What a great productive day. Matt's dad had the engine block cleaned up and 2 pistons installed when I arrived. We assembled the short block ..no issues there.
I must say the connecting rod bearings etc looked perfect. No signs off oil starvation to be found anywhere. Even the bottom off the oil pan looked debris free,and spotless.
The head was a different story. First we noticed that on the cylinders that had been detonation ......or so the theory goes.....(primarily #3 being the worst) there were small ridges built up on the area next to the valves. We looked at this area very carefully,because I was worried that the new gasket wouldn't seal properly in this area. After some light cleaning with emery cloth, it became very clear that some off the missing material from the pistons has transfred from the piston to the head.......strange. Anyhoo we cleaned it all up and went to install the head.
What was also strange was that both sets off spark plugs were present, and I couldn't see any material missing from the plugs anywhere. I thought that with detonation usually the plugs were the first thing to get damaged? anyhoo back on track.
I noticed Matt's dad was having a hell of a time getting the ARP studs in.......I didn't like this, so we opted to pull the head back off to further investigate. As suspected the ARP washers had depressed about 0.020" into the head and slightly crushed the washer surface area making it difficult to get the ARP studs in. We grabbed the correct size drill bit, and Matt' s dad put some vice grips on it and went about slowly reaming out the collapsed area. Interesting to see that all the holes were in fact collapsed about 1/8" as noted by the now shiny surface that the drill bit had cut. A very easy fix indeed.
Matt's dad had some old diesel head bolts kicking around so he cut the studs up and used the much thicker,superior washers from the old diesel head bolts. We now had a much greater surface area for the head bolts to clamp on to the head. After seeing this I will never install ARP studs again with the washers supplied.
So that's where she stands. Matt's dad will spend some time on it tomorrow and hopefully get it fired up
Mat your dad and I decided that one day you will fix the tdi
Cheers,
Craig.
Don't blame him, lots of hard work. Everything looked great, no leaks, but again only 30 seconds of run time before I said nope, no thanks, don't want fuel messing shit up again. Meanwhile I was trying to connect to VEMS. On the computer we've been using for a year or two (cheap old Dell) the serial port suddenly started freezing every time I tried to connect to VEMS. And I mean freezing the whole computer. When I turned ignition switch off, back to normal. On, freeze. Repeat. So I tried uninstalling/reinstalling VEMS and drivers, no dice. So I just downloaded some replacement .sys files and put them there, but now I'm at home and can't check. Might try a different laptop tomorrow with a serial-usb adapter. It was just really frustrating because we checked the timing and it was advanced (no ignition lock) but then when I went to connect the laptop said NOWAI. Ugh. So unfortunately it's still sitting there but at least it runs. New plugs tomorrow and hopefully I can get this VEMS BS figured out. I know it's not just VEMS because I opened up the 034 882c software which also tries to use the serial port, and it froze as well. Piecashit.
