of tension with our 12 thou feeler blade so we are at 12 thou at the moment.
11:16 Now one other point when we are using our feeler blade that I'll just mention here.
11:20 We're trying to get these ring end gaps to be parallel, we can check this visually which we've already done but another clue to this is when we are using our feeler blade, we're obviously beginning to insert the feeler blade from the inside diameter of the ring and we'll push it towards the outside diameter towards the bore.
11:37 Quite often what you're going to find is that the feeler blade will slide in initially nice and easily and then as we move it towards the outside diameter of the ring, out towards the bore wall, the feeler blade will start to become a little bit tighter or harder to push.
11:53 This is an indication that we do have a bit of a taper on that ring end gap and in other words the two ends of the ring are not parallel to each other and this will require some rememdial work.
12:04 In our case, everything's looking pretty good here, visually the ring end gap is nice and square and our feeler blade there slid through nice and easily so we're at 12 thou at the moment on all 4 and we need 17 so obviously we need to remove 5 thou.
12:21 So what we're going to do, we'll take our ring out now, we can get it installed on our ring grinder, now in this case our ring grinder does have a dial indicator on it.
12:31 You can use this as a guide to how much material you're going to want to remove but I would not suggest that you rely wholeheartedly on this because there is still a little bit of flex in our dial indicator and as I move the table here we can see that it's quite easy to move that dial indicator by a few thousandths of an inch so even with a dial indicator, you can use it as a bit of a guide as to how much material you're removing but I always recommend taking small amounts of material off and checking your work frequently.
13:02 Creeping up on your target ring end gap rather than trying to do this in just one hit.
13:07 Alright so let's get our ring installed, we'll put our little fence down here.
13:11 Get our ring installed on the bed and make sure that it is contacting that little fence and we can lock it down and remove that fence.
13:20 Now another thing I will mention here, this has an adjustable stop which we can see here and that adjustable stop allows us to move this in or out to suit our bore diameter and this allows us to ensure that we are getting a true square ring end gap.
13:36 So particularly when you are setting up the ring file for a different bore diameter compared to how it was used last time, it's always something that you do need to check and just make sure that you've got that stop adjusted to suit the diameter you're working with, making sure we're getting those nice parallel ring end gaps.
13:53 For now though, I'm going to get everything zeroed here and we can start removing a little bit of material, I'm going to try and remove about maybe 2 or 3 thou with this first cut so let's get that done.
14:19 Alright with our first adjustment made, what we can now do is get our ring back in the bore and we'll check our progress.
14:25 Again before we can actually check our ring end gap, we do need to square that ring again so let's get that done.
14:37 Alright so we were at 12 thou, we've removed around about 3 thou so we should be up around that 15 thou mark but let's just start by easing up on that, we'll try our 14 thou feeler blade.
14:51 OK our 14 thou feeler blade slides through there, just the smallest amount of tension so we probably actually are right on our target there of 15 thou.
14:59 Let's check that.
15:01 OK yeah with our 15 thou feeler blade, good amount of tension so we actually did remove exactly that 3 thou that we were trying to remove so we've got another 2 thou to go, let's get our ring back in our file and we'll repeat that process again.
15:34 Alright our second cut made there on our ring, we'll get it back installed in the bore.
15:40 Square it up and we can check and see if we've got our target of 17 thou.
15:48 Again we'll start just one feeler blade below our target so we'll start with our 16 thou feeler blade before stepping up.
15:59 OK so our 16 thou feeler blade, slides through there with a little bit of tension so we are already bigger than our 16 thou feeler blade so we'll jump up to 17.
16:12 And with that feeler blade, now I've got a good amount of tension in there so we do have our first ring gapped to our target of 17 thou.
16:19 So this is the process we're going to go through for our remaining 3 rings and just to reiterate, my tip there is just work slowly, gradually, checking your work, it's always easy to put the ring back on the file and remove a little bit more material.
16:33 If you go too far, there's no solution to that except to start with a new set of rings which is obviously going to cost you both time and money.
16:42 So let's get our remaining 3 rings gapped now.
17:17 Alright at this stage, we've got all of our rings correctly gapped to our target ring gap and we can now get our engine block back onto our engine stand and the next step of our short block assembly process will be installing our pistons onto our connecting rods.
17:32 Assembling the pistons onto the connecting rods is a slightly fiddly job, specifically when it comes to correctly installing the wire locks that JE provide with this piston set.
17:44 We have covered this in the body of the course but we are going to go over it again here.
17:49 Now in order to help with this, I do have part of a bulldog clip here.
17:53 Again we've demonstrated how to use this in the practical skills section of the course and just sharpening the ends of that bulldog clip will just give us the ability to more easily locate that in the wire lock groove inside of the piston.
18:07 What we'll do is we'll start by taking out number one piston here and we're just going to insert that bulldog clip into the wire lock on one side.
18:16 When I'm doing this, just for consistency I always try to make sure that I assemble the wire locks in the piston in the same order so in other words, always put the same one in to start with.
18:28 Now our next step is to take the wrist pin and we're just going to slide that wrist pin into the pin boss of the piston all the way through until it contacts against our bulldog clip.
18:39 I'll just mention here, this is another one of the tasks that I do like to perform without using gloves.
18:45 This requires a little bit of dexerity, we will be using pressure from our fingers in order to help get those wire locks into location so I find gloves just makes this a little bit more tricky.
18:56 Alright so we've got our wrist pin located and that's going to allow us easy access to get our first wire lock into position.
19:06 Now with this process, it is one of those tasks that you will probably find is a little bit fiddly to start with and then you'll get a bit of a technique for your particular piston and wire lock and once you've worked out that technique, the rest becomes a lot more seamless.
19:23 Keys to consider here is you want to make sure that we don't end up with the ends of our wire lock basically straddling this little half circle cut out in the piston here.
19:35 That's actually used to disassemble the wire lock so we need the wire lock actually running across that.
19:41 If we just conveniently end up with both ends of the wire lock either side of that, it's going to be very very difficult to extract that wire lock when we want to disassemble the piston during a freshen up.
19:50 So what I'm going to do is take our first wire lock here and I'm going to get the end of the wire lock located here in our little groove.
20:00 Now I've located the wire lock here so that I'm going to actually be able to use the underside of the piston to help compress that wire lock and at this stage, all I'm using is pressure from my fingers.
20:10 I'll use a thumb there just to help get that started and at this point we can take our little flat blade jeweller's screwdriver and I'm just going to apply a little bit of pressure down and we want to be careful here obviously that we aren't marking the piston.
20:22 So I've just pushed that down there and now work that around and again just using the end of that jeweller's screwdriver, it's only contacting the wire lock itself and we've heard that nice little click there, that's into location.
20:38 So we've got our first wire lock in position there, we can now extract our bulldog clip and we can remove our wrist pin.
20:47 Now what we'll do is go through the full assembly of this number one piston and connecting rod and then we'll move on, speed up the process and repeat it for our remaining 3 rods.
20:55 Now obviously we want to make sure that everything is well lubricated when we do our final installation for these parts.
21:02 And while I am a big advocate of using engine oil for a lot of the lubrication on our bearing surfaces, in this case with the wrist pin and the pin boss in the piston and the small end of the rod, I do like, to use a moly based lubricant.
21:16 This is an area that can take some time to get good lubrication once the engine is up and running, so the moly based lubricant's going to give us good protection while that's happening.
21:26 So what I'm going to do is just use a finger here to apply a generous amount of that moly lubricant to the inside of the pin boss in the piston and then we'll repeat that with the small end of the rod, so let's get that done now.
21:43 Alright all of our parts are lubricated here and it's time to assemble the rod onto the piston.
21:48 Now with this particular rod design we don't have any forced oil lubrication for the thrust face of the bore so it technically doesn't matter which way around we locate our rod.
21:59 I do always make sure though that irrespective of which way around the rod is located that all 4 are the same, just for consistency.
22:08 So for a start what we're going to do is take our wrist pin here and we're going to get that installed into the first side of the piston.
22:16 We're then going to take our connecting rod and we'll locate that in position as well.
22:21 We can just simply slide the wrist pin right the way through and get it into location.
22:27 We'll now get our piston located again so that we can install our second wire lock and this is essentially a repeat of the process we just went through.
22:35 Of course this time we don't need to use our bulldog clip in order to locate the wrist pin.
22:41 So let's get our wire lock and again exactly the same, what we're going to do is start by locating the wire lock here and we're just going to be using the underside of the piston there just to help compress that wire lock into location.
22:54 Again at this point all I've done is used light pressure from my fingers, just a little bit of pressure from my thumb there, that will help get that into location.
23:02 Now we can use the end of our jeweller's screwdriver and we'll just get that into location and then we can just work that around and again we are only pushing down on the actual wire lock itself.
23:16 So you can hear that nice satisfying click when it is positively located in the wire lock groove.
23:22 And a good visual inspection of the wire lock, just making sure that both sides there are properly located.
23:29 We've obviously got a little bit of excess lube on that side of the piston where it's already pushed out and we'll clean that up as well so at this point we've got our first piston assembled onto our connecting rod.
23:40 It's a case now of going through and repeating that process for our remaining 3.
23:45 Let's get that done now.
24:38 OK we've got all of the pistons now installed onto the rods and we're comfortable that all of those wire locks are in fact properly in place.
24:45 We're now going to install the rings onto the pistons.
24:48 In order to demonstrate the ring installation process, we've got 1 of our pistons and rods here, number 1 piston and rod sitting vertically on our workbench.
24:57 Now we're doing this so that we can easily film and demonstrate this, however typically I'd recommend that you do this with the conrod and piston supported in a vice or you can also put them into a conrod and piston stand like we've got here.
25:11 However for our purposes, this will suffice.
25:14 Now what we also need to understand is what we're actually going to be doing with our ring gap location and this is something we often get quizzed about and honestly I think it's something that is maybe a little bit over thought by a lot of engine builders, particularly novices.
25:29 The reason being that the ring end gaps do not stay where you put them, the rings will actually rotate on the pistons in operation so where we start with the ring gaps is not necessarily going to be too relevant as to where they end up staying.
25:43 However best practice, we also want to start with them in a location so at least we don't have the ring gaps aligned.
25:51 Now JE with our piston and ring kit do provide some information based on where we should be aligning the ring gap so we don't have to guess here, we're just going to be doing what they recommend.
26:03 Before we go ahead though and install the rings, we do need to do a little bit of prep work on the rings.
26:09 First of all, we need to give them a thorough clean down with brake clean and a rag, making sure that we remove any protective film or coating that is applied to them for storage.
26:18 And also the rings that we have gapped, it's likely that this can end up resulting in a bit of a burr on the edge of the ring where we have ground the ring.
26:29 So all we need to do is make sure that we remove that using a fine needle file.
26:34 Important to mention here that we are only trying to remove that burr if it exists, we're not trying to chamfer the edge of the ring.
26:42 So we're going to start by just going through and doing that and we'll remember we only ended up removing material from our top ring so just going to go through and just debur that top ring gently, let's get that done now.
27:00 Right with our top rings deburred, I'm going to go through and just thoroughly clean all of the individual rings now.
27:23 Alright we've now got all of our rings cleaned down and we're ready to install them onto our pistons.
27:28 Now before we do this, you'll see that I have made a mark here, an arrow on the top of our piston crown that's going to face towards the front of the block.
27:35 And this just allows us to reference where the piston is going to be pointing and also gives us a reference for our little diagram from JE.
27:44 Now we do need to be mindful when we are doing this.
27:47 More often than not we're going to find that our pistons are not symmetrical.
27:49 What that means is the valve pockets for the intake valve will normally be larger and often deeper than for the exhaust valves.
27:57 And we need to make sure that we have taken this into account and we know which way the piston actually needs to be installed into the block.
28:04 In our case, the crown of this piston is actually symmetrical, we don't have a asymmetrical skirt design, we don't have an offset wrist pin so the piston can actually be installed in either way however once we've made a decision on which way it's going to sit, we need to stick with it.
28:21 So I've made those marks there and we can reference that to our JE little sheet here and we're going to start here by installing our oil ring expander.
28:31 Now this is quite easy to install just by hand, we want to be just mindful that we don't end up damaging it because they are quite fragile.
28:39 So we can reference the little diagram here and we'll see that our oil ring expander rail gap should be on the far side of the piston so what I'm actually going to do before I rotate it into location is I'll just get it installed on the side of the piston where I can see the gap.
28:55 The reason we want to do this, before we rotate it into position is just to make sure that we don't end up with the ends overlapping.
29:02 This should become pretty apparent if that is the case because it will make it very difficult for the rest of the installation but in this case I know that the end gap is nicely located, not overlapping and we've got our end gap into location.
29:15 Now we can install the oil ring rails.
29:18 With the oil ring rails, these are relatively easy to install by hand.
29:24 They're relatively flexible and we don't need a ring expander tool to install them.
29:28 Again a little bit of care as required to make sure that they aren't damaged.
29:32 Again if we reference our little diagram we can see that our top oil ring rail gap should be located over here on our piston.
29:40 So what I'm going to do is start by just putting a little twist in the oil ring rail and get it located, one end located and then essentially we can just gently spiral that into location on the piston, making sure that the gap does end up exactly where we want it.
29:57 From here it's a repeat process with our lower oil ring rail.
30:01 And this time we want our end gap to be located, essentially over here.
30:06 Let's go ahead and get that one on now.
30:26 Alright once we've got both of those rails located we can just do a final check of our ring end gap location and make sure that we are comfortable with that.
30:35 In this case, we are, everything's looking good there so it's onto our second ring.
30:39 Now this is where we can use a ring expander tool if you've got access to one.
30:45 I've got one here that's really cheap, I think this tool's around about $15 USD and it is quite handy.
30:52 It's not impossible to install the rings and do a really good job by hand.
30:56 What I can tell you though is that repeatedly expanding the rings with your two thumbs is going to end up getting quite painful, particularly if you're assembly multiple pistons and multiple rings.
31:09 There is a small but real risk of actually damaging the ring by expanding it just using your thumbs as well.
31:16 Although I have built multiple engines this way no problems, it does require a little bit more care.
31:21 What we are going to do though is use this ring expanding tool and get the job done with that.
31:27 Before we install the ring, we do need to be a little mindful of the orientation and in the case of the JE rings, they do have a number laser etched onto the top surface of the ring.
31:38 So if you've got a etching like that, it always must face up.
31:41 So we again can look at our little diagram here, we know that our second ring gap is going to be facing directly towards us.
31:50 So we'll make sure our orientation is correct, we'll get this installed into our expander tool, make sure that it is located properly and then it's just going to be a case of expanding it gently out, we only want to expand it just barely enough to get it over the piston crown and get it into the groove and we can release that.
32:10 Sometimes requires just a little bit more manipulation to make sure that you have actually got that exactly where it should be.
32:16 It's in location now.
32:19 Another check I always like to do when I am installing the rings as well is just to make sure that the ring is completely free in the ring groove.
32:27 Alright we've got one more ring to install now which is of course our top compression ring and no big surprises here, the top compression ring gap is going to be 180° opposed to our second so facing away from me.
32:40 Again what I'm going to do is install it with the gap facing me just for simplicity and then we'll rotate it into location.
32:47 Again there is a number etched onto the top of this ring, we need to be mindful of that, make sure that is facing up, get it installed into our expander and again just expand that out gently and get it into location.
33:00 Again once that is in the groove, I'm just going to make sure that it is nice and free which it is and we can rotate that around into the correct orientation.
33:10 Just moved our second ring a little bit in the process there so we'll get that back.
33:13 So there's our first piston complete.
33:15 We'll now get that piston into our rack ready for installation and we can carry on and repeat that process for the remaining 3 pistons and we'll just speed this up a little bit from here.
34:09 Alright that's all of our rings installed correctly on our pistons, we can now bring our block back in and we can get stuck into the assembly of the short block itself.
34:19 The first component we're going to fit into our engine block is our under piston oil squirters and it's really important to make sure that you don't overlook these as once the crankshaft is in, it's very very difficult to get access to the location of the block to adequately fit them and torque them into place.
34:37 Now these do require a little bit of care when it comes to cleaning them.
34:41 In particular the actual bolt has a pressure relief valve inside of it.
34:46 The design of this is so that we don't end up reducing the oil flow to the bearings at low RPM when the oil pressure is low.
34:54 And it can be a place where contaminants and debris can end up getting trapped.
34:59 A good way to clean these out is simply using a liberal spray of brake clean and then using a high pressure air and by supplying that high pressure air down through the centre of that bolt, that will actually open the pressure relief valve inside of it, allowing any debris to be cleared out.
35:13 So what we're doing to do now is locate these in place, there is a little tang on the end of the under piston oil squirter and we need to make sure that this is properly located into the matching hole in the block so let's get them into the block now.
35:38 Now that we've got those all installed loosely, they're just finger tight at this point we're going to use our torque wrench to tighten these up.
35:45 The Mitsubishi factory specification for these is 24 foot pound and we are using here a 3/8th torque wrench because 24 foot pound is just off the bottom edge of our half inch digital torque wrench so we've already made our adjustment, we'll go ahead now and torque these to spec.
36:05 Right now that we've got our under piston oil squirters into location, the next step is to install our bearings.
36:11 Now we do need to be mindful here that with our main bearings there are upper and lower bearing shells.
36:16 The shells that are listed as upper, these are actually going to the upper part of the block, obviously we've got the block upside down now so seems a little bit counter intuitive.
36:26 The important point to note is that these bearing shells do have lubrication holes.
36:30 So if you get these around the wrong way, this is going to result in instant engine failure because there will be no oil supply to our main bearings on our crankshaft so very very important.
36:40 Before we go ahead and install these, what I am going to do, given that our block has been cleaned, I'm just going to take a clean rag and our brake clean and give the bearing surfaces, or the journals I should say in the block, one final clean.
36:50 I'll also go through a thoroughly clean both sides of the bearing shells before we install those so let's go ahead and do that now.
37:05 Alright we've got all of our bearing surfaces cleaned down and the general surfaces in the block, it's now a case of simply installing those bearing shells.
37:12 Now this as we've showed in the body of the course, what we want to be careful of here is not scraping material off the back of the bearing shell as they're being installed.
37:22 So we're going to locate the tang into the receiver groove in the block and then we're just going to apply a little bit of pressure and push the bearings forward so that they slide nicely into place.
37:38 Alright we've got our bearings installed, the next step is to apply some lubricant to those bearings and this becomes a bit of a personal preference aspect here, there are special assembly lubricants which we can use.
37:50 My personal preference here is to use engine oil, just clean engine oil and this allows the rotating assembly to rotate a little bit easier and this is quite important because we get a sense when we're turning the crankshaft after the bearings have been torqued up, if everything is spinning as freely as we expect.
38:07 Some of the assembly compounds are a little bit heavier or a little bit more viscous at this makes turning the crankshaft difficult so with that being said we're just going to use our oiling can here and apply a liberal generous coating of oil to all of those bearing surfaces.
38:24 Alright it's time now to install our crankshaft and a couple of points I'll make here.
38:28 You can install the main studs prior to installing the crankshaft.
38:32 This does mean that you need to be a little bit more careful when you are lowering the crankshaft into position, it is very easy to scrape the main journals against the studs and this can score or damage the journal so I prefer during the assembly to leave the studs out until the crankshaft is in location.
38:49 Another point you'll remember with the crankshaft is that we did remove the gallery plugs from the crankshaft when we were cleaning it.
38:55 So really critical to make sure that these plugs get reinstalled.
39:00 Not particularly difficult task and we're just going to need to use a small amount of thread sealing paste on the threads of those so that we are not going to have any leaks.
39:11 We've already done that so let's get our crankshaft and we'll gently lower than into location.
39:28 With our crankshaft now in location, we can install our 2 thrust washers.
39:32 So in the later model 4G63 blocks these are just two thrust washers and these go into the upper section into the block so we want to slide these into place now while we've got easy access.
39:43 Of course before we do that, we're going to give them a thorough clean with brake clean and our rag.
39:51 Now installing the thrust washers is pretty straightforward, we do just need to keep one aspect in mind.
39:57 We can see on the thrust washer on one side of them we have these two grooves.
40:04 On the other side it is just completely flat.
40:06 It's really critical just to be mindful of which way around the thrust washers are being installed, we want to install them with these two grooves facing out towards the crankshaft.
40:16 Of course the other side of that, the flat side is going to go back towards the block.
40:20 Now before we do install these, I am just going to apply a generous amount of my moly based lubricant.
40:26 So with this particular surface it can be reasonably heavily loaded, particularly during initial cranking when we're getting oil pressure so we want something that's going to give it a good amount of protection so we'll just apply our moly based lubricant to that surface now and we'll give it a bit of a smear around there just with our finger to make sure that it's covering everything that's going to contact the crankshaft.
40:50 From here again just being mindful of the direction that it is going to be located, turn that around so it is facing the crankshaft and we're just going to slide that down into location there and it'll just very easily rotate around until it is in the correct orientation.
41:06 What we want to do now is install the opposite washer and to do this, can be helpful just to slide the crankshaft forward or back depending which side you're working on just to give you a little bit more room to slide that into place so we'll go ahead now repeat that process with our other washer.
41:26 Next up we're going to install our ARP main stud kit.
41:29 We're going to wind those studs down into the block and just using an Allen key we're just going to tighten them just slightly beyond finger tight so let's get that done.
42:09 Now that we've got our ARP hardware installed we're going to take our cradle and we're going to fit the bearings into that.
42:15 Again, paying particular attention to make sure that all of the surfaces are clean before we do so.
42:35 With our bearing shells now installed we're of course going to apply our engine oil to those bearing surfaces liberally as well.
42:44 Now we can take our cradle and lower it gently into place over the ARP hardware.
42:48 We do need to be a little bit mindful of the direction or orientation of that cradle and there is an arrow that faces towards the front of the block that we need to pay attention to so let's lower than down into place now.
43:05 Now it's a case of fitting the remaining ARP hardware, the washers and nuts applying a small amount of their ARP moly lube to the threads as we do so, so let's get those into place.
43:32 Now that we've got the ARP hardware fitted, we can tighten the cradle down and pull it down into the register in the block, we want to do this gently and carefully, making sure that we're doing it evenly, we don't want to pull the cradle down into the block unevenly.
43:47 So we're going to do this initially with a half inch drive ratchet.
43:50 We're not trying to tighten it here much beyond finger tight and then we'll move onto our torque wrench so let's get that done now.
44:16 Alright now that we've got all of the fasteners initially snugged down, I've got the cradle located properly in the block, we can swap to our torque wrench.
44:23 Now we're going to follow ARP's recommendation here of 60 foot pound.
44:27 I'm going to achieve that in 3 steps though so we're going to go 25 then 50 and then finally a step up to 60 foot pound and we're going to follow the Mitsubishi manual's recommendation in terms of torque order.
44:41 So we're always going to be starting in the middle and working our way diagonally out and again this is just in order ensure that we don't end up unevenly torquing the caps down which could adversely affect our bearing clearance so let's go through our first stage now at 25 foot pound.
45:02 We'll step up now to our second stage of 50 foot pound and we'll repeat that process.
45:13 Then of course our third and final stage up to 60 foot pound, let's get that done now.
45:24 Alright our third and final stage is complete there, as a sanity check here, with mission critical fasteners like this, I always like to do one last pass and just make sure that the torque wrench clicks off.
45:35 It should click off because we're not actually going to get the fastener moving before we overcome the set point at 60 foot pound of torque, this will very quickly highlight if we've missed a single individual fastener so let's just go through that now.
45:52 Well we're comfortable that all of the fasteners have been correctly torqued and now's an opportunity to actually rotate the crankshaft and here it should rotate relatively smoothly and with reasonably little effort which is exactly what you can see we've got going on here.
46:09 Now it's not going to end up rotating 3 or 4 revolutions if you give it a light spin, we've still got the oil in there which is relatively viscous but it should move nice and smoothly, nice and freely.
46:22 The next check we're going to make here is our available end float to set both those thrust washers that we just recently installed.
46:29 In order to check this I'm going to use a dial gauge on a magnetic stand.
46:34 Just going to locate this on the front of the block which is nice and easy given the 4G63 is a cast iron block.
46:41 And we want to just locate this so that is running in line with the crankshaft snout.
46:47 Now we can then zero our dial gauge, this might take a little bit of tweaking here as we manipulate the crankshaft backwards and forwards and to do that I'm just going to use a pair of flat blade screwdrivers here.
47:00 We can just locate this so that we can press the crankshaft forwards and backwards in the block.
47:06 And we'll manipulate that and see how much end float we actually have.
47:11 Alright so we can see as we're moving it backwards and forwards here, we're moving it just on 5 thousandths of an inch.
47:17 The specific range that is tolerable in the Mitsubishi workshop manual for this is between 2000 and 9000 so we're quite nicely in the centre of that range.
47:26 So we're confident that our thrust clearance is OK so we can remove our dial indicator from the snout of the crankshat.
47:33 We're going to now flip the engine block over and we can get started installing our pistons and rods.
47:40 Before we can install our pistons and rods we do need to go ahead and install our rod bearings and of course the first step here is to give both sides of the bearings a thorough clean so we'll do that now.
47:57 Naturally we now need to repeat this process of cleaning down the journal surfaces for the conrod as well as the cap and we're going to begin by installing number one and four piston and rod assemblies together so those are the first two rods that we will be working with so let's get that done now.
48:21 Just as we did with the main bearing shells, we're now going to install our big end shells into the connecting rod and the cap.
48:36 At this point we're pretty well ready to install our first piston and rod assembly and this does require a reasonably generous amount of oil to lubricate the bearing surface, we're also going to be lubricating the skirt of the piston and applying a generous amount of oil to the ring pack as well.
48:52 In order to install the piston and rod assembly into the block, I am using an ARP tapered ring compressor and important to make sure that we do match the bore diameter which in this case of course is 85.5 mm.
49:05 So we're also going to give our ring compressor a quick clean internally as these can end up trapping dirt and debris because they are oiled.
49:13 We're then going to apply a generous amount of fresh engine oil to the inside of our ring compressor and we can also just smear that around the entire diameter.
49:25 We've got our ring compressor ready to go so we're going to take our number one piston and again we're going to lubricate the big end bearing and then our ring pack and the skirt of the piston.
49:48 With everything ready to go, we can now take our ring compressor and we're just going to gently lower the piston assembly through the ring compressor.
49:56 Just want to get the skirt located into the ring compressor and drop it down so that the skirt is just protruding out the bottom.
50:04 Take note of our arrow which is going to of course face towards the front of the block and get this gently located into the top of the bore and make sure that our ring compressor is sitting squarely on the top of the block.
50:19 Now at this point one of the benefits with the tapered ring compressor is we only need light pressure with our two thumbs and the piston should neatly slide down through the ring compressor and into the bores so if we need any excessive pressure, that's a sign something isn't quite right, we should stop, take note and readdress the situation.
50:37 So let's get our first piston installed now.
50:41 Now that we've got our piston installed into the top of the bore, we can gently press the piston down through the bore and we'll be also using our other hand from the underside of the bore guiding the conrod down onto the crankshaft journal.
51:04 Alright our first piston is now installed, we're going to repeat that process with number 4 piston.
51:19 Now that we've got our first two pistons and rods into the block, we can rotate the block again on our engine stand and it'll allow us to get access to the bearing caps so we can tighten those down.
51:32 Again before installing our bearing caps, we want to be mindful of making sure that we generously lubricate the bearing surface and also take note of the cap number, making sure that the orientation of the cap is correct and that we are locating it on the correct connecting rod.
51:51 Now we can install our ARP custom age 625 fasteners and as usual these do require a small amount of the ARP moly based lubricant on the threads as well as underneath the heads.
52:13 While it is a personal preference, I like to do my final stage of torque for all 4 bearing caps together at the same time, obviously we can't do that now until we've got number 2 and 3 piston assemblies installed so for now number 1 and number 4 caps, I'm just going to tighten to the first stage which is 25 foot pound of torque so let's get that done.
52:36 Alright we've got our first two piston and rod assemblies installed, we're going to rotate the crankshaft through, so number 2 and number 3 big end journals are at bottom dead centre, we can turn the engine block over on the stand again and we'll go through the same process with our number 2 and 3 piston and rod assemblies.
53:38 Alright at this stage we've got all 4 of our connecting rods torqued to our first stage of 25 foot pound of torque.
53:45 The specifications for these particular fasteners are between 75 and 85 foot pound of torque.
53:51 Alternatively you can use the stretch technique if you prefer.
53:54 In our case we are tightening these down to 80 foot pound and we're going to do this in further 2 stages so here what we'll do is rotate the crankshaft so we can access all of the connecting rods as we go.
54:06 Obviously we've got 2 and 3 currently pointing straight up towards us so these are accessible.
54:10 We'll do our second stage here before rotating the crankshaft.
54:14 So for our second stage here we're going to go up to 60 foot pound.
54:22 Now we can rotate the crankshaft, a really easy way of doing this when we've got no crank pulley fitted is to use a large crescent and we can slip this over the snout of the crankshaft and locate it against the keyway and it'll just give us a nice easy way of rotating the crank.
54:37 So we'll bring number 1 and number 4 to bottom dead centre now and repeat our second stage of torque.
54:47 Alright second stage complete there on all 4 connecting rods, we'll go to our final stage here of 80 foot pound and continue the process.
54:58 Before we rotate the crankshaft again, I'm just going to use a paint pen here and mark the head of those fasteners and this will just give me a visual cue that these have been tightened and I haven't overlooked them.
55:12 And our last stage on number 2 and 3 connecting rod.
55:20 Alright at this stage, most of the hard work is done on our short block assembly.
55:25 We're going to now prepare our oil pump assembly and our balance shaft for installation as well as our rear main seal.
55:33 We're going to first of all assemble our oil pump and get that ready for installation on the engine and the amount of work here really depends on exactly what you're doing with the oil pump as well as your balance shafts.
55:45 If you are retaining the balance shafts and you're reusing the oil pump, well there's not really a lot of work to do.
55:51 In our case we've elected to replace the oil pump with a brand new housing, brand new oil pump gears and we're also removing the balance shafts and we just need to discuss a little bit around the options for removing the balance shaft because that will also impact on what we're doing here.
56:07 Now I'll just get the balance shaft itself, this one has had the counter weight already machined off it so looks a little bit different to stock and I'll explain that as we go.
56:18 This is the back housing for the oil pump and here's our little driven gear for the oil pump which bolts to the balance shaft.
56:25 So the two options are, the most common option used to be at least, by cutting off the balance shaft as it exits that housing, this will eliminate the balance shaft.
56:34 Now this of course leaves a hole because there is an internal oil gallery running along that shaft to supply oil to the rear bearing.
56:42 Simple way of solving that problem is to drill and tap the back of the shaft for an 8th BSP pressure plug.
56:50 Now this does get the job done.
56:52 Of course we do have the other balance shaft that needs to be removed and I'll talk about that in a second but it eliminates this balance shaft and in a lot of applications, it will work just fine.
57:01 We have however seen failures from this method because the oil pump driven gear is now only supported by the material of the balance shaft that sits in the back of this cast alloy housing.
57:13 It's no longer got the support of that rear journal.
57:16 And in some instances what this can do is allow that gear to move around and as soon as we get some radial play in there, it ends up wearing into the housing and this has two affects, first of all it drops our oil pressure and secondly it will actually pump the aluminium debris that it's creating through the engine so neither good.
57:35 So my preferred technique and the only one I would recommend is to either have a competent machinist remove the counter weight off the balance shaft which is what we've done here or alternatively companies such as GSC Power Division, STM Tuned and I'm sure many others, actually provide billet replacement parts.
57:54 So really the choice is up to you.
57:56 While it's not part of our oil pump assembly I will just mention the other balance shaft.
58:01 That is really simple to remove, it just unbolts from the front housing, we've got the location for it here.
58:07 We do need to blank this, we can either do this with a custom machined alloy plug, or alternatively you can buy a frost plug or freeze plug that will be a press fit into there.
58:17 Some sealant on there, job done.
58:19 We do also need to make sure, which we've already discussed that the bearing for the other balance shaft has been turned by the engine machinist to blank that oil gallery inside of the block.
58:30 If we don't do this, it's going to result in low oil pressure so I know I've already discussed it but just a good time to reiterate.
58:37 Alright now that we know what we're doing here, we'll just talk about our new front cover.
58:42 And this does come with a brand new front crank seal already pressed into it.
58:47 A brand new seal for our oil pump as well so nothing to do here.
58:51 I've already mentioned that we are going to need to blank off the hole in the front cover for our other balance shaft.
58:57 So what we're going to do is get our gears into location here.
59:02 Now I'm going to generously lubricate this with oil as well as our engine assembly lube.
59:08 It's really important to prime the oil pump properly, otherwise we will struggle to get oil pressure.
59:14 So I'm just going to use a little block of timber here just to support this while I install it.
59:19 We'll get some oil down into this front cover to support, to lubricate the driven gear, the drive gear I should say properly and we'll get it into location.
59:34 Right we've got our drive gear located there in the oil pump housing and we now need to locate our driven gear.
59:42 Now of course this also involves the shaft which I've already bolted through here and bolted to the gear and we've got the other side of our oil pump plate there.
59:52 Now one important point to note here is that we will see there is a match mark on both of these gears and if we are retaining the balance shafts in their normal operation, absolutely critical that those match marks are located together when we're assembling them.
01:00:07 If we're removing the balance shafts though, that is not such an issue because the phasing of the balance shafts doesn't really matter for our application but if you are using the balance shafts as intended by Mitsubishi, important to make sure you take note of that.
01:00:22 So I'm going to go through here, add a little bit more oil to lubricate the components and then we're going to pack the oil pump gears with our engine assembly lube.
01:00:39 Alright now that we've got our oil pump properly primed there, well lubricated we're just going to drop the backing plate there down into location and there is a little dowel or couple of little dowels that will locate that properly and we'll get that into place.
01:00:57 And now take the bolts for the oil pump assembly and get those started as well.
01:01:12 Alright we've got our 4 bolts that hold the oil pump housing together tightened up.
01:01:16 Now the torque spec in the workshop manual for these is 13 foot pound of torque so it's actually not very high and this is something where if you do have a torque wrench that reads down that low, by all means you can use it but if you've only got a half inch or 3/8th torque wrench, there's a pretty good chance it won't go down that low so doesn't require a huge amount of torque and it is only into alloy so we don't want to over tighten that.
01:01:41 We've got one last fastener to fit here and this is this tapered screw that is part of the oil pump assembly so the problem with this is we do need an impact driver in order to install that, that's why I've got this little block of wood here.
01:01:56 The process of installing this is to use an impact driver like this one I've got here and it needs a sharp whack with a hammer on the back of it and that will tighten that so we'll go ahead and get that done now.
01:02:11 Alright so at this stage, we've got our oil pump assembly complete and ready to install so let's get that out of the way and we'll move on and deal with our rear main housing.
01:02:22 And here we are going to need to fit a new rear main seal.
01:02:27 At this point we've already thoroughly cleaned down our rear main seal housing and it's really important when we are doing this to concentrate on making sure that all of the excess silicon that's been used to seal that previously has properly been removed.
01:02:42 Also important to thoroughly clean out the housing where the new seal is going to be placed.
01:02:48 We've got our new seal, again this is a genuine Mitsubishi seal, I don't like using aftermarket seals where possible, I always stick to the genuine factory item.
01:02:59 And the installation here, is one of those situations where there are genuine special service tools available from Mitsubishi, you can also purchase generic seal installation and removal tools.
01:03:13 However the majority of people will not have access to those unless you're building a lot of engines so this is where a little bit of improvisation comes in.
01:03:22 What we want to do is basically have a way of properly supporting the outside diameter of the seal as we press it into place.
01:03:31 And I'll just locate it where it needs to go now and generally it's not too difficult to find a suitable item around the home workshop that you can use.
01:03:41 What I've found is that the factory balance shaft drive pulley from the 4G63 is a really good option and if I locate that there, we can see that it does fit quite nicely over the seal.
01:03:54 Now I will mention, if you are going to be reusing this, if you're fitting it to the engine, this is probably not something I would recommend doing, however particularly if you're dealing with a number of engines, you'll end up with excess parts like this which you can utilise.
01:04:12 So what we'll do is we'll take our plastic mallet here and it's just a case of gently tapping this down into location, we're going to be working our way around the perimeter and we want to make sure that we're pulling this down evenly so that it does end up nice and flush with the top of the rear main seal housing so let's get that done now.
01:04:39 Alright we've got our seal installed now and it's also worth just understanding what we're looking for in terms of how that seal should sit when it's properly installed.
01:04:49 And a good guide to this is always just to take a bit of a look at how the seal was before you removed it.
01:04:57 And with these, there is a slight chamfer at the top of the housing and this helps locate that new seal when we're pushing it into place.
01:05:05 And what we want to do is have that seal just sitting just on the edge of that chamfer and that will have it just marginally below the finished surface of the housing.
01:05:13 So at this point we've got our oil pump housing and we've got our rear main seal ready to install, we're now going to bring the engine block back in and we'll get these parts fitted.
01:05:24 Our first task here is to fit our rear main seal and this is pretty self explanatory.
01:05:29 A little difficult for us to demonstrate on camera just due to the location of that rear main seal and proximity to the engine stand.
01:05:38 However as I've said, pretty self explanatory process.
01:05:41 We're going to start though before we fit it by just adding a little bit of clean engine oil to that rear main seal and making sure that is lubricated right around its circumference.
01:05:52 We also need to apply a bead of sealant and for this I will be using our 3 bond.
01:05:58 And all we want here is a nice bead of sealant, we don't need to go excessive here and we want to make sure that we go with our sealant on the inside diameter of all of the bolt holes so we'll get that done now.
01:06:17 Now obviously you couldn't see exactly what I was doing here so we'll just get this under our overhead camera and we can see that bead of silicon and we' just can see that on each of the bolt and dowel holes I've just gone on the inside there just to make sure that that is going to seal properly.
01:06:32 Now before we do fit that in place, I am also just going to give the mating surface on the block one last clean with our brake clean, making sure that no oil or contaminants have got onto that during the assembly process of our crankshaft.
01:06:49 Alright we can now take our rear main seal being careful not to wipe that 3 bond off that we've just applied during the installation process, we'll slide it into place and get it located over the two dowels.
01:07:07 Alright we've now got that installed so we're going to obviously go through and fit and tighten our bolts so we'll get that done.
01:07:42 Alright with our rear main now correctly tightened, we're going to take the opportunity just to use some brake clean and a rag to clean down the excess silicon or sealant that has been squeezed out as that has been tightened up to the block.
01:07:58 Lastly we can now fit our oil pump assembly.
01:08:01 And there's a couple of steps that we're going to go through as we do this.
01:08:04 The first is that because we are using our cut down balance shaft, we do want to make sure that the rear bearing for the balance shaft is properly lubricated so we can use our oiling can and get some lubricant down into that location.
01:08:20 Next we're going to take our rag and brake clean, we'll give the front surface of the block that the gasket is going to sit against as well as our oil pump housing one final clean.
01:08:35 We can now take our new gasket and we can locate this over the two dowels on the front of the engine block.
01:08:44 And before we do fit the oil pump housing I'm going to add a little bit more lubricant to the rear journal of our balance shaft and I'm also going to lubricate our crank seal.
01:09:00 We can now guide the balance shaft journal into the bearing and we can locate the oil pump assembly onto those two dowels.
01:09:12 From here it's simply a case of refitting the bolts for our front cover and tightening them down, so let's go ahead and get that done.
01:09:43 Now I will just point out with the front cover assembly, we have removed our balance shaft so we no longer have a bolt going through the front cover there for our tensioner pulley for our balance shaft belt so we will also need to fit a short bolt just to blank that hole off.
01:10:01 At this point though, the assembly of our short block is complete and we can move onto our cylinder head.

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