Sensei's B6 rebuild and swap

[JohnGunn]

Zanzer, sorry, but it looks like I've effectively hijacked your great thread. It seemed, when I asked about my problem, it was related to your thread in that both your B6 and my B3 had been neglected and abused in similar ways. Now I see that what I did was wrong. It has taken on a life of its own: a life I'd like to see ended.

This thread concerns some really wonderful work done by a serious mechanical artist and nothing should be allowed to take attention away from his beautiful work.

Please address any comments stimulated by my question about engine oil additives to either of the two following open threads where they will be more than welcome:

Need Help Understanding Source of Engine Noise
Help. My New Aspire only holds 3 quarts of oil.

With that, now I'd like to go back and look at all the beautiful pictures. Even the workshop clutter seems beautiful to me. My problems will come and go, but your work, my friend, will continue to inform and inspire for years to come. For the first time I know what the inside of an oil pump actually looks like. In case you've forgotten it looks like this:

[Zanzer]

It's all good man! I'm always willing to try and help no matter where you wanna post it

Thank you for the awesome compliments as well! If you think that clutter is beautiful, you should see a full shot of the shop! You'd fall in love LOL :mrgreen: Lately it's been all work and little cleaning. I even said to myself today..."it's about time to stop all this and have a good cleanup day"

[Fordverde]

We want moooree!!! we want moooree!! weee want morreeee!!!
Man if you were my neighbor, you'll have my festy in your drive way in the waiting line!!!

[Zanzer]

^^ LOL Bring it on up man! There's 4 in line in front of you at the moment :mrgreen:

Sorry the updates are kinda slow lately. I've been working on Taz's car while waiting on Sensei to splice his injector harness and get time to clean up the engine bay. He's been working crazy long hours lately and hasn't had much free time.

[Fordverde]

HAHAHAHA it would be cheaper to buy a new car thant to ship it to NC. By the way, where did you say you bought the freeze plugs?

[Zanzer]

I had to get the freeze plugs at 3 different places. The 35mm plugs came from Advance and I got the remaining 30mm ones from AutoZone and O'Reilly. I didn't know at the time that it wasn't a commonly stocked item which is why they were so hard to round up. Had I known this I could have ordered them from RockAuto when placing an order for other jobs I'm doing. Oh well, I'll know next time LOL

[Safety Guy]

Just a flat out great thread, Zanzer! We appreciate all the photos, too!

Inspirational!

Karl

[Zanzer]

^^ Thanks Karl!

I hope to get back to the updates maybe next week. I took some time away from this one in order to get Taz's 89 ready for 4thTiva this weekend. I kinda wish I had done a build thread on it now. It's turning out really nice

[Fordverde]

So, did you finish it?? can wait to see the engine fully assemnbled.....

[festyfreak39]

loveee this bulid!!! its defiantly not a rebulid this is a spec bulid!!!!! id love to see how much boost and power this motor could take having being rebulit so well!

[Zanzer]

Sorry about the lack of updates guys


The motor is basically finished and sitting on the engine stand. It's just waiting on the injector harness and for me to reinstall the manifolds.

As it turns out, both this engine and the car that it is(was?) going into became mine last week along with 2 other cars. So this engine may now find it's way into one of my 93's

I haven't really decided yet since I was originally planning on dropping a B6D into one of the 93's and a B6T into the other. But I'm thinking I could swap in this engine into my white 93 in less than a day, it would be better than the Aspire B3 that's currently in it, and I could see what kind of gains the headwork yielded. I've got a ton of ongoing projects for other peoples cars at the moment so it will be a little while before I'll have a chance to do anything to my cars, which gives me plenty of time to think about it



I'll get some pics of the completed engine on the stand after I pick a new digital camera. Mine died a couple of weeks ago.

[walth]

zanzer I'm currently rebuilding an early gen b6 and love your thread. I found it about a month ago but wondering if you have any updates?

[JohnGunn]

First, I'd like to thank walth for bumping this thread so I would come back and reread it all over again. Food for the Soul.

Each time I read it I realize how important cleaning is to the whole process of restoring an engine, or healing anything.

Since I first read the thread I have taken the valve cover off my B3 to see just how plugged up the drain holes were and found that they weren't plugged at all. Had to come up with another hypothesis of why my engine becomes starved for oil when I put 3 quarts of oil in after draining oil during an oil change. Think it has something to do with air leaking in through a hole in the pickup tube. Plan to take the pan off to check out that theory early next month.

When I took the valve cover off I wanted to clean it just a well as you did the one in this thread. I looked at the baffles, there are two in the B3, and knew there would be a mess under them, but was afraid to remove them thinking there would be gaskets under them that would be impossible to find. So I held back and put it back on without cleaning under them. But I plan to go back in and do the job. The shape of the gaskets would be very difficult to make out of gasket material, but I thought it might be possible to use the gasket in a tube stuff.

According to the instructions I have read, in using that stuff, you select the proper size of bead to apply and then tighten till it starts to come out the edges of the joint. Then wait before screwing the screws in another half turn or so. Is this the technique you used or do you think the sealing of these baffles is not critical to the performance of the engine and don't need to be sealed with a gasket?

Since I'll be doing the same thing on my oil pan soon, I went to the junk yard and practiced taking the oil pan off an Aspire I found there. The person who last installed that oil pan did a really poor job. It looks as if he had put way too much gasket maker on the mounting surface and had torqued the bolts down according to the values in the manual. Large pieces of gasket material were dangling from the seal on the outside and, much worse, on the inside, large pieces had been pressed out, broke loose, and found their way into the bottom of the pan.

When you install an oil pan do you follow the instructions on the gasket maker tube or do you follow the service manual instructions to torque the bolts to between 69 and 78 in. lbs.? Or is it possible to wait long enough for the gasket maker to harden and then it will hold against the recommended torque without being pressed into the pan?

Zanzer, my friend, see what you get for doing such good work? People like me wanting you to help them. Maybe all of us don't have the time and place to rebuild a whole engine, but almost all of us could get the feel of that by doing to our valve covers exactly what you did to yours. Thanks for being so generous with your thoughts and time.