Lee's Garage

[Benn]

Yay running again almost ready to be driven in anger soon. Why was there no matt ginger j in the vid? lmao

[lee303]

he'd gone home by that point, i think he'd had enough of having tea bags fired at him by brian, or had to see his bird, one of the two anywaylmao

[Brian_S]

It was a good impromtu look in the box, if not a bit uncomfortable! lol

The 1.8 sounds sweet as always, looking forward to drowning out the sound with 6 cylinders!

[lee303]

lmao it was quite erm, 'interesting' thats for surelmao and tbh i'm looking forward to you drowing me out too it will just be awesome to have yours done and go do some events together

[Brian_S]

tea bags fired at him by brian

I'd like to stress that they were the type of tea bags you make tea with!

Roll on the new year when the V6 gets built. Woohoo. I might strip it tomorrow and seal the block up properly rather than let it just lie around gathering **** in the bores lmao

[lee303]

lmao

[rob_lee_1]

sounds awesome.... almost sounds like a bike revving in the vid! haha

[lee303]

it certainly does rev up fast, it has very little inertia really, when you switch it off it just stops like someones pulled the pluglmao

[robertkassner]

I was going to say that - Revs nice! nice work Lee.

Rob

[flatout]

sounds lovely fella, glad to hear its getting there mate.

[Brian_S]

As the bottom end of the X25XE V6 has been sat around for a bit with the heads off, I thought I had best strip it down now and seal it up so that it can be rebuilt in the new year. Anything's better than just having it laying around getting dirt in the bores, waterways and oil galleries. I also want to make the dry sump pan on a nearly empty block, I'll just put the main caps and girdle back on to weld up the dry sump pan.

The flat 20XE flywheel fits perfectly on the X25XE crank:



The bottom end of the X25XE with it's girdle on, the sump is mostly removed and the crank windage tray is removed:



Photo of the girdle/main cap interface. It's probably a good job that there is a strong girdle strapping the mains as there are 6 cylinders and four mains!



Girdle removed:



Which revealed a nasty peice of swarf on the block on the back of the crank sensor hole:



The swarf fell off as soon as I touched it.

The last person to rebuild this engine did the crank pulley FT. It took me, some heat, a 3ft breaker bar + extra extension to get the pulley bolt out. However, the woodruff key gave up first and sheared before the bolt made lots of noises and moved:



This in turn created a burr on the end of the crank which scored the crank thrust bearing, so a few bits to replace. The crank bolt was far too over-tight it was crazy, it just laughed at the nut gun.



The X25XE Crank, with its huge counterweights:



One empty X25XE block:



The oil galleries run across the block from the front of the engine to the rear taking various deviations on the way. The oil exits the pump and into the lower gallery hole in the photo:



The gallery from the oil pump then comes out the threaded hole to the right of the oil filter in the photo below. This goes off the oil/water heat exchanger (Which I won't be running) and return from there into the -10 JIC fitting to the left of the oil filter. This feeds straight into the outside area of the filter, which includes a pressure releif valve incase the filter gets blocked - this is probably designed to operate before the filters own pressure releif system which are generally flawed by the fact that when they releive, they push all of the previously filtered out debris straight into the main oil gallery feed! D'oh!

After passing through the filter the oil enters the main oil gallery feed through the centre filter hole. This gallery, as well as feeding the main crank bearings directly and going off the rest of the engine also goes back to the oil pump (the top gallery in the photo above) to the oil pressure releif valve to control the oil pressure.

[lee303]

hey dude, grr poxy internet not work till now for some reason ffs!lmao
progress looks good, crank pulley looks a mare though, must have been done up fecking tight to bust the keyway and that bit of swarf looks niiiiicelmao so i take it you'll try to get the ally to do the sump tuesday? that would be
race of champions was wicked and way warmer than actually going like last year dc had a blinder and crashed two KTM xbowslmao not quite as good as the crystal maze though

[Brian_S]

lmao Crystal Maze was awesome. Glad to see DC going out with a bang *boom tish* I'll have to try and catch up with some of the footage.

The crank pulley was a bit of a pig, the 3ft extension was bending quite a bit. Hats off to the E Torx socket though, it gripped well and only flew across the garage once when I was trying to shock it undone with a hammer! lmao

Tuesday I should have the ali for the sump pan, yeah.

[lee303]

lmao sounds like you had an adventurous daylmao dc had one race where he binned the KTM into the barrier on the last corner and still won the race with one wheel stuffed up into the chassis locked solid, then proceeded to bin it into the hordings under the stadium after he had left the track to return to the holding area, what a 'ledgelmao he very nearly beat loeb to the title too

[Brian_S]

lol, awesome effort. Glad someone ran loeb close. I do think rally drivers have a bit if an advantage at the ROC, they pretty much do the same thing at every rally.

[lee303]

yeah, schuey and vettel won the teams but got dumped out the singles bit by a yankee nascar driverlmao he was awesome in everything other than the fiat 500's which they raced in when he lost, he blamed it on his inability to go fast when he cant see his wheels againlmao look the footage up, its worth a look, loeb had an epic fail at the first corner in a KTM but still came back to win

[AndrisV]

Just an idea I'm thinking of. In this season my younger bro had a problem with alternators tearing in parts every other rally. Engine ain't anything ultra 7750rpm max and alternators as well + we was lazy not having made decent ratio pulleys at start. But even after we made some, problem still persisted. He's changing gears (sync) almost like with dog, but thats not a biggie, gearbox rebuild after 2 rallies anyway. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6fXLgQRar1c

My idea to try and save alternator, is to fit a freewheel clutch type pulley on alternator, VW Golf 4 has it. This could be interesting for Brian since I see a ribbed belt will be used, those belts don't like sudden changes in rpm and this way VW was trying to fight the problem. And a problem in this is braking with engine.

[Ginge]

Awesome as usual...

got a high res pic of "Brians Box" ?

I need a new desktop and it caught my eye!

Ginge

[Brian_S]

Hi AndrisV, Do you have any photos of how the alternators failed? Are you sure the crank pulley and the alternator pulley are parallel to each other? I've not heard of any poly-vee related problems, in fact most people recommend them as they tend not to flip inside out when the engine changes revs quickly. I would be interested to see any info you have though. I have seen the alternator clutches before, but I thought they were more to do with massive loads on the alternator (like electric power assisted steering), not really for engine rev changes. Thanks for the heads-up.

Ginge, I think Lee might have a higher res pic, as he took it. The box seems in good condition - shame it's not got a SCCR kit in it though

[jonlem]

Brians box is a stock T5 isn't it ? hardly worthy of a desktop pic (no offence meant Brian) lol

I'll be interested to see what comes of that v6, certainly a different approach than most would dare take but no doubt the finished article will be awesome.

Car sounds good too Lee, you missed a good day yesterday although ROC was probably excellent as long as it was warmer than last year ! BRRRR

[Brian_S]

Yeah, std T5 - don't worry no offence taken! lol. I was going to go for a T5 from the states, but the exchange rate went tits up and it would also have added another few months to the build, which would just be crazy. It's been off the road long enough now.

I can't wait to get the V6 built, although the initial build will be standard internals on throttle bodies. During next year I'll get the bits from Mr. Bowyer for a steel bottom end and some decent cams. There's plenty of potential with the V6.

[jr@corsasport]

Excelent rick draper esque mincing going on there lee

[lee303]

Awesome as usual...

got a high res pic of "Brians Box" ?

I need a new desktop and it caught my eye!

Ginge

i can mail you the high rec one if you like mate, just drop me your email addy

Brians box is a stock T5 isn't it ? hardly worthy of a desktop pic (no offence meant Brian) lol

I'll be interested to see what comes of that v6, certainly a different approach than most would dare take but no doubt the finished article will be awesome.

Car sounds good too Lee, you missed a good day yesterday although ROC was probably excellent as long as it was warmer than last year ! BRRRR

yeah, is box is rubbish, i keep telling him to no availlmao
i just couldnt be arsed to do anything yesterday tbh, so a day infront of the telly and playing my guitar was pretty much spot on for me, last year they even ran ou tof hot drinks at wembley for the ROC, not a problem i suffered at home with skylmao

Excelent rick draper esque mincing going on there lee

yeah yeah, i know, apparently reco are expecting the shafts this week though, so it could well be all systems go saturday

[jr@corsasport]

i


yeah yeah, i know, apparently reco are expecting the shafts this week though, so it could well be all systems go saturday

i meant just in the vid, not genrally as it would be ever so ironic for me to start taking the piss about build times lmao

[lee303]

lol, dont worry mate, i knew what you meant, but i have been feeling the mince a bit recently myself, cant wait to be able to do some meaningful stuff