My First Engine Build....2110

[andy198712]

Hi,

This is my first proper engine build, and have been collecting parts and changing my mind on it for about 3 years, i starting with the idea of a 1641... then 1776, then 1955, then thought well if i'm stroking it, i'm gonna go more, so 2110 it was (although i did have 92mm thin walls for a while)

feel free to say whats rubbish or what could be better ect, i'm all ears and will welcome the help!

Here is my spec

Case - this is a used 1200 case i brought as a short block for £40 and turned out to be in great spec (1200's dont beat the cases)
i'll be porting the cases and doing the Bob Hoover mods too. its been bored and tapped very kindly by a friend who bored it off the crank centre line, not the case, so should be nice and true! tis a D code case and dual relief


Crank -CB super race, nitrided, 82mm crank, counter weighted, 8 doweled. DFL Coated


Rods - CB UNITECH HD's Bushes DFL Coated 5.4in


Bearings - Most likely DFL these too

Cam - Webcam 86B, Straight Cut gears DFL'd


Lifters/Followers - CB Performance 28mm ultra light weight


Push Rods & Tubes - Smith Brothers Alu Pushrods , Black Jaycee tubes


Barrel & Pistons - AA 90.5's (Stroker)


Heads & Rockers - CB 044's oval ported by me 40x35.5 valves with the single groove collets and dual valve springs, Bugpack Forged 1.4:1 's

This is where things start to get interesting.....
Oil System - Will blue print and flow a 26mm pump ala Bill Fisher (probably DFL too)

Fuel & Air System - Megasquirted fuel injection, TBI's off a GSXR on cut down dual carb manifolds, crank fired ignition, might try and make the flywheel the trigger

Compression - 9-9.5:1 (with 1mm of deck i'll have 9.3)

[andy198712]

Started work on the Cylinder heads.
i'm going to un shroud the inlets first, here is what i had planned to do, roughly marked with pen to get second opinions, following the width of the valve (plus the blending) out the cylinder wall, which was marked as these are used heads (lightly)


as you can see with the valve lifted, just how little room the air has to get past this side of the valve! it wants to make a tulip shape around it, shrouded in like this it would really struggle, poor thing!! as you can see the proposed un shrouding would give it alot more room to flow


after more reading all over the internet, someone mentioned about some cylinders have some slight movement with heads, in particular CB ones.... ok i thought, lets try mine.... wiggle wiggle, yep about a mm! so i sat it in the head, pushed it towards the exhaust side and scored around it, this meaning my un shrouding would not under cut the cylinder regardless of position in the head... big no no.
Glad i did, as you can see in the picture..... Measure 55 times... score once, measure a few more... cut

[andy198712]

Slowly started to remove material.......... Nervous times! But the tightest spot had 2mm clearance, now increased to 4mm, I'll now follow it toward the valve and smooth as I go



Looks rough at the mo but all will be smoothed!

[andy198712]

I've been spending a lot of time on the heads and have little to show for it, seems I'll have a lot of time in these heads when I'm done !

So finished the shaping on one valve, still needs smoothing, also you can see where I've started to remove sharp corners and smooth the chambers where they meet the seats, took a steady hand!!




Starting on the porting, going for an oval port, 35mmx40mm oval shape


Standard port (ignore the drawn on bit here)


More work done, straightening work, started to lightly taper the guide


Similar angle on standard port


Needs smoothing

[andy198712]

Getting a bit more work done on the heads





sadly my dremel broke, had it a good few years now and its been great

So today i've been flashing my Megasquirt ECU with the firmware it needed. had to do it on a windows laptop as i cant do it via mac, but can tune it on mac.
pleased with that.
been setting up the settings on it to run crank fired ignition, where by there is a trigger wheel mounted to the pulley, and a VR sensor, which goes to a little black box (EDIS module) then to a coil and then to my plugs..... and a wire to the ECU.
Bye bye Distributer!

the nice thing about the EDIS module is it has a limp mode. if the ECU dies or blows a fuse or what ever (unlikely) it has a preset 10 degrees BTDC limp mode so it'll still run.

been doing alot of reading on this, and taking alot of head scratching. need to do some soldering on the ECU and a few mods to it but should get there soon!

i'll be trialling this on my daily 1200..... i feel if you trial stuff on your daily, you put more effort into it working

What it all means is i can sit in my car on the laptop, adjust the spark tables and pretend im in Fast and Furious....

once i've got the hang of the spark tables. it wont be such a jump to run the ignition and fuel injection on the 2110 when its done

-------
That was about 2yrs ago, i've since done pretty well on the spark tables and works flawlessly

[andy198712]

So,
Opened up the rockers from Bugpack today. As with most parts you buy, so it seems, There is some work needed to make them work how i would want them too.

first things first, the spacers, these all need de burring, i used an oil stone on both sides then crocus polishing paper, i then did the same to the rockers and gentle polish of the shafts. after about 4hrs maybe? i'd say i'm nearly half done sorting them out and setting the side play.

i swapped in the studs they supplied as the CB ones were a different fitment. bolted them down and torqued to 18ft/lbs..... 2 out of the 4 wouldn't move at all.
they were binding on the mounting blocks on the heads..... bit of sanding and re fitting, repeat 3 times and there free again.

here you can see where it touched



problem solved, had to do it for both sides



finished product! (temporary mock up bolts btw)



bit dull i know but building an engine seems to have LOADS of these small little details that all need sorting so you end up with something better then a cheap turnkey engine you can buy from many big retailers   hopefuly anyways!!

[andy198712]

mostly finished the port and chamber work on one head now! very pleased!! has taken hours and hours!!

the pics make it look a bit rubbish and un even but its the lighting.... honest









might hand finish the ports and maybe polish the chambers....

[andy198712]

so,

Today i had a spare bit of time and i decided to mock up my crank slightly, i cant do the cam gears ect as i still need to coat my bearings.... and still need to buy the coatings... i think i'll go with DFL (Dry Film Lube) and a heat dispersant one for the heads and barrels.
i brought a counter top oven off ebay for £4 from fourlanes as a parts cooker..... it gets to 250 degrees!! melted some solder on some headlight surrounds i baked... anyway!

i fitted the number two bearing but it felt tight so removed and re tried ect, gently easing it round but not really applying any force.... eventually it dropped down but was a little stiff, i wasnt happy with this so removed it, noted a shiny spot on the bearing.

the spec:


so out with the poor mans blue.... applied, refitted the bearing, moved it round a bit and removed:


as you can see the spec is indeed a high spot.  so using a new razor blade i gentle dragged it over the area at a angle (like you would to apply filler)
cleaned, drew on, oiled, re checked:
getting there


i did this a couple times, little and often till it was totally gone and the result was the bearing moving how it should.

dont forget, new bearings are far from clean! this came out of one bearing out the box with some acetone


gave it all a torquing to 45ft/lbs just to see.


all given a gentle tap to relieve any stress and all moved freely.

next job it check oil clearance, side play

[andy198712]

i've been checking the rod bearing side clearance, bascially you dont want the bearings touching the radius on the journal.... so i penned up the radi and bolted on the rods and gave it a twist and wiggle, up and down, round and round ect ect, removed rod, check the markings to see if there was any contact, and repeat for the 4 rods



i did try drawing on the bearings them selves but drawing on the radius was easier and clearer



at the same time i checked the side play, tolerance in my VW manual being 0.004 - 0.016, on all mine i could fit in a 0.012 feeler but not a 0.015 feeler so was happy with this.



finally added in some little grooves so the spent oil is directed up towards the piston....



wrapped it all up and put away as thats as far as i can get on the crank till i coat my bearings

more work to be done on the heads though!

[andy198712]

DIY rod balance jig!





well after a fair few hours i'm done! got all the big ends all the same weight to one decimal place, then the total weights and removed weight from the little end to adjust, then rechecked and adjusted the big ends again and called it good!

a very time consuming job!
i'll try and dig out my blueprint sheet for the rod weights but here's the little ends



and big ends



the big ends i got to near enough 0.1g differance, and the little ends are about 0.3g differance and i called it good! you can spend hours chasing 0.1g's here and there i found so called it good at where i was.

So my big ends started off at:
419.4g
417.8g
417.6g
416.3g

after a few hours they were
416.2g
416.3g
416.2g
416.3g

so i was happy with that!

i used the little ends to adjust total weight.(with bearings)
Total weight after that started at
600.9
602.8
600.4
599.7

after a while i got those to:

599.6
599.6
599.7
599.9


These are the final weights as i after doing the big ends, then little ends then adjusting big ends again i realised i would spend a life time getting them perfect, thus i settled for 0.3g variance on the total weights.
as i see it, the big ends are more important then the little end weight slightly... as the big ends contributes to the reciprocating weight and dynamic balance of the crank, and the little ends mearly go up and down so dont play AS bigger part. but still 0.3g is a good tollerance for a DIY job if you ask me.

just adding up how many times i adjusted the weights on the rods.... 25 adjustments(removing material) and checked each weight 3 times..... 



well i wasnt happy with my notches so re did them to give a rounded cut



using this (donated by Ade )



much happier!

[andy198712]

was playing with the heads today and snapped this pic to show the differance between stock chambers and mine at the same lift, not the space for the mixture to flow past the valve head



not too bad



i blasted a load of parts ready for coating, not a fun job!! (ignore the dry sump pump, I'm selling that in favour of a deepsump for cost)



Coated my parts in DFL-1















Completely internally coated and you'd never know!!


All lightly oiled and wrapped up till fitting time!

[andy198712]

staring at £300 worth of crank wondering if i blast it with abrasive grit or not........



i chose yes....... washed it in acetone a few times then spent a good while blasting it, surface prep seems very important for the coating. made sure i got every bearing face good and proper!
baking at 170 degrees for about 30 minutes to drive out any oil that may still be hiding in there! then i'll let it cool till its just warm, and i'll apply the DFL-1.

so the book reads, if you apply a DFL to one part ie bearing, it helps loads with lubrication and friction, if you coat the other it hardly improves those two factors, but makes part life alot longer......

acetoned, blasted, baked, acetoned, airlined...



acetoned, warmed, coated, baked....





in that second picture you can see a little bubble on one of the dowels, thats it looks like if you dont key the surface correctly (i only blasted the journals) thus its important to do proper prep!

[andy198712]

Did some more coatings,











You can easily see in some areas where I didn't key the surface and it bubbled, keying properly is vital for this stuff it seems! ( the bubbled over spray will be removed before fitting)

[andy198712]

Also drilled some holes in the heads to aid in flow over the exhaust, at the moment it's just a pocket, but with the holes (will be smoothed) the air can flow through.

Holes


Left hand pockets, you can see a glint of light

[andy198712]

my cases being cut, note the step.

[andy198712]

Beautiful machining


Started on a few case mods:

Widening the drain hole where the crank seal is by 1mm and also widening this drain path


And widening the cam oil ways


Before I could do any more or go over my exsisting with a sanding roll, smoke started coming from my drill

Also been spending alot of time removing the paint. Soda blasting would be ideal but can't find soda in mass cheaply

[andy198712]

here's my injection side of things

the sizes started like this, this is the gsxr TBI and standard non offset twin carb manifolds i got off the samba very cheap (thus i wouldn't mind hacking them up)


after some hacksawing and angle grinding i'm about here





i want to mock up a very basic long block and pop a shroud on just to check clearance before i fix them to the manifolds

[andy198712]

well, spent a good few hours on the engine today, didn't really get all that far but its a lot of checking, re assemble, check, disassemble ect, forgetting something, going back ect, hey ho!

Today the weather was rubbish so i worked indoors,

case ready to accept a crank





i wanted to make sure the oil holes lined up with the oil grooves on the bearings, so i marked where the oil hole was on the case, then copied that to the bearing once fitted, i also marked where the channel on the bearing goes..





i then marked on the bearing where to open the groove up a bit so it would make full use of the oil hole and not close it off by 30-50%



and took out a little material with a handy little cordless dremel i got from Lidls (£20)



i did that to the two full bearings (the little one at the back didn't need doing as the hole is small to act as a restrictor i'm guessing. the centre main (half bearing) was lined up fine as is



popped in the crankshaft and it spins smooth as silk! fitted my dry sump pulley (small!) so i could rotate it whilst pushing to forward to see if i had any clearance issues with jus the crank and i was ok, some parts were close but easily over 1mm so no worries.





i slowly torqued up the main bolts, starting with the middle to, then two by the flywheel, then the pulley side and started at 9ft lbs, then 16, then 23, checking after each nut was adjusted for smoothness, happily, everything was silky smooth! and spun very freely.



i for see some clearancing needed pretty easily, as although the crank is on there and clears fine, theres no way a rod will clear, this area i can't even get part of baby finger in, and a rod needs to sit in there too.... i expected this, but it's going to take me a while and lots of grinding, cleaning, testing, grinding, cleaning testing....





This would have occurred today, only when i went to fit a rod i realised i'd used my rod bearings i'd coated on another engine... DOH!

i then set about starting to smooth off an sharp edges and the air channels, again that will take a good few hours of work with the dremel and flap wheel!.

i moved on to having another look at my rockers as i think something isn't quite square, they were binding at certain points, but i'll have to dig out an engineers square to check that over.

[andy198712]

spent a few hours on the rockers this afternoon/tonight.

There Bugpack 1.4 ratio rockers, i got a great deal on them new, not seen any reports of them failing and they look study.... but! they are far from "bolt on" i've had to spent hours getting these to be bind free and with the correct side clearances! also following the trend of the build.... these are DFL coated (surprise huh? )

so i decided to start again, measured one half's shims... the kit is mainly supplied with shims all of the same thickness (well as much as a cheap set of rockers can offer) i believe the CB sets come with different shims... but you pay more



i was aiming for between 0.005 and 0.007 inches, which for me was about .127 and .178 mm off the top of my head, why can't things all be metric? i work on seakings at work and there in inches.... does my head in! anyway.... with my feelers, i aimed for about .13mm-.15mm which is low to mid tolerance.

This took hours of measuring (see pic) removing, sanding shims, cleaning, refitting... repeating. i'd be putting it off as its a dull task but glad its done now,



which gave me these rather unexciting looking items, but it felt good to get it done!




also worth noting the heads need some clearancing where the rocker blocks are, i might have even got away with this by shimming the rockers but won't know till i get a cam and look at cam geometry....

[andy198712]

We'll came back from the vw show with a webcam 86b after chatting to the guy from stateside tuning.
Also ordered a set of his single springs for it. He said they are made using technology from the motorbike world, I forgot the maker. Basically normal duals fade and need replacing but these only fade 1-2% in the time that a set of duals is way past it.... Also less spring pressure, less wear, less heat but better valve train!

I do need to run lightweight ish valve train though. 40x35mm valves help here, will have to sort Alu pushrods, they had smith brothers ones there they recommended, but at £125 they'll have to wait or find a cheaper alturnitive.

Will set about deburing the cam this week and start checking end play on it ect.

Need to check my main bearings too as I had a small patch that had gone copper colour from contact during mock up which will need attention. Spun smoothly which is odd...

[andy198712]

CCing heads.... @ 1ml at a time (only syringe i have handy) taking a while!

after buying a new syringe and adapting my measuring method and disk (was having problems with air bubbles trapped in there) there both 57cc within less then 1cc of each other on one head.... 
Takes a while as i measured them about 5 times each to rule out a whack reading!

All 57cc within one cc tolerance, happy with that! with 1mm or 0.040 of deck that gives me 9.3:1 compression ratio, and with the webcam 86B they say 9-9.5 so i'm happy with that!!

[andy198712]

Had a go at stroker clearancing the case, mounted one rod, one jug and one piston without rings and marked a few areas where the rod bolts contacted, was quite a juggle holding it all together and a few swear words where said!
Trying to balance the case, crank, knock in piston pin and line up the main bearings to there dowels...

I coughed up the £30 something for an engine stand!

I've heard that instead of using a barrel and piston you an use rubber bands through the little end and secured to the head studs to center the rod through its movement, will buy some thick rubber bands and give it a whirl.

Just a long process of assembly, marking, removal of crank and piston And barrel, grind, clean, repeat...

Will pop some pics up this week, I cheated a bit and just copied one spigot to the next. Will assemble again soon to check and once all the rough work is done it will be sanded smooth.

Can then move onto checking if the rods clear the cam....
I must say the cb unitech hd plus rods don't need as much clearance work in the case as I'd have thought....

Spoke to Stateside Tuning whom i brought the cam and single springs off of, i brought a set of CB performance ultra lightweight followers with a 28mm head (less weight then larger head as isn't needed on this cam) and also a set of Smith Brothers aluminium pushrods, so £279 lighter i'm pretty much there on parts for the long block... if anyone is interested in prices on a build like this i have a tally somewhere....

Engine Build Cost

Cases - £40
Crank & Rods - £370
Heads - £400
Megasquirt ECU - £80
Cam Gear - £70
Rockers - £125
Cam - £95
Tinware - £8(pulley tin)
Pushrod tubes £80
Main bearings £45
Cam bearings £14
Rod bearings £13
Lifters £120
Barrels and pistons £110
pushrods £150


Total £1720

[andy198712]

i popped into my local "sell everything" shop today and brought some flap wheels to help with the stroker clearancing to smooth it all over, some barrel brushed for the cleaning of the galleys and a M10x1.5 bottoming tap to chase the head stud holes although i ended up just using a head stud in the end!


Got a few jobs done (pics later)

clearanced one half of the case (still need to two areas but won't be able to see those till its bolted together.

Honed the cylinders and now degreasing them for the 3rd time before carb cleaner, baking to dry, then painting them with a matt paint designed for wood burners (so radiates heat well i believe) should stop flash rusting at least!

been bout 5-6 hrs work today doing that, mostly all taken up stroker clearancing, its a slow job and each rod hits in about 3/4 places per half, then once its burred out it needs smoothing with the flap wheel. i brought some fairly big flap wheel, mine are about 50/60mm at a guess, maybe something 20/30mm would have been better but hey ho!

[andy198712]

To stroker clearance, the rod has to be in its normal position as it would be in the engine, meaning you have to install a barrel and piston, this was quite a lot of faff and extra hassle, more to clean and less vision for me to see where and what needed work.
Then i remembered someone saying to use rubber bands instead..... picture paints a thousand words, i moved the crank about and sure enough, it stays centred (needs equal amount and type of bands) will double check it once i've done them all with a barrel and piston, but this saves a lot of time and helps you to be able to see the area to clearance a lot better!!





its hard to show, but the rod bolt head hits on both sides of the spigot (already cleared a bit)





and then the side of the rod hits the roof of the case.... so clearance is need here.



and also the bottom of the rod will hit the opposite side of the case on the left hand side of the spigot as you look in, but that will come later in the job after i have don't the above to both sides, here is where i am so far (VERY MESSY)

[andy198712]

Bit of part porn for you.

these are the CB Ultralight weight lifters with 28mm head. nicely finished and feel light, they are a two part design ( think, where the inner is held in with a cir clip.... worries me a bit but there meant to be great so won't dwell on it!







and these are probably my favourite part of the engine in terms of quality from the brought parts, i did have some bug pack HD alu push rods but quality wasn't great, with the tips being different shapes.
These are made by SmithBrothers and the finish is absolutely beautiful!!





the lifters all weight 71.8 grams

[andy198712]

 i gave the Bob Hoover drilling a go.... it is a tough one to choose as you can all but ruin a case if your case is machined wrong or you mis calculate....

Longggg drill bit borrowed from Ady (thank you!)



after measuring about 5 times, then about 5 more i marked with pen where i wanted to drill to, so it would be on the safer side, the black dot in the cam bearing area was helpfully the correct distance of where the oil galley opening is on the case (thanks used vw case)




would stop here or a tad before



i took Ady's tip and canted the drill bit up a tad to air on the side of caution. made my drilling, stopping half way to recheck as it felt like a fair old distance!

hard to pic



you don't know its its right till you do the vertical drilling

i used a small 2mm drill to make a pilot hole down the oil galley on the cam tower, and again canted it at an angle towards the rear of the case to play it a bit safer, again i'd marked the drill bit where it should pop through and sure enough it did (although i did check to make sure it wasn't popping out the side of the case!)
i then opened this up with a short 5mm drill bit and again... checked i hadn't busted it!
here is a dowel with yellow tape on to show it better, you can see the hole is slightly off centre, this was to play it a tad safer!



happy days

carred on with stroker clearancing the other side of the case, no pics yet as its just a copy of the other side, i mated them together and stencilled the cut side so they matched. once this side is all smoothed off i'll clean the case a bit as its covered in a thick layer of swaff and i'll trial fit the crank again to see where i need to clearance, i think it'll need work on the rods down ward stroke, BDC on the back of the rod, by where the head stud drillings are but we'll see!

[andy198712]

Well, thats 2 years of work posted up 

[stait9]

Awesome and inspiring Andy.  Good luck finishing it off.
Cheers
Stuart

[andy198712]

Thanks bud, very kind

[andy198712]

More stroker clearancing today!

i started on the cam tower part, here was my issue



and here was the solution



got 1mm of clearance with the crank pushed forward and the rod pulled back. then mirrored this on the other half of the case, i haven't put them together yet to try the back part of the rod on the down stroke, will need to clean the cases very well before that which is time consuming but next on the list!

smoothed out another rod notch to have some clearance



i looked at where the oil from cam gear drains back to the sump and it was such a small hole, maybe 7mm? so i've started opening that up a bit more to allow better drain back, as the rear relief piston also bypasses to this area (although thinking about it, the rear piston donesnt bypass into the sump, just bypasses the cooler?)



that'll be smoothed.

i've also started thinking about windage, i was thinking of either making two small baffle windage trays, one for either side to cover "slosh" flying up these holes



but i'm also thinking of making some windage pushrod tube extensions AKA Tom Wilsons book. or both so it covers oil slung up from the top by the crank and also slosh in corners...
making the windage tray small like this should prevent any issues people say about drain back.

something like this http://wheelerdealer-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/formel-vau-style-windage-tray.html

Any thoughts?