Ground Up B16A Build

[Boosted Euro]

^^^ this

Step by step how too's are one of the things this site is lacking .

[cpl rampage]

Thanks guys! always happy to share, especially since there isn't any specific deadline to build this engine, I can take my time and explain everything.

[cpl rampage]

Some more progress:

How To measure your block/rods for bearings

What you need:

Cleaned block/rods
Main/rod caps
Micrometer
Lint Free cloth
Torque Wrench and socket to fit main/rod bolts
Telescoping bore gauge... more on this below:

Here are the tools laid out:



On the bottom you can see the set of bore gauges. This is one option you can use to measure your block/rods. These are the inexpensive option($20), but they are a serious pain in the ass to use.

The other option is to purchase a dial bore gauge like this: DIAL BORE GAUGE Those are some pretty expensive ones, although if you are lucky you can find a used set for under 200 dollars. I contemplated buying a dial gauge this time around, but the telescoping bore gauges work ok if you have the time and patience for it.



The following pictures are of me measuring the block, but the procedure is exactly the same for a rod

Step 1: Bolt up the bearing cap

Make sure to wipe the mating surfaces, clean the threads and lubricate with motor oil. Depending on you engine, you will need to torque each bolt to the first step, and then go back and torque them to the final value.




Step 2: Measure the Journal (lots of steps I know)

Begin by wiping the measuring surfaces of your journal and tools. When measuring be sure to not fall into the oil gallery holes in the bearings, it is a POTA to get the spring loaded rod out of there:




Compress your telescoping bore gauge, and lock it in LIGHTLY. It does not take much force to lock these in, and too much force and you might damage it




Insert it into the bore, and with it push against one side, unlock it. try to do it such that it does not fly out and impact the bore, you might dent the heads of the bore gauge.




There are again 4 places you should be measuring, top and bottom of the journal, and then again top and bottom 90 deg away from the first measurements.

Now the hard part. there is a LOT of "FEEL" involved with this, and lots of practice. you need to feel when your gauge is perfectly perpendicular to the bore which is hard in itself. At the same time, you also want to ensure that the gauge is running across the center of the bore. this is helped by the spring loaded nature of the gauge but you still need to check for this.




Now you must lock the gauge in lightly, with out disturbing it. I will tell you now this is going to be VERY frustrating. you WILL mess this up a lot! keep with it and eventually you can get a feel for it. If it becomes too much, buying a dial bore gauge will alleviate this issue. If you get it locked down correctly, it should not be loose in the bore. Carefully pull/push it out of the bore. Then you can measure its length with your micrometer. I find it easiest to put the micrometer in a vise with soft jaws/rag, and then hold the bore gauge in the micrometer and measure it. make sure to not put too much pressure on the bore gauge when measuring, they can slip/move and you have to start over.

Using a bore gauge like this, i recommend checking every measurement multiple times, there is a lot of play in the system, and it is hard to get exactly the right value on the first shot.

Once you are confident you have the right diameter for that journal, you can go ahead and loosen the bolts, a 1/4 turn at the time, until they are loose. back them out about a 1/4 of an inch but do not remove them yet. Taking a rubber mallet, pull on the bearing cap with your hand while lightly tapping the side of the cap, this will slowly remove the cap, once it is free, you can finish removing the bolts.




Now you just need to repeat this entire process for the 4 other main bearings, and the 4 rod bearings, ENJOY! Sorry there weren't more pictures, I had my hands full this time around.

To determine what bearing to use, I created a bearing selector worksheet in excel. The direction on how to use it are at the top of the spreadsheet, but it is basically plug and play. Enter your measurements and it will tell you what your oil clearance will be based on on which color bearing. Just find the oil clearance range is with in your desired range and look up and it will say which color to use. You can find this calculator attached at the bottom of this post!

The next how to will cover Honing and measuring the cylinders.

[MaliBoost]

Some more progress:
How To measure your block/rods for bearings
What you need:
Plenty of PBR
Cleaned block/rods
Main/rod caps
Micrometer
Lint Free cloth
Torque Wrench and socket to fit main/rod bolts
Telescoping bore gauge... more on this below:

Looks like you forgot one thing. Still nice writeup

[cpl rampage]

Haha if i was building in in my college dorm it might have been PBR, this time I didnt have any beer... coke was the drink of choice, sam winter next time!

[dan03235]

nice work thus far

glad to see people are still messing with the B's a bit too

[cpl rampage]

I ordered the bearings earlier this week from Bernardi Parts, as well as distributor cap, rotor, thermostat and gasket, timing belt, tensioner and spring,full gasket kit, and NGK plugs and wires.

Here is a quick write up on how to hone engine cylinders:

What you need:
Honing tool that fits your size cylinder
Drill with adjustable speed
Engine oil
Lint Free wipes/cloth
degreaser/brake clean

Here is the honing tool attached to my cordless drill, if you are doing this with a cordless drill make sure you have a fresh battery, it can drain them pretty fast. I have the Tri-stone style hone, there are also the "dingleberry style" hone, they work just as well, I don't know what the official name is...




Before inserting the hone into the cyl, make sure to coat the stones and the cyl with engine oil. Also make sure to never move the hone up or down while it is not spinning, you do not want to make any vertical scratches. Go ahead and fire up the drill, you don't need to go full bore, a few hundred RPM is where you want it. Don't let it sit in one spot, move it up and down over the entire length, try it out, you want a nice diagonal cross hatch. Only do it as long as it takes to get a even cross hatch and remove any blemishes. don't stop the drill before removing it from the cyl, pull it out first...




Once you are done with all the cylinders, you will want to clean out all the grit that you just created. I clean mine in two steps, first with some simple green. Let it sit, and then wipe it out with a cloth. after that I flush it out with some brake clean. make sure you get everything, you do not want the grit getting into your oil when you build the engine. after this make sure to wipe the whole cyl with fresh oil, to keep it from rusting up.

Here is the finished product, next write up will be measuring the bores and checking P2W clearances.

[Synical DSM]

Great post and write-ups. Stuff like this is rare here and appreciated.

[cpl rampage]

Great post and write-ups. Stuff like this is rare here and appreciated.

Thanks, happy to share!

[cpl rampage]

Another update:

Checking the cylinder Bore

So I am not going to go too in depth with this, it is exactly like measuring bearing journal ID's. The only difference is instead of measuring at the only the top and bottom you will want to measure in the middle of the depth as well. And don't forget to check 90 degrees apart at each depth. so a total of 6 measurements.




Measuring the Piston for wear

This one is easy, just measure approximately .75 inched up from the bottom of the skirt, perpendicular to the wrist pin. check it make sure it is within the nominal OEM spec and you are done.




So assuming everything checks out you can go ahead and order parts:



OEM bearings, water pump, Timing belt, tensioner, spring. New rotor, cap, T stat and gasket, NGK wires and Plugs. As well as a full gasket set. Unfortunately the dealer messed up my order and I only got half the rod bearings I need... so much for putting the oil pan on today.

So the agenda for today started with checking the end gap of the rings

What you need:

Cleaned and honed block
Piston ring set
A piston with out rings
feeler gauges

Pretty simple stuff, and usually doesn't require any modifications if your block is in spec. Start by compressing the 1st ring and inserting it into Cyl 1 like so:




Then, using an inverted piston, begin pushing the ring down into the cylinder farther:



Keep going until you get about 3/4th of the way down:




At this point you should be able to take your feeler gauges and determine what the end gap is. I like to start at the large end of the nominal range, and work my way down until i feel a slight drag on the gauge.



And now you just need to repeat this process 15 more times. Dont forget to keep the rings with the right cyl, so measure the ring in the cyl you intend on putting them in.

Next up is to put the rings on the piston, all you need is something to hold the piston while you work on it and a piston ring expander.

While using the ring expander be careful to not snap the ring, only expand the ring just enough to get it on the piston. Any more and you run the risk of damaging the ring.




Start with the oil ring spacer, followed by the lower and upper oil rings. These are small enough that you should be able to use your fingers to put them on without an issue.




Now you can use the ring expander to put on the 2nd compression ring, followed by the 1st compression ring.




Once you get them all on, rotate them to match the ring gap drawing in your service manual.


Moving on, before putting the pistons into the block, we need to check our work in sizing the bearings. to do this, take your bearing halfs and insert them into the block. make sure to use the right one and the right half (if you have a B series block). Also make sure that the tang fits into the groove in the block and the cap:










You can go ahead and carefully set the crank into the block, do not turn the crank at all while doing these tests!

[cpl rampage]

Break out your Plasti Gauge (the green one), and cut a piece as wide as the journal and place it on top of the crank journal.






Now take your cap with the other bearing half in it, and place it on top the the crank, make sure to put some oil on the threads and torque it down to spec.




Now loosen the bolts and pull the cap straight up. remove the bolts all the way and take a look at your work:





Compare the width of the smushed plasti gauge to the chart, make sure to check both the crank and the bearing half, some times it sticks to one or the other. use which ever clearance is smaller.


before moving on to the other main bearings. scrape off the plasti gauge using a plastic scrapper (credit card works well).


Now you will want to put in the pistons, so remove the crank and set it aside for now and put in the pistons. Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of me putting the pistons into the block. Some notes is make sure the ring compressor is tight if it is adjustable, and make sure to lubricate it and the cyl bore with some engine oil.




Now you can co ahead and preform the plasti gauging for the rod berings

Don't forget not to rotate the crank when move from one rod to the next!

[Ballistic Motorsports]

Nice right up ... did you file fit the rings ?

[cpl rampage]

Yeah, I wasn't able to take any pictures of the process, not all of the rings needed to be adjusted most were within the OEM range.

[cpl rampage]

So I got the correct bearings so i could begin assembling the bottom end. There isn't much to this, just make sure to use liberal amounts of assembly lube on both bearing halves before assembling and bolting down. make sure to rotate the crank after you bolt down each cap to make sure that nothing is binding up.






Once you have everything bolted up, it should look like this:




Then comes the windage tray:




Followed by the oil pick up, don't forget the gasket:




Oil pan gasket, it isn't in this pic, but you need to use some sealant on the intersections of the block and the oil pump/rear main seal housing:




And Finally the oil pan, don't overtighten the bolts, the gasket will fail, I found this out the hard way a long time ago...




Flip it over and check it out:




Putting on the accessory brackets on the rear of the block, water tube, T-stat and cover, black box. Dont forget to replace and lube the oring when installing the water pipe:




I then went to start installing the timing gear and lower cover etc, but realized I'm missing one of the timing belt guide plates, if anyone has one of these from a B series engine lmk:




So instead of that i went on to cleaning out the combustion chambers and exhaust ports, getting rid of any carbon i could see:







Once that was done, I installed the new valve stem seals. I forgot to take pictures but basically they are just tapped onto the valve stems using an installer tool. Make sure you use the right seals, black spring for exhaust, white/silver spring for intake. Once the seals are in, you can go ahead and lube the valve stems with some engine oil and put them into the head, I would have done this but I ran out of time...

[cpl rampage]

So got some more work done on the head, not as much as i hoped, i wasnt home for very long unfortunately.

Installing Valves and valve springs:

So assuming you have the lower spring seats and valve stem seals installed you can go ahead and insert the valve. I like to apply a few drops of oil to the tip and spin it as a put it in so that it gets spread out. once it is all the way in, you will need to find something to hold the valve in when you lay the head down. I piece of rubber or wood works good, or something metal will work if you are careful not to scratch the head mating surface.




Next comes the springs and retainer. Make sure to put the springs in the right direction, the end with the tighter wound coils goes towards the head.




There are a few different types of valve spring compressors, but not all of them will work with a B series head because of how deep the springs are in the well of the head. The type i have is the type that just grips the coils and compresses the spring. this is not the easiest to used and i had to grind the #!#!#!#! out of mine to make it clear all the other stuff in the head but they are cheap. another type you can use bolts to the cam cap holes and gives you a big lever that you can compress the spring with. these are more expensive but much easier to use.




Once you have the spring compressed you can insert the keepers. I like to use a flat blade screw driver with a dab of grease on the end of it. just stick the keeper to it and put it in the general area, it doesn't need to be perfect. after getting both keepers down there i switch over to another flatblade that is nice and clean to help push the keepers down into the correct spots as i slowly release the spring. when you are done it should look like this:




To ensure the keepers are fully seated flip the head up so that the valve is free to move. take a socket on an extension and give a good tap to the retainer with socket and a hammer. this will let the retainers fall into the right spot if they are pinched etc.




Now just repeat for the other 15 valves and you should have something looking like this:









Next comes installing the rocker arm assemblies. If you fully disassembled yours like me to clean them then you will will want to assemble them with some oil like below:










Next you need to install the assembly, make sure to libricate the rocker arm shaft with oil, as well as the rocker arms. hold them in the right area and slid the rocker shaft in. repeat for the next assembly. when you get to the last one make sure the shaft is rotated the correct way and push it all the way in. the oil jet hole should line up, install a new o ring on the oil jet and install:





Repeat for the other side, and then you should be good to go and put the head on. make sure to put the head gasket on the right way:




And that's all I had time for...