Finally getting there... :)

[Gerard]

Warning: much rambling ahead. Excuse the WOB.
--

Well, after a year of hunting parts at decent prices and waiting for
shipments to come in and slowly cleaning up the old tub amidst much
b*tching and moaning from many people, it seems I will soon have an
assembled MC motor.

I finally got to see the engineer who is going to be building the
engine. Although he was pleased and impressed with the parts I had
obtained, he made me feel like an idiot for a while when he pointed out
I could have sourced all the parts through him. But I had to laugh when
I enquired about his suppliers only to find out I've exhausted every
single route. :) Mechanics will talk big for some reason, even if they
haven't tried to source the parts for the specific car before. The only
thing he wasn't happy with was the head gasket.

Lots of bullsh1t was spoken, but some of it seemed quite believable
given the work he seems to have done. His V8 Jaguar sitting in the
corner, Porsche 911 in the other with the bottom end sitting on the
bench next to me, his own creation of a Harley trike with tyres looking
2-feet wide and a rear assembly from some Nissan pickup at the back, and
so on.

He said 1 week to assemble the engine. :) I want standard spec all the
way through, but he suggested using a set of solid lifters in place of
the hydraulic units.

Began to feel like an idiot again when he said the high-temp aerosol
paints I was going to use were pure crap, even if I've only really
painted the starter motor and clear coated some mounting parts. I was
going to do the cam cover, belt covers and sump in high-temp paint, but
he wants to etch prime and paint it rather. Guarantees it will not burn
off. This I would love to see. The block is going to be painted in a
silver finish which I thought was a bit bright/loud, but I'm going to do
it. The paint is going to get a slight tint to give it a body-colour
matching burgundy flip. I might as well clean the gearbox casing and
paint it in a matching silver for the heck of it.

I finally painted the suspension parts using the Hammerite smooth finish
paints as suggested by many listers. It seems like it'll stand up well
to chipping. Engineer wasn't bothered with this.

The exhaust manifold was finally sent off yesterday for its ceramic
coating. I just thought "what the hell". Getting a chrome/silver finish.
I've still got some work left to do on the inlet manifold, but hopefully
I can get the polishing right and get it to a satin finish.

I will be assembling the turbo this week as well, if I find time. The
new turbine wheel is already balanced. $200 in total for the parts. The
turbo rebuilder showed me the uprated impeller wheel for the K26, but
didn't give me the pricing. It is alot bigger and requires a new backing
plate and housing, but the rest of the K26 is the same. Hopefully it is
way under $200.

I will be assembling the suspension and front-end this week and might
get the brakes on as well.

My mechanic went on about the flywheel. He says it isn't as simple as
just installing the timing pin into the ring gear. This I'm not
convinced about. The flywheel is from an AAR and is the same as on the
older 2.2 N/A I5 motors. It takes a 240mm pressure plate on both the AAR
and MC motors, and the difference in starter ring gear seems to be the
presence of a pin in the MC's unit. Starters are identical. The clutch
might be a pain, the engine being an MC, the flywheel from an AAR, and
the gearbox from a early '80s Audi Coupe of some sort with what seems to
be a 016 WV/UW gearbox. I haven't checked, but I assume all 016 boxes
have the same input shaft setup and diameter. The pedals and hydraulic
clutch bits will also be going in in the next 2-3 weeks.


Now, what's the ups and downs of this conversion to solid lifters on a
gen-1 MC motor?

G.
--
1989 200 FWD ... getting there! :)