[tomstickland]

Dum de dum, fitted new heater fan tonight. Had to get that done before getting on with painting the new block.
Hmm, I'll just stick that new thermostat in too.
Three bolts, two were a bit tight. "better be careful or I'll shear those off" I thought.
How right I was.
"OK then, I can probably punch them out with a bit of time".
Wrong.
So I had to remove the strut brace, air box, cam cover and cam belt. I couldn't get the remnants out of the housing so I drilled them out and tapped the holes.
Also knackered the rubber seal that goes between the housing and the cylinder head.
So I've given up for a while.
Looks like I'm off down Vauxhall tomorrow to buy some bits.

Oh well.

 

[Fenix]

lol.

That sounds abit like my easy engine swap.

so far its taken 2 weeks but tbh not having a car to go to dealers/scrappies doesn't help

 

[Colonel K]

NEVER EVER THINK A JOB WILL BE EASY.

This is the hard lesson I've learnt

 

[Gaz]

i know EXACTLY what tom means here, its like almost every job i do on the cars turns out much harder and longer than it should be!

 

[Davo]

your not alone. I was changing injectors and decided to try and unscrew the fuel lines to the rail the wrong way!
So I broke off the union, and now the car is out of action - doh!
Fortunately Mr Animal has kindly sourced me a rail so it will be working again on Saturday - yay!

 

[tomstickland]

Well I managed to tap out the thermostat housing in the end.
I'm not happy with it though, so I'm trying to source another 2.0 8v thermostat housing. It's proving difficult.

 

[Davo]

Well I managed to tap out the thermostat housing in the end.
I'm not happy with it though, so I'm trying to source another 2.0 8v thermostat housing. It's proving difficult.

hmmm, when u go to Vauxhall and order a thermostat, what exactly do u get?
I went into Vaux for a standard valver one - cost £22 because it came with housing aswell.

 

[Jhonno]

what sort of heater are u running tom? standard one?

 

[tomstickland]

When I say "housing" I mean the large casting that is bolted to the head, not just the little housing that has the thermostat in it.

I've got the std heater.

 

[Astra Dan]

Hmm, I've got 2 x 2L 8V engines, I can picture the housing. I think the Mk3 will be OK, it's not quite 10 years old yet, but I bet the Nova's engine (as it's nearly 15 years old) will have some seized bolts, better have a look at this...

 

[tomstickland]

Well I got it all back together today. Fitted new cam belt too.
But I didn't bother tensioning it. I think I can detect a small "milkfloat noise" coming from it. The classic whine of overtensioning.

Think I'm going to sort that on Saturday.

 

[DarrenH]

 

[tomstickland]

Did you draw that yourself?
You are clever.

 

[tomstickland]

Saturday update:
the cam belt seemed to be whining a bit so I took it apart today. The cambelt tension was fine. I checked TDC properly and it looked like I'd fitted the cambelt one tooth out on the camshaft. So I moved it, but in the process almost knackered the vernier pulley. It's a vernier with two rings and a pin that lines one of many holes in the ring with one hole in the sprocket. I was doing up the bolt that holds it all together when I realised that the sprocket was one at a funny angle. I then twigged that the pin wasn't pushing into a hole and I was actually tightening the sprocket against the pin. I had to guess which hole the pin had gone in. Luckily I remembered that the pin on the cam shaft should point upwards at TDC. Got it all back together in the end.
I'm not happy with the condition of the cam sprocket anyway - it's Ally and a bit worn away on some of the teeth. So it looks like I'm fitting a new Steel pulley and getting it all timed up at some time in the future.

On the plus side, I did go out for a quick test drive and I can once again confirm that the lack of weight in the back makes the handling a lot nicer on wet roundabouts.