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Finally, I started looking at the engine. I knew this engine has blown head gasket from the time when the radiators blew and the engine overheated. I just didn’t want to put the engine back in the car in this condition. The engine didn’t fit my “2 Million Rand Car” picture. I asked my one good friend Duncan if he could not help me with the engine as he did allot of builds with the VK45DE and VQ35DE. Duncan took the motor apart and found some big issues.
So what is wrong?
Duncan took the head off the engine and could clearly see where the head gaskets were blown. It blew between the cylinders and the water jacket. So under boost, the boost will leak into the cooling circuit and push out all the coolant. That is why the car only did like a lap or two and the cooling system was fairly empty.
I got a set of new thick head gaskets out of the stores. Duncan called me and said we had bigger issues. The head warped from overheating. The one-cylinder head was out with about 0.5 mm. This was just too much and would just not work. We could not even skim the heads as 0.5mm would be just too much to take off and there would be a lot of other issues we would have to deal with.
The best would be just fit a set of other heads. As we have been using the VK45DE for a few years for development we had some spares available. We got a set of good heads out of the graveyard(Old part store). The heads got stripped and cleaned. The head of the Porsche 917 was still standard. So it was a straight swap.
Duncan inspected the sub-assembly of the engine and the sub was still in great condition. The engine got built back up. Now that the mechanical side of the engine was sorted I could focus on getting the engine to look the part.
Getting the engine to look nice.
We took the engine and masked everything off that should not be sprayed. We sprayed the engine with a hi heat black spray as we did want the paint to come off from the heat.
I asked Duncan if he could spray the tappet covers for me. As this is a dry-sump engine most of the ports on the tappet covers had to be blocked off. I have done this in the past but it was all bolted plugs. I wanted a clean look so I got all the ports machined off. The ports had to be closed off so I got the plugs machined out of glass-filled nylon, the same material the covers were made of.
I glued the plugs in place with a high heat epoxy. and then sanded the joints a bit so that the once sprayed the plugs would not be noticed. It would look like it came like that from the factory. Duncan didn’t say what color he was going to spray the covers. I just knew whatever color, it is going to look amazing. And so it did.
The engine was starting to look the part. I was very happy.
What else needed to be done.
The exhaust headers were damaged in the crash. I had to do some repairs on them and had to get them re-ceramic coated. Everything on the car just had to look new.
I also redid the oil lines underneath the engine that went to the Morosso oil pump. I tucked the pipes underneath the engine so that it just looks so much neater.
The engine was ready to go back into the car. I just had to do some small changes in the engine bay. You get mixed feelings when doing the last build like this. You know that the car is going to look great and that after the build is done and the car gets sold you will most probably never see the car again.
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One thought on “In what state was the 700Hp engine?”
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