Well.. now you can start your benz 6.3 rebuilding business!
Well.. now you can start your benz 6.3 rebuilding business!
mazdeuce wrote: "I NEED to put on a supercharger, the internet wants me to." I'll let you know how that goes.
As an individual who has to manage projects for a living, I am very much against scope creep. You have enough other projects on your desk and the Panzer Princess has had the attention she deserves.
Spend the time and $$$ on Fergus; one of the more charming, character loaded, patient and deserving cars in your stable.
Smear the piston/wall junction with vasoline before you clean the piston. Then turn the crank to drop the piston and 99% of the gunk will be trapped in the petroleum jelly at the top of the cylinder.
NOHOME wrote:mazdeuce wrote: "I NEED to put on a supercharger, the internet wants me to." I'll let you know how that goes.As an individual who has to manage projects for a living, I am very much against scope creep. You have enough other projects on your desk and the Panzer Princess has had the attention she deserves. Spend the time and $$$ on Fergus; one of the more charming, character loaded, patient and deserving cars in your stable.
Yeah, I mean, if any of your cars is SCREAMING for a blower, it's Fergus.
In reply to NOHOME:
I know that's what I should do.......
There are some other things going on in Deuceville that mean I need to make sure that the R63 is just a background project for a while. I'm purposely not letting myself dig in hard because I need to be able to step away and let it sit and not be bothered by it. However, that purposeful lack of focus leads to daydreaming. What if......
Crackers wrote: Smear the piston/wall junction with vasoline before you clean the piston. Then turn the crank to drop the piston and 99% of the gunk will be trapped in the petroleum jelly at the top of the cylinder.
The last time I bought a jar of Vaseline it was to pack the new oil pump on the Range Rover. It was the only thing I bought. I was VERY excited to get home and get the truck buttoned up. I may have given the store clerk the wrong impression.
I will do that with the pistons. Thanks for the tip.
And I still want to set Fergus up with four side drafts on a long runner cross intake. For reasons.
"And I still want to set Fergus up with four side drafts on a long runner cross intake. For reasons."
You've convinced me. I know you weren't trying, but that's what you did.
mazdeuce wrote: In reply to NOHOME: I know that's what I should do....... There are some other things going on in Deuceville that mean I need to make sure that the R63 is just a background project for a while. I'm purposely not letting myself dig in hard because I need to be able to step away and let it sit and not be bothered by it. However, that purposeful lack of focus leads to daydreaming. What if......
Umm... after cleaning the pistons, what's left to do before reassembly starts?
Just coming out of lurk mode, home sick so catching up on the thread. Great stuff. The bolt head being right where the tech expected, wow, says so much about it being a known problem. Also very fortunate for you that there wasn't anywhere the head of the bolt could go to cause more trouble!
This whole thing reminds me so much of Ford vs. the owners of the third gen SHO (notice my forum name, though I have a gen II), where a significant number of the cams failed, sometimes shortly after developing a slight ticking sound. The cost/weight saver there was that they had swaged the hollow cam outwards into the pressed on lobes, a rather unique method AFAIK. But some lobes did come loose, and being an interference engine, this generally resulted in engine being trashed. Ford never did step up to make it a general recall. I always wondered what the % of failures would have had to have been for them to take action; or would it have needed a few well-publicized fatalities (car stops on road, then fiery crash - can you say Pinto or Crown Vic Police Interceptor?) to get it into the public eye?
Finally, I used to look at broken stuff for a living, and the shape of the fracture is kinda neat (engineering nerdy-neat) in that it shows the load path underneath a bolt head as the fatigue fracture progressed along the path of highest tensile stress. Also that corner at the bottom of the head of the bolt is WAY too sharp. Dunno if MB specs out every aspect of their fastener or if they bought it out of a catalog, but on fairly infrequent occasions even good engineers forget to carry the zero or whatever. Engineers would want to make it good, accountants would say not to. But you need both:
Q:What's the difference between an engineer and an accountant? A:The accountant knows he's not an engineer....
mazdeuce wrote: Kind of driving Mrs. Deuce nuts talking about pulling the motor and how excited I was to pull the valve covers so she sent me back to the Grosh. Passenger side looks fantastic. Cams are great. And pointy. Bolts look great. Usually they just crack so I didn't necessarily expect to find anything but it's good to look.Cams look great. Motor turns over smoothly. I'll still need to inspect the cylinders and check to make sure the rod isn't bent, but I'm thinking I got off lucky. Now I KNOW what happened. I know how to proceed. I'm feeling good about this for the first time in a long time.
In reply to Ian F:
I need to purchase everything.
Without going into too much detail, we're single income in Deuceland and are likely to be experiencing some income fluctuations in the near term. It's all going to end up as a net positive but now is a good time for me to remember one of the mottos of being a stay at home dad "you've got a good thing going, don't screw it up"
The R63 is not, and shouldn't be, a priority either for time or money.
Recent sales of R63's suggest that these are an appreciating asset. I'm going to find tweed pants and a pipe and consider myself an eccentric collector of high horsepower family cars. Collector cars in storage are fine.
Our regular schedule of automotive and general project insanity will resume once things calm down.
mazdeuce said: And I still want to set Fergus up with four side drafts on a long runner cross intake.
See, since it was stated before the project started, that there is a requirement specification, not scope creep. So it is all good. 
NOHOME wrote:mazdeuce said: And I still want to set Fergus up with four side drafts on a long runner cross intake.See, since it was stated before the project started, that there is a requirement specification, not scope creep. So it is all good.
Only on GRM can you own a car for four years and have it partially disassembled in the garage for almost two of those and then put it mostly back together and still have it be in the "pre project design phase".
In reply to mazdeuce:
"Everything" is the bolt kit and a gasket set, no? Or are there some other "while I have it apart" items you want to replace?
While I don't disagree with you, I can say from experience that having a half torn apart German car sitting on the lift in your garage can turn into a nightmare quicker than you think. IMNSHO/E, getting the car back together ASAP while it's all still relatively fresh in your head might be more important than you realize.
In reply to mazdeuce: You're famous!
In reply to ShadowSix:
Yes, that showed up on a friend's Facebook feed yesterday. It's interesting that people wrote about me on Jalopnik and R&T yesterday and nobody ever tried to contact me.
mazdeuce wrote: The great tragedy of fame could be the origional owner figuring out that they're still paying for my XM.I will be very sad if my free radio is gone when I fire it back up.
So, here's how Sirius/XM works.
When you activate a new radio, the company tells the satellites to send your unit's ID code out on a side channel that tells the unit it's now active. That message is broadcast for a couple days/weeks.
When you cancel your subscription (or stop paying), they do the same thing: send out a message with the ID code telling the unit to stop receiving. That message is also broadcast for a couple days/weeks.
So if the vehicle has been off for several weeks while it's having its engine rebuilt, then it might never receive that cancellation signal, and you'll have free SiriusXM in that vehicle for life.
mazdeuce wrote: In reply to ShadowSix: Yes, that showed up on a friend's Facebook feed yesterday. It's interesting that people wrote about me on Jalopnik and R&T yesterday and nobody ever tried to contact me.
I wondered if anyone contacted you regarding the write ups or not.
Reading through some of the Facebook reactions to the R&T write up was a glaring reminder why GRM is my internet automotive happy place. 
In reply to Sky_Render:
So you're saying I should park in the bat cave for a month after cancelling XM? Done.
In reply to Ian F:
Head bolts, gaskets, the lifter tappet thingys are known to fail and aren't expensive. The timing chain isn't really a wear item but the plastic guides are. The cam phasers are the big thing to think about. They're $500 each and there are four of them. I'm leaning towsrd leaving them. They're not too had to replace with the engine in the car. I still need to figure out if I can have the intake repaired or source a different one.
Fresh cup of coffee and seriously thinking about what you said though.
I agree with Ian. I wouldn't push this thing to the corner and let it sit. Entropy sets in at that point.
If the parts cost isn't too high, I'd buy everything now that's a PITA to replace and get it up and going right away...
As the caretaker of a piece of internet news bait, this is fairly typical. R&T will often try to contact me, but will go ahead with the article if I don't respond in a few hours. They also know how to get in touch with me, whereas some Random Forum Guy (played in this case by Mazdeuce) is harder to reach. It's all about time to market.
A lot of other places will just put something together and publish. Which can be amusing if there's a bit of bad info in there, because you can watch it propagate from one article to another.
Interestingly, the UK based outlets are a lot better at contacting me and also reading, understanding and rewriting the information.
And don't ever read the comments. There are an infinite number of monkeys out there, all typing the same four things.
Keith Tanner wrote: And don't ever read the comments. There are an infinite number of monkeys out there, all typing the same four things.
speaking of "don't read the comments" and "re-appropriation of internet content"... I wonder how long it will be before this is turned into one of the "Build Threads" youtube hijacks?
Measuring deck height on weirdly shaped pistons that rock in the bore. What's the procedure? I can tell with a straight edge that they're fine, but I'd love some actual numbers. MB says piston deck height of 0.18mm +/- 0.05mm.
I was trying with my new measuring thingy, but I'm a bit frustrated. 
Do the pistons come up higher than the deck? If not, I would not use that gauge. I would use a straight edge and some feeler gauges.
In reply to Slippery:
Thanks. The internet just taught me the same thing. 
Tested four pistons (including the two that bracket the bad bolt) and everything looks fantastic. The .23mm a no-go on all of them. Time to break out the Vaseline and get to work!
It's really cool to see the insides of these things. I'm glad to hear that you think the rods aren't bent.
Can you clean out the cam phasers somehow without fully dismantling them?
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