R63 AMG The Unicorn of my Destruction

In reply to mazdeuce:

mazdeuce wrote:

BrokenYugo wrote: I think you'll probably be ok with just lifters, especially if the cam is hardened. I'd be inclined to drown them in cam assembly/break in lube on installation and get UOA on the next few oil changes just for good measure though.

I was going to ask about assembly lube for the cams. They don't use any bearings which I thought was kind of interesting and terrifying. If something goes wrong it eats the whole head.

Yes and it eats it up FAST! On a fresh install I use Torco lube on the bearing surfaces and each lobe/lifter. It's enough to get through startup and that's all you need.

mazdeuce wrote:

BrokenYugo wrote: I think you'll probably be ok with just lifters, especially if the cam is hardened. I'd be inclined to drown them in cam assembly/break in lube on installation and get UOA on the next few oil changes just for good measure though.

I was going to ask about assembly lube for the cams. They don't use any bearings which I thought was kind of interesting and terrifying. If something goes wrong it eats the whole head.

A surprising amount of engines are like that. The Cummins 5.9 (and a lot of other diesels) only has one bearing near the cam nose. And that's a cam-in-block engine.

AngryP hipped me to this thread this morning. Read on the E36 M3ter till my legs fell asleep...then realized the thread was FORTY FIVE PAGES LONG, showered (as far as you know) and headed to work.

A couple thoughts:

1. I was really hoping on page one that the reason for Angry sending me the link was "It ends in him wanting to sell you the Vagon." JOKES! (No, but seriously....)

2. This thread is berkeleying awesome. Had "A couple minutes to kill" and ended up reading front to back. Thanks for now making me stay late at work, ass.

3. Only because Angrydude said I should: Has anyone mentioned that HENNESSY HONDA OF WOODSTOCK EATS ENTIRE BUFFETS OF DICKS FOR BREAKFAST, LUNCH, AND DINNER?" (MORE JOKES!)

Seriously dude. Nice work. 99% of people would've thrown it on CL or sent it to the yard/scrapper. Very cool to see proof that it doesn't take some berkeleyer from Stuttgart to hand-build an engine to last. Mega thumbs-ups.

EDIT: No offense if you're some berkeleyer from Stuttgart.

mazdeuce wrote:

dculberson wrote: In reply to mazdeuce: Wait a minute! We went over that cover plate in the grosh thread. Put another one on asap before little fingers get zapped! Haha

Dammit! Fine, but isn't is a good thing that I didn't replace the switch plate yet? It's the last old one in the house, and you guys thought I was just being cheap.

Especially since new switch plate plastic is probably softer and thinner than older switch plate plastic, to save that $0.000000001 per unit.

As a longtime GRM subscriber (from the AutoX magazine days), I finally had to join the board to comment when my non-car-guy brother and wife independently sent me links to this from different non-car sources. You're officially famous!

Congrats on the rebuild...you're a better and braver man than I. As a receipient of one of the earliest Miata motors Keith mentioned a few pages back, I feel your pain. I wound up giving that motor away to my racing partner at the time and it now lives on (after a rebuild) in his '92 Silverstone.

I'm just glad I caught the leaking swirlpot in my Cayman R (just out of warranty of course) in time to avoid being forced into a decision like you had to make...with a potential motor replacement likely worth more than the car itself.

I do love how you're keeping your original motor with the Unicorn...symbolic victory at its finest.

Speaking of Unicorns, I'll be down in your neck of the woods sometime in the next couple of months. Tax stamp should show up on some cans I have in BATFE purgatory at a shop in Houston. Our High School mascot is a unicorn (I wish I was kidding), and I'm sure we have some gear appropriate for your build. Have a few NATO and German plates from our time living overseas laying around to help tile the grosh too.

Again, congrats on preserving one of the few real Unicorns out there. I'm working on my own as soon as a close friend moves back from Germany with his manual transmission Volvo V70R promised to me upon his return!

mazdeuce wrote:

BrokenYugo wrote: I think you'll probably be ok with just lifters, especially if the cam is hardened. I'd be inclined to drown them in cam assembly/break in lube on installation and get UOA on the next few oil changes just for good measure though.

I was going to ask about assembly lube for the cams. They don't use any bearings which I thought was kind of interesting and terrifying. If something goes wrong it eats the whole head.

I have always just used motor oil. I have a thumb-lever kind squirt can, I give the journals all a little squirt of oil.

Reality check: The loads are so low that using raw machined aluminum as the journal is perfectly cromulent. As long as the metal isn't actually cobwebs-and-dust dry, it will be Just Fine.

I also use the same squirt can to liberally pump oil into the feed journals before installing a given cam.

So Amazon just sent me an email trying to sell me Mercedes timing chain guides...

Given I've never seriously considered an MB, I'm blaming this on you.

In reply to 91Eunos:

I'm glad you decided to join us. I personally feel that the full GRM experience is three pronged. The magazine, the forum, and the Challenge. All of them stand alone, but the three together give you the full experience. Of course even though I built a Challenge car and entered once, I still haven't actually made it to the event. On my bucket list.

When you make it down to Houston drop me a line (click on my user name and it will let you send me a message) and you can stop on by and either see this thing still scattered all over the garage or hopefully back up and running.

If you want, I can make up a vinyl for the back window....

"As seen on MSN, R&T, Fark, GRM, etc...."

In reply to Smarta$$ McPoopyPants:

Sorry about the sore legs and body odor, I'm sort of proud that I could be partly responsible for that sort of personal neglect though.
A LOT people asked me if I was selling the V. Even though they're both pig heavy and have silly power they're quite different. As long as I have the room they both stay. I also never considered anything other than fixing this somehow. Well, there may have been a brief few moments where MB could have convinced me to accept a silly low trade in, but they missed their opportunity an now that window is closed.
I can only imagine how horrible this would have gone if there were a Hennessy Mercedes of Woodstock.

In reply to Knurled:

Yes, for these heads, engine oil works just fine.

Also, for the liftres you want to make sure that they have that springy feel. If I recall correctly the way they usually fail is that they collapse and make hell of a noise. So if you are not replacong them, keep them submerged in engine oil till its time for them to go back in. That'll help with the start up and reduce the chance that they'll make that precious scary noise.

These lifters are getting replaced. The visual evidence that some of them have stopped turning on occasion lets me know it's time.

Crackers wrote: So Amazon just sent me an email trying to sell me Mercedes timing chain guides... Given I've never seriously considered an MB, I'm blaming this on you.

Amazon is simply testing out their new fortune telling software on you. In the future you will own a Mercedes...........

Yeah, just motor oil on the bearings will be fine. I was taking about just the lobes/lifter faces, there are special sauces for that, intended more for pushrod stuff but a little overkill never hurt, some kind of high moly grease IIRC.

BrokenYugo wrote: Yeah, just motor oil on the bearings will be fine. I was taking about just the lobes/lifter faces, there are special sauces for that, intended more for pushrod stuff but a little overkill never hurt, some kind of high moly grease IIRC.

Yep, moly break-in lube. Pretty standard stuff, I use it on all bearings when I rebuild an engine. Mainly it's there as a high pressure lubricant to protect everything until oil pressure builds on an initial startup.

Those first few seconds are critical on lifters/tappets, as a brand new one doesn't have a wear and rotation pattern established yet.

-Hans

Just checking in to get my daily update. Also, if some mb intern does pick up this thread, I consider it a personal mission to derail said minion as much as possible. For the lulz.

Proper lube. Duly noted.

mazdeuce wrote:

Crackers wrote: So Amazon just sent me an email trying to sell me Mercedes timing chain guides... Given I've never seriously considered an MB, I'm blaming this on you.

Amazon is simply testing out their new fortune telling software on you. In the future you will own a Mercedes...........

Not unless you're planning on giving one away...

8+ years after I join (kind of shocked i remember my login) this thread motivates me to post. Amazing. I'll be following this daily.

Ecast25 wrote: In reply to Knurled: Yes, for these heads, engine oil works just fine. Also, for the liftres you want to make sure that they have that springy feel. If I recall correctly the way they usually fail is that they collapse and make hell of a noise. So if you are not replacong them, keep them submerged in engine oil till its time for them to go back in. That'll help with the start up and reduce the chance that they'll make that precious scary noise.

This applies to the new lifters as well! We had a guy rebuild a perfectly running motor for no reason back in school and he replaced the perfectly fine GM lifters with garbage Chinese ones, did NOT soak them upon rebuild. Not sure whether the quality or lack of lube killed that engine but it sounded horrible for about a minute... till it didn't. Mazdadeuce keep up the quality work I think I mirror many with the sentiment of, "I wish I could be like you when I grow up"(I say as a 26 year young man)

Hi, Former Mercedes Rebuilder here.

1) Bent rods can be checked by grabbing a long piece of tempered glass (usually they don't deviate much) and then using a feeler gauge on both sides of the rod against the glass. The go/no go of your feeler gauge should be very low on your rods, about .002"

2) If you rods pass, feel free to re-use them. I don't know about re-using the bolts on that engine, if the torque spec is horrendous (really high) I would just buy new bolts.

3)On the rods, I'm not sure if you have cryo-snapped or machined/forged. From about that time period the V8 AMG's used snapped rods, while the SLR used forged. Either way, you just have to make sure they are straight.

4)In my years rebuilding Mercedes engines, I have only seen 1 damaged crank. Mercedes cranks are outrageously tough, the engine can overheat, ruin all cylinders, bend all rods, melt the pistons, and all you have to do is carefully melt the main and rod bearings off of the crank and you are good to use it again. To re-use your crank, I would sand with 400 grit the rear edge of the rear of the crank, triple checking that there is nothing on that edge which will nick the rear seal. Then I would very carefully use one of those sandpaper rolls of high grit to carefully polish all the journals and throws. Err on the side of not sanding much, aka barely touch it, just try to remove the sound rust that might be built up.

5) These bolt failures never used to be a problem back when KAMAX made all the critical bolts for mercedes. I've built many engines, and this is the first head bolt failure I think i've seen. Headbolts are usually quite trusty, and every engine I've built has been held into the engine stand by 4-6 mercedes headbolts, so I wouldn't think too much about just buying a new headbolt to replace your failed one.

(a note for later) So for building the lower end of the engine, aka the Shortblock. Your engine block will have a code stamped into it, with G,Y,W etc. That is the code for main bearings you will need for the engine. Since you're at 100,000 miles, I would suggest going about 1 rating up from the original code. I would change out all the White codes to red, and all the reds to yellow. Once you insert the new bearings, throw the crank into the block, and torque the mains, see how hard the crank is to turn over. If you insert the damper bolt, the engine should turn over with the weight of a wrench.

I have quite a few notes on Mercedes engines are put together, let me know if you have questions or run into some problems with your build.

For assembly lube for your cams, Joe Gibbs has been tested to be an extremely effective lubricant. Once I saw a diesel (OM642) come back in after the installers foolishly tried to run the engine without putting oil in it, causing the engine to seize after about 5 minutes. After a careful disassembly(For Warranty), that engine only needed minor work on the head and cam to be shipped back out.

If you get tired of the R... go for the G...

In reply to SStrife:

That is good info.

mazdeuce wrote: Proper lube. Duly noted.

ALways use proper lube, especially on rear, err engines.