TC1600's budget 4AGE rebuild (warning- pics)

[TC1600]

Hi all,
Well, unfortunately I've recently joined the BHG club, so while the head's off, I thought i would freshen the motor up. I'm not made of money (who is?) so i thought i would do it as a budget rebuild and post up how/what I've done. I can save quite a bit of money by doing it all myself (I work as a mechanic), and using equipment from work. While it is a budget build, I will be trying not to take many shortcuts, and will replace consumables such as thermostat and radiator cap as precautionary measures. The process is made easier by a donated short motor (thanks to Starfire who just needed the head), so I will only need to borrow an engine crane for one day.

I won't bother covering how I removed the head, I'm sure that would be covered elsewhere. When I checked the head gasket, I found it was gone between no.4 cyl and the coolant gallery:



And a closeup:



I stripped down the donated short motor to find it in surprisingly good condition. The machining marks are still like new on the piston skirts, but the rings are gummed up with carbon pretty badly, which would have made it blow some smoke, particularly when cold (when the pistons and rings had not expanded fully). The plan is to clean up the pistons using a wire buff, and refit with new rings and bearings. There is some surface rust on some of the bores, but hopefully will clean up with a light hone.

The disassembled short motor:



A piston with stuck rings:



the bores:



While the car is off the road I took the opportunity to get the radiator flushed ($90, was reported as being 60% blocked), and have purchased a complete gasket set from ebay (bargain at $50 + postage, looks ok, but will see what the quality is like as I put it together). Total cost so far: $155.

Will post up more pics and details as they happen.

Cheers, Ian.

[TC1600]

Well since the last installment there has been much cleaning happening. everything has come up better than expected, which is a bonus.

Here is the crankshaft before cleaning, the journals are unmarked which makes things easier to start with:



A friend made a rack for keeping the valves and springs etc in order; here are the valves before cleaning:



They have now been cleaned up on a wire buff, they just need lapping in to the seats (for those that don't know, it basically involves using an abrasive paste to ensure that the valves and seats are an exact match). The head was in reasonable condition considering the car did not appear to have been particularly well maintained, but had some oil leaks and exhaust leaks. Here is a before photo of the head, showing the oil from the leaking distributor and signs of an exhaust leak from a missing manifold bolt:



I started by giving the head a degrease and steam clean, it came up ok and allowed me to further inspect the condition. There was some slight pitting where the head gasket had blown, so at a minimum it would need to be faced. there was a small amount of corrosion around a couple of the coolant galeries, but nothing to be too concerned about. While it was off, I thought I might get my brother-in-law (who builds a number of drag and speedway engines) to have a look at the ports, to see if they could be improved on. I expected that we could at least smooth out where there was a lip at the end of the machining for the valve guide, but I ended up getting my first lesson on porting! There was quite a bit of work that could be done, mainly in straightening out the turn in the exhaust port, and general reshaping/tidying up in both ports, so I got stuck in. 6 hours later, the ports were reasonable, but not really finished off that well, but due to time constraints, I had to go. "Leave it with me, I'll just finish them off, won't take long" he said... when he turned up at my place 4 hours later he said "the more I looked the more I thought I could improve!" Anyway, they are now looking good, and after another final clean here is the finished result:







The bores came up very well with a light hone with a glaze-breaker hone, i was a bit worried the surface rust may have been deeper than it was:



The last thing I did in preparation for reassembly was check clearances of the new bearings and the ring gaps, after sending back the wrong conrod bearings and ordering the correct ones, everything checked ok. After a final clean of the block and internals they can start to be assembled.

That's all for now (more than enough for one post I think : ), will post some pics of the assembled engine later.

Cheers, Ian.

[MRMOPARMAN]

good stuff ian, i just completed exactly the same thing with my bigport budget rebuild aswell.

if you got a permaseal gasket kit, check everything thats in there.. i was missing 1 rocker cover and a heap of seals.. bastards!

with mine, i ended up having to get the crank machined to get bearing tolerances and a slight bend in the crank machined out, combined with getting the head surfaced and serviced, ended up costing over $900 at trade price.. coulda got me a silver top for less

anyways, goodluck with the building

[gerald1]

wanna do that to my 4a-f :-P

i wanna make a beasty 4a-f but i got no skillz and no time and no money to spend.

anyway good write up dude!

cya
gerald

[TC1600]

Time for the final instalment of the saga (for now, anyway).

The pistons were cleaned on a wire buff, and the ring grooves cleaned of all carbon, and after a final degrease and washdown, were ready for fitment of rings and bearings.

The first completed piston assembly:



And all the pistons in their homes (and a coat of shiny black paint):



The valves were lapped in, and during this process it was found one of the exhaust valves was badly pitted on the seating surface. Luckily, Terry had donated the valves, shims, buckets etc from his head, as he was going to fit oversized valves. I selected the best appearing valve and lapped it in, happily it came up well. I fitted the buckets and shims, and temporarily fitted the cams to check the clearances. They were all within specs, perhaps surprisingly including the replacement valve. The cams were removed, the head fitted to the block and the cams lubed and refitted:



Over the next couple of evenings the cam covers, manifolds and various other ancilliaries were fitted to the engine in preparation for the engine swap the following Saturday.



Terry and Beej arrived about lunchtime, and we set about removing the old engine and gearbox:



We then began the fun filled task of degreasing the various bits and pieces and the bay itself:




Just a note, I'm glad Terry told me to get a full box of degreaser, I didn't think we would need anywhere near that much, but when it was all finished in the morning, there was only 2 1/2 cans left, one and a half of which was used for cleaning the driveway.

At around this time, Beej had to head off, but Terry and I continued into the night. We wheeled the engine from the shed to the carport, and swapped over the flywheel and pink clutch, before mating it up to the 2nd hand gearbox.



By this time, it was late enough for my wife/photographer to go to bed, so we don't have any more pics until the finished result.

We hoisted the engine into the engine bay, and began hooking everything back up. By about 2.30am, everything was connected, the fluids were filled and we were ready to try to fire it up. We connected the battery, but found after sitting for over 3 months that it was dead flat. I raided my parents' Datsun that I was using while the Rolla was off the road for its battery, and it turned over, but apart from a couple of half-arsed attempts would not start. We fiddled with electrical connections, but to no avail. At one stage it actually started, but was running on 3 cylinders at best. However, there were some sparks coming off the coil lead, so Terry offered the use of a spare distributor cap and lead set, and his battery charger, as by this time it was struggling to turn over. I gave him a lift home, and collected the parts and charger, went back to my place, put the battery on charge and collapsed into bed at about 4.20.

The next morning, after being woken bright and early for Father's Day, I went out, fitted the cap and leads, double checked the static timing, and turned the key. Success!!! It ran beautifully, and after letting it down off the jack stands and resetting the timing, took it for its maiden voyage... to the local BP for 20 bucks of Ultimate, a windscreen wash and some air in the tyres. I drove home, rechecked for leaks, fluid levels etc, and sat back and admired the finished product:



Now to get some kays on the engine before the Toyota Vs Nissan dyno day, 500km would be great but I don't think I will get that many.

In closing, I would like to thank a few people, without whom the buildup would have been much harder, if not impossible:
Terry (Starfire) for the bottom end that turned a blown head gasket into a full-on rebuild
Beej, Jordan and various others in TCC for their help, advice and encouragement
Craig from Walkom Performance Engines for help porting the head
Steve in the Spare Parts department at work for his endless patience in tracking down non-Holden parts in fits and starts as I thought of them
Jodie for her patience with me disappearing into the shed for many nights these past couple of weeks, and talking of little else,
and finally you for taking the eime to read through this thread.
Apologies to anyone I may have missed.

[TC1600]

Cheers for the replies, I'll be tallying up the final cost shortly...

And yeah there were a couple of gaskets and seal missing, the water pump gasket was missing (not a problem, as one came with the new water pump), and the o-ring for the water pump backing plate thingy (was able to adapt the dissy o-ring with lots of Master Gasket lol), but had plenty of little o-rings and stuff left over, no idea where they were supposed to go

[roadsailing]

here was me thinking that 4AGEs never blew anything!

interested to see dyno resutls, hope it all turns out well!

[RObErT_RaTh]

I never knew you got a trophy when you join team BHG! I'll try and work harder next year

[30psi 4agte]

Nice + well put together thread mate.......

[TC1600]

Just a couple of updates:

I've covered around 500km since the rebuild, and am pleased to say it's running well. I changed the oil the other day (seemed to be quite dirty already, which was to be expected), I put mineral oil in again, and after the engine has covered 1500km or so, I will then go to Mobil 1. I also flushed out the water from the cooling system, and put corrosion inhibiting coolant in. The level had dropped a little, but I will keep an eye on that, it may have been an air pocket which bled out.

Last Saturday, TCC held their Toyota Vs Nissan dyno day, which was a good chance to see how it went. It put out 66.0 fwkw, which was a little less than I'd hoped for (anything over 70kw would have been nice), but the engine still feels a little tight, some more kays should see it free up a couple more kw's, and I have a pod filter to fit when I find or make an adapter, and will try to find some extractors that don't blow the budget. But hey, it's still a slight improvement on the old engine (65.1kw), a nice flat torque curve and still more to come. I might try to get in on the dyno again in a couple of months to see if it has improved.

Overall, I'm happy with the build, and hope to take it to Mallala for some laps, and run a hillclimb or 2 at Collingrove. I'll post up the results as they come.

[RObErT_RaTh]

I've seen 5M's that pull results like that so don't feel too bad

[Starfire]

Good work Ian,

Glad I could help out - My engine crane sure does look clean and bright in the photos, which if youv'e seen it up close you know this isnt the case.

Now we just have to rebuild the spare one in my shed - and find something to put it in

[Starfire]

Another thing that we've learned from this little project is that the ports on a stock bigport are not the limiting factor when it comes to making power.

I would suggest that the proposed inlet and exhaust mods would give it a bit more performance, but to really wake it up some cams would be good.

Cheers,
Terry

[TC1600]

Cams would make a big difference, but if I was going for an all out performance engine I would have fitted higher compression pistons, the stock bigport ones are about as low as you would see on a NA engine, at least in the last 20 years. I'll leave the cams as is for now as I don't want to lose driveability (it is a daily driver), but it's an option down the track.

[too_quick]

Updates on how its running ?