the engine thing ... putting the thread to bed

[Tahrey1043]

(agh, i've been off here all week, totally lost my threads...)

Damn it all to crap! Which shells were those then, so i can check they haven't screwed me too? (can we group together and go demand a refund and apology for them being such f*ups? halfords may not stock the right leads but this stuff is far more critical)

Been on to the KS distributors via email. Upshot is they haven't got anything even remotely suitable listed, if their sales advisors are to be beleived. How much did your guy find them for, Logik? Might get desperate enough...

EDIT
OK anyone - any final clues on how to fix this?
I'm thinking, can I use the rings from some other engine size? Seeing as the bore is the same on all the engines from the 1.0 thru 1.3 CL, GT, G40 and diesel, including the carbed ones, would the piston crowns be the same, i.e. same rings on all of them? (only the stroke length + compression differs)
Perhaps GSF have cocked up on the 1.0 supply but not the 1.3..........?

Otherwise, does anyone have a beat up polo they'd like to take a nice engine from and put it into a not-(quite-)so-beat-up one? You can have the shell cheap but will have to pay for the transport yourself unless you bring the engine along to fit in-situ.

or....... could put an electric motor in it wonder how well it would run on just the starter at the moment, without the pistons in or head on?

[Tahrey1043]

just noticed something that might point to what the problem is here...



*sigh* buffoons.

OK, guess i'll either try sanding out the grooves a bit so the wrong ones will fit (assuming they're the right diameter as well - will have to check this) - shouldn't cause too much harm should it? - or go back thru this thread to see who else can supply them without costing TOO much. I'm now prepared to spend a bit more to get them from someone who knows arse from elbow (well, its not so bad - halfords don't know arse from face) but still not huge amounts.

wonder what ones from other engines might fit? cant imagine they're all brilliantly specialised as they are, after all, just springy rings of steel, that may as well come from some random pattern part manufacturer.

[LogIK]

LOL! You're joking about the sanding thing right?

All of the piston rings are the same, except for AAU and 3F ones. This is not made at all clear on the GSF website, infact, it's completely wrong. Anyway don't bother with GSF, as they definately cannot get them, so you need to be looking elswhere.

I've asked on the VAG parts section on this website and they can definately get them, but they are £20 a set (ie. 2 compression rings, 1 oil control ring) so you will need 4 sets, thus making it £80. My machinest sourced mine from Germany and got them for £70.

You may be best off tracking down your nearest machinest and take your pistons in and get him to get the correct rings. If not, I guess I could always ask the guy who got mine to get another set.

[Tahrey1043]

£70............. Well i'd certainly go for that rather than the £80 lot. you however are putting a nice performance machine together... i'm just knocking a shopping cart back together on a hobbyist basis.

i may well see if i can make the grooves a little wider, for that, and see what happens. the metal seems quite soft and i cant see what trouble it would cause - if they are in fact the same on the 1 litre and a more powerful engine, there's probably a lot of structural slack left when running at 45hp and some of it can be removed without issue..

because thats not so much going over my remaining budget as smashing it to little pieces. i'll have to see how desperate i get. i may well shell out.

if i think it's just too much, then i may as well have a go at making it work and then scrapping it, rather than just giving up and scrapping it.

very p*ssed off at the whole affair now!

[LogIK]

Don't try to sand them down or make the groves bigger. You will f**k it up no end. This is precision engineering so there's no use in trying to bodge things like that.

You may be able to get them cheaper than £70, but I just settled with that, after doing some research.

I know how you feel with the "utterly pissed off" thing.

I'm going through the same at the moment where nothing is going right, but hey, s**t happens. Things will work out in the end.

I hope your big-end bearing are the correct size. GSF my arse!

[Tahrey1043]

just out of interest which BEBs were yours, i think i still have my packet and i can certainly find the part number just to cross check. if they come out the same, well, it might all be different due to stroke length etc but i think i might ask them for a refund and see if more accurate ones can be found elsewhere. but at least the bearings i have are KS, as in vw oem makers (part of pierburg aint they) so theres a half chance theyre either right or the right parts are available, whereas the rings are some brand i never heard of (thompson? who're they?)

good call on the ring front - i did another comparitive measure up, they're not actually so much thicker than the originals as i originally thought, but just enough to stop them going in the grooves. however they ARE wider, so they wouldn't be able to compress down so far and probably wouldnt have fit in the bore anyway

as it happens theres a guy either on here or porka selling a 1.3 engine for £75 (condition unknown as yet) and it looks like he lives quite close to where my dad's bus route is......

what do you think the furthest distance a polo should be towed with its engine in pieces? 180 miles?

that or a go down there, collect, come back (sure its 360 miles, but i can at least get a family visit in so "worth it"), find an engine hoist hire for not too much, and figure out how to disconnect it from the gearbox with minimum hassle...

[Young_Un]

whilst sanding out your piston rings (great idea imo- all the 'best' tuners do it) why not take a flap wheel to the cylinder bores??? nothing like abit of blow by.

Also its a good idea to put sand in your oil, this will have much the same effect, but it obviously cheaper than wet and dry paper.

You Monkey.

[Tahrey1043]

lol well i am desperate mate. wont go as far as all that though.

however ive done the sensible thing and pulled a list of motor factors to worry at from the yellow pages & thompson local...

PS i wasnt sanding the rings - just thinking of making the grooves slightly bigger by a fraction of a mil. if they fit and seal then what difference does it make? Irrelevant anyway - the diameter's too large never mind the thickness

[Tahrey1043]

i think, considering the situation, that £45 for a set is a good enough price, don't you? even better he can get them "next day", which means call tomorrow before lunch - get em for tuesday. Mint. I just hope he can deliver or i'll be having to take an arvo off to go trekking to Cannock or Lichfield. ("Motormania", if you're interested)

i'll have to check with the guy just to make ABSOLUTELY SURE he's got the right code this time

sure as hell beats the place i called right before i got to his number though - they wanted £29.99.

...

PER PISTON!!!!!

er yeah thanks for looking guys.... but i could get a whole "new" car to use as a block donor for that much! ("Autoquip", that was)

could carry on hunting and see if anywheres cheaper but i already wasted enough precious lunchtime in a job that seems hellbent on giving me chronic indigestion this week.

funny though how everywhere i called that didnt shut me right now said they had to order them in - and the prices varied so wildly. surely there can't be THAT many suppliers that these small-time factors order from? and hell, who is it that THEY call when they need to reorder? I'd rather just go straight to source, seeing as they'll be ordering them in single-unit quantities anyway...

[ste mk1lx]

tahrey are these any good ?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 42443&rd=1

[Tahrey1043]

having a very "grrr" day

....grrr at mum b***h about my room (when i come and complain about hers is when she gets the right, surely?)
....grrr at new video drivers turning computer from stable donkey with only slightly sluggish 3D performance, to a juddering, top-heavy wreck with slightly faster 3D output. And not uninstallable by earthly means.
....grrr at my brother hogging the f*cking internet and having done things to the router to enable him to leech (not share - leech) several bittorrents at once while knackering my web browsing. The boy has no morals but was still p*ssed that I had a go on his PS2 whilst he was away for a week. (He's also robbed my roadmap)
....meaning I'm still waiting for that link to load....
.... oh here we go ....

damn. another grrr. They possibly could have been mate, and far cheaper than what I ordered yesterday... However I would have needed new gudgeon pin circlips and junk like that, and no guarantee they'll fit the AAU 1.05 properly (no pics of the top of the crown for starters - bad show, mr ebayman!). Hmmm.

....also grrr that, sans uber-map* (cheers K), i had to rely on Multimap to find the place... which didn't show that the quickest way to it, taking the A5127 from the A38, is not possible when heading north... only south. Guess which way I went, and ended up in burton, another 10 miles distant?
....only to find that they hadn't got their stories straight, I DIDNT need to leave a deposit in person, and could well have ordered over the phone instead of wasting an afternoon**.

*kills world*

anyway they're ordered now, I can only hope they're the right size - and that the big end bearings are (maybe should have asked for a set of them as well?)
I'll take my "wrong" new ones, and a set of the old ones along, plus a piston, when I collect to make sure they fit.

* Phillips "drivers road atlas" circa 2002.. doesnt have the m6 toll, or the proper route of the A55, but covers every other piddly little road in existance, with accurate junction layouts. It's superb and I bet a similarly detailed update isn't available any more.

** all the same i discovered this little road ( http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... ane9wg.gif ) that is just about the nicest preposterously tree-lined lane for lazily motoring down on a sunny weekend EVER. It also leads to a village that seems to be composed almost entirely of pubs... good future place to live methinks.
It's also not a million miles away from somewhere called Curborough... why does that ring a bell? There were several seemingly race-prepped golfs cruising about..

[Tahrey1043]

edit:

...
...
...

f*cksocks!

Ste, i'm looking at the ebay auction now and may ask the guy if he's got any better pictures. Better to dick about with circlips than to give up entirely... is that your username or did you just run across them?

Logik man, what would the lead time be on getting them posted along from your guy?

this once was a post about volksbits in selly oak doing me right, but they too have fallen prey to the retarded mong in the importers thinking that 1300cc rings will fit a 1050.... THEY WONT YOU BLOODY MORON, CHECK A COPY OF ELSA SOMETIME.
Still cant complain about the service from VB though - the guy in there was genuinely nice and even had a scour of elsa himself that left both of us scratching our heads over WTF was going on.

[Tahrey1043]

Can't beleive i'm almost done with this now.

Started the lump up at about 8 this eve to get a video for logik (who kindly offered to diagnose any lingering troubles with it), and, blow me, it actually ran quite sweetly - for a 1043 SPi anyway. Making the familiar churning engine note that I got used to before, a little louder thanks to not having the intake "horn" on. The only bad noise being the continuing staccato scrape of the timing mark plate against the alternator pulley, which I can rectify with a pair of pliers tomorrow.
Even the throttle response was back to something approximating normality, rather than near-random... though it still isnt settling down as well as it could. This is good though, as it gives me a chance to rectify any slips off the pedal (of myself, or my good friend the seat-braced stoplock) without it falling down to idle speeds.

If my luck holds, it just needs a battery, a £15 tyre, and some paperwork, and its good to go ... off on a 50mph, acceleration-free voyage of discovery. I've got a week off coming up. Think I'll go to the seaside

Just to close this (already pretty well mothballed) thread off, a reply to the first suggestion on the first page - it was a nice one, unfortunately experience says otherwise.

as your going to be renewing the timing belt I would suggest putting the car in gear and try to undo the bolt that way

Though I didn't use this method for removal in the end, I tried it when putting the cam sprocket back on, making use of the new belt. It slipped and jumped something rotten... the bolt actually needs far more torque than I realised (something like 80 Nm! almost as much as the head bolts, i'd wager).
Just very glad I'd moved it to 90 degrees BTDC beforehand
The old standby of shoving a screwdriver (or in this case, a chisel) through one of the holes to brace it against the head worked well, however... though you could see the chisel bending and it seemed temporarily cold-welded to both sprocket and head when I went to remove it. Better to spread the load with several chisels (or, that funny tool) next time?

Goodnight thread...

damn, but that sig pic is hypnotic, i'll have to change it pretty quick

[LogIK]

Glad you've got it running.

I guess the next things for you to do is to make sure the timing is set up correctly and sort out why it's overheating. Hopefully it just an airlock in the system. Use the method that I described to you and it will get rid of the airlock.

Anyhow, with regards running it in, don't be frightened to use acceleration, just don't hammer it or let it lug. You need to put the engine under loads for short periods at a time and vary the revs as much as you can, to ensure the rings seat properly. My method was to get it sitting at about 50MPH on the motorway, then slowly accelerate to 60, then completely let the throttle off until you slow back down to 50 again. After a few hundred miles, you can bring the revs up a bit more and do short period of three quarter throttle acceleration.

Avoid doing short journeys in her as well. It's all about co-efficients of thermal expansion, so you need to get that engine fully up to temperature for long periods.

[Tahrey1043]

so i'm guessing having it run for a max of ten minutes on the trot whilst trying to get the bloody timing sorted isnt reccomended then

mind you the fan did come on a couple times...

(and neither will be the first trip out - a roundabout route to an MOT centre taking in as many miles as i think i can get away with, and a tyre fitters)

i dont think its overheating now, just coming up to temperature as you might expect it to sitting at 2000rpm going nowhere.... it gets warm, hot, and eventually hot enough to trigger the fan for a couple minutes, which cools it off nicely. got the last of the bubbles out *i think* ... need to give you a pinch and a punch for suggesting to have the heater bleeder open with the engine going though, it p*ssed coolant everywhere like a baby boy having his nappy changed! hehehe
but with it closed and it ticking along at a nice pace i was able to give the pipes some satisfying squeezes with the expansion tank lid off, got bubbles, and then not-really bubbles, and able to top it up quite quickly to the MAX line.

timing is STILL playing me havoc though. its sounding pretty much normal now that the thing isnt rubbing on the pulley (though theres a clacky noise i hope isnt a tappet and more a usual sound i'd forgotten about) but i cant get it to settle right - it's close, but not right, certainly doesnt sound like an engine that wants to idle properly when i dare to let off the throttle ... and of course i couldnt rescue that timelite anyway as, i forgot, the bulb went. So its all half blind guesswork. Gave up in the end, just set it to a point where it seemed reasonably happy, popped the connectors back on the battery terminals, undid the crocodile clips, closed the bonnet and reversed it up onto the driveway with a lot more ease than expected.

(logik if you want the vids to check on that, you can be my guest, but it'll certainly be a heck of a DL - i filled the entire 512mb card in about 45 minutes, luckily it's in "chapter" chunks, and again totally used up a pair of batteries )
(oh and was it actually necessary to remove the dizzy to get the cam cover / head off anyway? I'm not convinced any more, having gone thru it all, i think it would have happily stayed where it was)

edit --- only took about half that number of videos. for some reason my cameras had a funny fit and told me i was out of video space when theres at least a good 200-250mb free still. WTF? (maybe im only allowed so much of it used up by vid and the rest HAS to be pictures? wierdness)

still thats a hell of a lot to upload on a 16kbyte outbound connection