Jim,

I doubt that you have to worry about the head being beat up as long as it's not cracked. Have it magafluxed or otherwise tested for cracks, do a valve job and go with it.

Carefully put away your bearings with tape around them to mark the journal they came from and carefully note bottom and top halves.

If you want to put the manual from the parts car in, this will be a lot of work, but is doable as long as you have the entire car there to get all the parts from. However, if you were to want to mate the '79 manual transmission to your '83 engine, the automatic crankshaft is different in the back, and you will need to use the adapter from the back of the '79 engine on the rear of your '83 engine.

Additionally if you take the '79 engine and put it in your '83 chassis you have a different glow plug system. the '79 has series glow plugs and is wired for same. If you have the whole car you can rob the series glow plug relay and fuse block from it and change the '83 over. The glow plug relay for the series system is behind the instrument cluster, not on the fenderwell.

Not having seen this engine, it's hard for me to say, but from everything I hear so far, it sounds like you can salvage the engine that's in the car now. Everything I've heard so far makes me believe that's the way I would go. Also, the four cylinder is just easier to work on than this blasted five cylinder in my daughter's car.

Also, if you pull the engine, prop up the transmission and just leave it in the car. With the radiator out, you can lift the engine straight out. You will only need to remove the cooler lines, get the dipstick out of the way, pull the metal cover from the bottom back of the engine adapter to access the torque converter bolts. The top bolts on the five cylinder transmission are difficult, but I bet they're a piece of cake on the four cylinder. They are on a manual transmission four cylinder.

Good luck

I'm going to just do it
 

after reading your success story on the 300D I will start with the teardown tomorrow and go with it. Heck, with the cyl head off the removal of the engine is 1/2 way there :).
I have a friend that I can borry an engine lift from and I intend to purchase a stand. I will probably post a new thread and start asking the questions. Will make sure I keep everything in order and labeled to make sure it all goes back together just like it comes apart. I will break the news to the wife this weekend when I roll the engine and new stand into the garage :).

I understand that the cylinder sleeves are pressed in - and you probably have to get some good machinery to get them in straight. (Can't just take a hammer & 2x4?)

My question is - how do you get the old used ones out? Can they be pulled? Ground out? Sawed out? Maybe I should spend some time in the Haynes and the CDROM to see what it says - looks like a good way to make an old, tired engine new again.

So the theory is that the oil hole/sprayer for this piston got clogged? I think we need to see a picture of the head to convict insufficient oil as the criminal here. If the valves for this cylinder are all battered up like the piston.... I will submit that if it does not fit, you must acquit.

:rolleyes:

Ken300D

Ken,

The liners must be bored out. This is a machine shop operation. They bore the sleeve until it is so thin that it basically tears out. Then they drive in the new sleeve which has an ID smaller than stock bore. they then bore the sleeve to size and top it to be flush with the deck. This is not a wet sleeve like a truck engine.

This means that the block must be completely stripped for the machine shop to work with it.

Also, I didn't catch anything about the oil sprayers. If you were talking about engatwork's car, it's a four cylinders. The only 616/617 engines with the oil sprayers are the five cylinder turbos.

Have a great day,

Sleeves can be removed by running a sloppy, wide weld bead up the side. This will shrink them enough to fall out. Obviously, the weld cannot penetrate to the block, so this isn't novice work. Some people have had decent luck making a driver to push them out from the bottom, then shrinking them with dry ice and pushing.

New ones are packed in dry ice and dropped into the cleaned bore -- must be very clean and the liner must be shoved all the way down before it expands and sticks -- not for the faint of heart. MB liners don't have to be decked, they are machined to the exact height already. If someone tells you they have to be decked, they didn't get them all the way in (remember, CLEAN block bore...).

Best left to the machine shop.

Chunks of filament glow plugs can get through the holes in the pre-chamber -- there is only 0.050" clearance between the exhaust valve and the piston at TDC -- doesn't take much to pound the crap out of the piston.

Peter

I will try to photo the cyl head tomorrow - it looks pretty much like the top of the piston for this particular cylinder. The valves are intact but beat up too. Friends at work have suggested lack of oil and running hot. The running hot could cause the top of the piston and/or rings to start coming apart which could have gotten into the top of the cyl head. I can't even see the hole in the prechamber hole. I do not know what happened to it. It has the same style glow plugs as the 1985 300D. Anything in particular anyone wants a photo of during this job just let me know.

Jim:

Sound more like something got down the intake. Have the rods reconditioned -- that one is likely to be bent. Plan on new valves for that cylinder, too -- usually major interference will break the cam towers rather than the valves or cam, but it is possible the valves are bent.

There are several holes in the prechamber, I think (I could be wrong!). Something battered it down. Excess heat will blow a hole in the piston crown, or at least melt it, not pound it to bits.

Peter

Suggestion for appeasing wife! go to Kelly Blue Book site and get average retail for you low mileage car. (add a zero )then you can show her that you are making a cool hundred dollars an an hour for you labors and ending up with a priceless classic beauty.....
William Rogers......

William,

Good idea, after all zero means nothing, right?

psfred,

Thanks for the explanation. I guess my point had been to leave this to the machine shop. Am I also wrong about the ID of the liners as they come from the manufacturer? If the ID is bore size, not undersize, then with your description new liners could be done without taking the block to the machine shop. Please advise.

Have a great day,

Larry:

New liners will be undersized and must be bored and honed to fit the pistons, perferably individually. You can't get all shops to do this, but if you can it is best to have the bores honed to exact clearance. We use a racing/ pulling tractor shop, where this is normal practice, but we pay a bit more in cost and time -- they tend to be slow execpt in the winter (off season).

If you don't have access to the proper machine tools and experience in using them, it is more than worth the expense to have the sleeves done for you. Assembly is far eaiser, and can be done by any DIY type without diffuculty so long as one reads the instructions....!

A hint to someone attempting this the first time: The block WILL NOT be adequately clean upon return from the machine shop, no matter what they claim (or how much plastic they wrap it in!). They will NOT spend the time, so one has to do it at home. Scrub the bores with soap and water and a scrub brush (natural bristle is best) until the brush doesn't get dirty anymore. Takes a while. Ditto for the oil galleries (specify that the plugs be left out so you can get a long, skinny brush in there). Clean until you think you are going nuts, then clean some more! Grit from the honing operation collets in the oil galleries, and some will be embedded in the cylinder walls, and must be physically scrubbed out -- rinsing won't work.

Ditto for the crankshaft, too -- the brush must stay clean when run through the oil drillings. Takes forever, but if you don't do this, the grit will kill your crankshaft very soon after you start running it! The grit in the cylinder walls will eat your new rings and pistons, too, in very short order.

When it is all clean, rinse well and spray down with WD40 to prevent rust, and then install oil gallery plugs, etc, and procede with rebuild.

Peter

Yes, when I got my block back from the machine shop, I put it on the engine stand and rolled it to the driveway. I mixed about three gallons of detergent and hot water. I used a scrub brush and scrubbed the bores and some long brushes I got in a kit a few years ago when building a small block Chevy.

Then I used some cheap 30W I had in the shop for the first fill. I drove the car to town and back yesterday and pulled the drain plug as soon as I got back. The first fill had about 50 miles on it. I drained that oil all night to get everything out that I could. Put in a new filter and a fresh fill of Delo 400 this morning.

I plan on draining this oil at about 500 miles.

Have a great day,

Larry and Psfred, that kind of info is what makes this site so important to us that do our own repairs. When I was an active silversmith I used an ultra sonic cleaner for cleaning jewelry after buffing, do any of the big shop use large ultra sonics machines to clean blocks and other parts after machine operations...
William Rogrers.......

The very best shops will do some cleaning, but no one wants to pay shop rate for a good job, and even if you did, the block would be dirty by the time you got home anyway.

Scrubbing is the only way to get them clean that I know of. Ultrasonic cleaners won't get the grit out of the oil passages, anyway, since they aren't open except at the ports. Needs a brush.

Larry's oil plan is excellent -- MB ships cars with a special oil filter that is replaced at low (200 or so) milage to catch all the leftovers.

Peter

Yes, a long time ago the "overhaul" filters were available from MB. They were capable of trapping much smaller particles than a standard filter. I haven't tried to get one lately. The last one I got was in the mid eighties when rebuilding a '68 230, manual transmission 6 cylinder.

For domestic cars you can use the Baldwin filter for this purpose. It is a ball of string, rather than a pleated paper filter.

Willliam,

A high school friend of mine had a low production automotive machine shop for many years. He was absolutely meticulous about everything. He had a "Jet Wash" that was like a big dish washer. You could set a block on end and let it go for a while. It used very hot water and he could add solvent, soap etc. as desired, although I never saw him do that. He also had an area where he could use a high pressure hot water nozzle through all the passages. Also he would run the gun cleaning type brushes through everywhere. Very time consuming. I doubt that there are any production shops that would go this far. This is mostly race engine typ shops that go this far.

PS. When cleaning my block, I also used a contraption that blows compressed air through a nozzle and siphons liquid. I put th siphon hose down in the bucket of hot soapy water to blow out as many passages as I could get to. Then I siphoned hot, non soapy water with the same contraption.

Have a great day,

At least I will be enjoying the seats from the 240D for awhile. I moved the seats from the 240D to the 300D and visversa. The seats from the 240D are like brand new and alot more comfortable. I am seriously considering moving all of the interior from the 240D into the 300D. Everything will go except the headliner because the 240D does not have a sunroof. The tan looks good in the black 300D.

Got most everything off of the right side of the engine. Have the injector, starter and oil filter housing to go before I am ready to remove it. Probably next weekend. Some more interesting information - with the #3 piston at the bottom - I can pour Marvel Mystery oil on the piston and it will maintain level over night. The #1 and #4 pistons will not do that. Don't know if it means anything or not. Also, when I drained the oil out of the crankcase this afternoon I got about 3 liters of coolant out before the oil started draining. Whether it ever runs again or not I can't say at this time but I am going to disassemble the engine and have a real close look at it just for the experience.