Well within spec then, would say closer to the tighter side too. 0.09x would be quite loose i'd imagine.
Yeah its about bang on IMO, too tight and it would restrict the oil. Thrust bearing clearance is between 0.025 and 0.05, havnt got any gauges inbetween those. Just need to check my ring and big end clearances now and shes good to go. Waiting for the sump and other parts to be cleaned should be picking them up after work.
Great work so far Karl Are there any other ways to measure the crank end float other than to buy the gauge and magnetic stand?
Thanks fellas! There only other ways I can think of are completely impractical, could use circular gauges for measuring the bearings and journals but that would work for size only and not account for the parts torqued down or concentricity either. I would imagine they are probably used by the bearing makers though but that would probably just be a go and no go to check its within tollerances? Another way I have used before is an air gauge, which perhaps could be used if the crank was assembled dry, they usually work by pressurising and measuring back pressure, so the tigher the gap the higher the back pressure, but I only used them for measuring bore diameters with extremely tight tollerances they can be extremely accurate, providing there are no other variables such as bore taper and surface finish etc. Remember one particular bore had a +/- 0.004mm tollerance and could litterally be thrown out by somebody opening a door and temperature changing by a couple of drgrees . Anyway this is also something to perhaps consider with engine bearings as they operate at both cold and hot temps, with different materials being used for the crank, block, caps, bearings etc so they can all expand at different rates by the same change in temperature. Sure this has all been figured out by the manufacturers (or maybe by trial and error?) Anyway Im going on a bit now there are too many variables here to use air pressure, and you would need to know the pressures for a bearing at bottom and top limits of the tollerance to set it up not to mention pressurising one oil feed at a time accurately. Just not practical for us guys building one engine! Would love to know if anyone has any other ways?
Got the casings and sump back after having them cleaned, with a touch of OCD I decided I couldnt face putting a weather battered sump on my newly painted block so it had to have at least some tlc, so I painted the sump and crank end casing with a high temp paint, as I wont be firing up this engine for the forseeable future to bake the paint it left me with no choice, take a fairly large risk of death from the mrs and use the oven Anyway I am really happy with the result, how long it will last I am not sure? What I am sure of is tomorrow I will be cleaning the oven, buying a bunch of air fresheners and being unusually nice Now I need to find the right moment to break the news to her that I have around 10 more to bake
Got the rocker cover finished today, not sure the blue came out as light as I hoped but pretty happy with it. Might look better in grey?
Forgot to mention before about a pointer for anyone else using the ARP cap stud kit! The nuts are 13mm 12 spline, but the end cap is different to the other four, this cap has cut away for the bolts / studs. My slots for the bolt head is 17.2mm wide (sure they will all be the same) and doesnt allow most 13mm sockets down. There should be thin wall sockets out there with 13mm internal and no greater than 17mm external but I had to turn a socket down for this job as shown in the photo to explain. Anyway hopefully it can take the 60ft/lb torque! Failing that I may mill the slow out to widen it if this becomes a problem and also reface the cap bolt face seats if needs be. Hopefully this helps somebody out before they get to the problem!
I have a 3/8 socket that just fits, but there is too much pressure on the sides for my liking and dont want to get a false torque from it, also unfortunately the torque wrench I have it 1/2 so dont really want to use a adaptor down to 3/8. But that doesnt mean other sockets dont fit!
It was E-tech vht ìn graphite, and the other is just halfords vht light matt blue. Everythings been degreased then through a parts wash twice, a lot of brake cleaner, alot of hand scrubbing, refinnished all the mating surfaces by hand then cleaned again will see how long it lasts though when its in the car!
Really liking the colours on those. Might have a rethink on painting mine again in that dark grey. It' come out much better than mine
Thanks mate I was actually not sure if the blue looks right on the grey but its growing on me. Didnt want it all to be grey and black.
Got hold of some half decent scales today, accurate to 1g so weighed out my pistons, rods then the assembled rods and pistons. Wossner forged 83mm Pistons with rings fitted: 1 - 307g 2 - 308g 3 - 308g 4 - 308g PEC I beam forged Rods: 1 - 613g 2 - 613g 3 - 613g 4 - 613g Assembled pistons and rods (rod, pistons, rings, gudgeon pin and circlips **without bolts**) with as closer amount of assembly oil as I can visualy measure. 1 - 1074g 2 - 1075g 3 - 1074g 4 - 1075g Completely happy with the assembled parts! All withing 1g which is outstanding for an assembly. Finally a last check over the crank before it goes in for good (hopefully ) Going to be alot more going on over the next few days!
Got the crank back in and studs torqued down. As it turned out my stud nuts are infact 12mm 12spline not 13mm as above, so to torque them down correctly I ended up taking another trip to turn down another 12mm socket so that it cleared the side of cap 1, this is incase the cap is pulling on the side and gives a false torque. Serves me right for guessing head sizes Anyway crank went in again without issues, already measured tollerances and all bearings had been left in so no need to remeasure. Assembled the rod / piston assembly already as in the post above, so was ready to drop them in. Fitted the pistons / rods, all went smoothly wasnt able to get hold of a 83mm tapered sleeve so had to run with a micky mouse piston ring compressor as found in your local halfords store or on ebay anyway after much messing around setting the rings and fitting, they are all in. Next to gauge the big end clearances, standard Renault tollerance is: 0.015 - 0.079 metric. All came in the same band on the gauge at around 0.035 so just below the mid limit! Then measured all the ARP rod bolts, greased and torqued them down to spec and measured their stretch. I measured from the bolt head face to the thread end. Measurements are original then stretched length. 1 - 38.11 / 38.12 2 - 38.10 / 38.11 3 - 38.13 / 38.14 4 - 38.09 / 38.10 5 - 38.10 / 38.11 6 - 38.11 / 38.13 7 - 38.10 / 38.11 8 - 38.10 / 38.12 All within the 0.025 stretch limit. So then cleaned the bolts, re-greased and re-torqued down to spec. So thats my crank assembly almost complete! Still got alot to do so more to follow shortly
Managed to get some more done today, checked the new oil pump over then primed it, all OK. Got the timing side crank seal on along with the oil pump, so the sump is now on too! Put the heat exchanger back on too along with a filter, covered all holes leading in to the oil / coolant ways as Im hoping thats the last I see of the bottom end
Inlet manifold complete. Refaced the mating surfaces and painted it. Pointer if anyone goes to paint one and you cannot find any bungs to plug the injector seats, a penny is the petfect fit!
Fitted the flywheel side crank seal today and fitted a couple of other parts to the block. All my brackets and fittings are now cleaned and painted and anything that is not on the block is ready to go! So thats pretty much the bottom end complete and Im pretty happy with it. As it will be a while until my head is complete, I have adapted the nylon plate I made earlier to stop the deck getting damaged and to help prevent condensation. Added some inspection holes so I can keep check on the bores and keep her oiled too. So still got some more work to do on the head, which I will hopefully be posting up shortly, and some new cams on their way too that will also be some work to do with so more to follow soon! Just curious has anybody ever had a oil pump sproket slipping on the crank? Im not a fan of critical parts being held by only sandwich torque on a bolt head in this case the aux pulley, cam pulley and oil pump sproket! Only the cam pulley is keyed. Was contemplating fitting a pin from the oil pump to the cam as a extra precaution but wanted to ask everyones opinion first?
Started the final work I wanted to do on my head to get it ready, as I posted back at the start of the thread I have already done all the porting work on inlet outlet and cylinder pots, these are now complete and I am happy with them, not going to share too much now as I want to keep it for when the valves are cut in, and the block face has been skimmed and its ready to go onto the block when it should be looking pretty! But I wanted to show some of the hand work I am doing to try and keep the thread interesting. The work I am doing now, again flatting and checking the other faces, exhaust and inlet mainly, as I have spent some time getting the inlet manifold flat I need to do the same with the head, plus the original faces are pitted so will also get rid of as much of that as I can. Alot of stoning and checking flatness and I am pretty happy with it, will probably vht laquer the polished faces when the manifolds are on to stop them pitting again and keep them looking good, even if you cant see them. Here it is in progress
And after the above the final result, checking the mate between the head and the inlet manifold, testing with a .002" gauge (smallest I have at home) cant get it in from any of the sides so the two faces are about as good as they get by hand I think! Definitely less wobbly than it was before
Few more parts finished today, decided to go with the clio aux pulley air con delete previously shared by @Korky (thanks) managed to get my mits on a pulley and after my usual ocd fueled cleaning and painting process decided to weigh and measure the two pulleys to compare and share the info. Megane 225: Weight - 2317g Circumference - 480mm on outer. Clio 182: Weight - 1159g Circumference - 390mm on outer. So the clio pulley is exactly half the mass, and just short of 4/5 of the drive. I will be replacing the OE dual mass with a solid lighter flywheel, so in theory should be fine lowering the weight of the pulley. The drive will of course lower the rotation per rpm of the alternator to crank, by around 1/5 of its stock set up, shouldnt be a problem electrically, will test its output on idle when its in the car if anyone is interested in the results and doesnt mind waiting shouldnt be a problem as it will spend most of its life between 5 and 6 grand probably Also made a adjustment to the paint scheme of the rocker cover, changed my mind and went with a matt black, the flavour is e-tech VHT black if anybody likes it, I prefer it to the previous blue - which was an absolute **** to scrub off for anyone wondering
Continuing the huge attention to detail! I’d not want to put this in the car, it’s a work of art mate! Keep it as a sculpture in the house [emoji1303]
thanks mate appreciated. Ill be ripping the car apart too to try and get it to the same standard! Will have to become a fair weather driver
Nearly done getting fastners ready, been cleaning them up and painting the heads, same paint again from e-tech its really good stuff! Dont think I will have all the parts to finish the head until next year as there are waiting times on some of them, so trying to find other stuff to do until then!
Does anybody know anywhere this gasket is available other than Renault? Been looking high and low for one! Its the throttle body to inlet manifold. Few more pieces to the puzzle arrived today, thought I would put up a couple of pics, happy to measure / take more photos for anybody who wants a closer review or thinking about buying them. Decided on catcams uprated valve springs, will likely be sticking with stock camshafts for the time being but in the case I decide to change them in the future these allow it without any need for removing the head. Couple of quick photos comparison between the catcams to the left and stock to the right. Also had my new valves arrive along with a top end gasket kit. Gone for supertech, with inconel exhaust to standard size. They look considerably higher quality to the OE valves although have left them packaged for now, again happy to do some more in depth comparison for anyone interested.
whats up with the renault gasket then? i had one made out of ptfe but cant remember where from Throttle body gasket by matt eaton, on Flickr
I think i might have one or maybe two, will have a look tomorrow when i am in the workshop. On a separate note, check your valve stem seals fit inside your new valve springs, mine didn't, my aftermarket springs are smaller diameter than standard springs.
Thanks Ian, if you have one spare let me know what you want for it! Did quickly check the internal diameter comparing the two springs, by eye they are the same internally, the top retainers fit as I had one to hand but I will double check the stem seal, thanks for the pointer! What springs are you using?
How did you get around the seal size? Did the retainers fit the springs also? Forgot to ask before, you mentioned you had to wait for new collets, did they come from supertech or did you get new OE ones?
The valve stem seals for the 250 megane engine are like top hats and are held down by the springs, the guy doing my head found some in his vast supply that fitted. The collets came from the USA as did the valves, they just forgot to put them in the box, took longer for the collets to arrive than the valves
