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2K views 24 replies 4 participants last post by  Patman1 
#1 ·
I know you guys like it when I keep you in the loop on what I'm doing :D



Got everything removed, over the weekend I will remove the valve cover, cams, lifters and the head. Obviously this is all being filmed. However, I have not had the time to edit any of the footage, between university (I've got one last week of classes and then finals), life, and actually having to work no my car I don't have too much time to edit the footage. However, next week I should be able to start releasing parts of the video.

Also, Jostep, you were totally right, those PCV pipes just fall apart. Trying to remove mine they just crumbled into pieces, even the large hose, it had a huge gash in it (it was in a bend, so the bend could've kept it shut enough to not cause a huge vacuum leak). I'll keep the T (mine's plastic, not brass, but it's solid) and buy some oil resistant hoses and make a new PCV.

Also, my fuel injector seals were really dirty, after cleaning them up they look fine though, no brittleness, no cracks.

One last also, the machining quality of the M111 is absolutely fantastic. Just a quick peek in the ports and you see it right away, very smooth curves, no rough casting edges / sand marks etc. This is light-years ahead in terms of quality compared to Japanese engines.

I'm also surprised by how easy this is turning out to be. A lot of things look scary at first, but then as you get into them, they end up being really simple / obvious to do.
 
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#2 ·
Wait till you pop the valve cover, its a thing of beauty under there. interesting they have raised port heads... certainly explains the top end powerband.

I wish I had pulled the intake off, would have made fixing the PVC hoses, installing new coils, and cleaning the engine bay 1000x easier. Also could have polished all of the intake manifold instead of what I could reach. incidental note: Your power steering pump and reservoir is different than my 95 model...

And for gods sakes paint the valve cover while it's off.

Excellent job, watching closely.
 
#3 ·
I'm not going to paint the valve cover yet, I'll do that when I actually do some modifications to the engine :D

This is the new style power steering pump, it's got a square reservoir, the old one was round and had a filter on the bottom, new one doesn't have a filter.

I'm going to wash the intake manifold, it's not too dirty however, a quick scrub of the runners with a brush on a stick and some degreaser should do the job just fine.

Anyway, today it's time to remove the valve cover! I'll post a pic when I do :D
 
#4 ·


Shot of the camshafts



Camshafts removed! Honestly removing the camshafts was sketchy as hell, I didn't want to fracture them. However it turned out to be pretty easy if you used your head, rotate the camshaft to a position with minimal stress across all lobes (it's possible for both cams, some valves will be slightly open though), then remove any cap that isn't taking up any stress from the valve springs, and then slowly remove the rest (I was doing it 1/8 turn at a time, until all the valves were fully closed, then you can remove the caps).
 
#5 ·
What a hunk of engineering...it's just so impressive.

sooooooooooooooo...since you are removing perfectly good camshafts, what's gonna be filling that empty space...:grin:grin:grin

And simple green will etch aluminum, (ask me how I know) so don't use that on the intake. a quick pass with a wire brush on a dremel, then a shot of hi temp clear will seal it and prevent further grease and oil smudges on your aluminum. makes it wipe off easy to clean. you will never ever get a better opportunity to make it look perfect.
 
#6 ·
I'm not using simple green. I'm using some phosphate-free, sulphate-free, whale-safe, dolphin-safe, panda approved, EPA upheld, organic, free-trade, unionized Super Clean (it actually works really well). Also, don't read un-ionized, read it union-ized :D (two very different words with the same letters, damn you english!).

Unfortunately, due to being a not so rich student, the stock cams will be going back in. However, I really doubt this is the last time I'll be opening this engine up, so in the future there will be some serious tuning business going on. I'm in the process of cleaning the lifters. Damn the oil inside is pretty nasty! There is also a weird build-up of I don't know what on some of the parts. I'll take a picture and film the disassembly of one lifter, it's actually not at all difficult to do, it just requires tweezers (and some banging).
 
#7 ·
You forgot gluten free and responsibly sourced... but glad you found a Panda friendly cleaner..:grin

also this:

Schrick Mainly in my M119 search parts scrounging...but they have some info and parts. Interestingly NA vs turbo applications they rec. the same camshaft profiles. apparently these heads (all DOHC Mercedes heads actually) were set up from the factory at almost the limit..not much more to be gained there.

Web Cam Inc. - Performance and Racing Camshafts / Vehicle List

http://www.elgincams.com/campaper.html....good info on SOHC vs DOHC camshafts.

Also using a c36 timing advance allows 26 degrees of advance, which I believe is 4 less than what we have...might make a difference on overlap at high rpms. with the springs, cams, washers set guys are seeing 7K rpm worth of usable powerband.
 
#8 ·
Well IDK about the validity of those claims since the C36 does have more aggressive cam profiles than the c280 (idk about exhaust, but intake I'm 100% sure). I always regarded the intake on the C220 to be perfect for the amount of power it makes, it is not a restriction for sure (apart from the air restrictor present at the very entrance to the intake, which I've done away with). You won't gain any power from a custom intake without doing other mods first. The exhaust side of the cylinder head can be ported for suuuuure (and I know this because I removed the cylinder head :D pics tomorrow). IMO there is lots of power to be had from the exhaust side, the ports can be made a lot larger, there is a lot of meat on that side, tri-y headers and full exhaust could see a 20hp increase, and I'm saying that because the stock manifold is such a tragedy. The intake would just be made to complement whatever the exhaust does. Then maybe you would see an advantage from upgraded cams, but I do agree that the stock setup is pretty good. Also, fabricating a custom throttle body would be really cool, and as we exchanged through PMs, a 4 bar FPR to help the fuel atomize better, and to increase the quantity of fuel delivered (which would be crucial if the engines breathes better from the previous modifications).

Anyway, cylinder head is off, so tomorrow I'll call up a machine shop and see when they can take it, I'll have the surface verified and machined necessary, and I'll have them install a new set of exhaust manifold studs, and finally a bath for the head :D Releasing the torque on the head bolts was quite a workout, tightening them is going to be lots of fun :D

Also, the engine block (apart from being dirty), is an absolutely perfect condition! Perfect cross hatch on the bores, zero ring step, it looks like the block was installed from the factory yesterday.
 
#9 ·
exhaust cam on the c36 was .010 more lift. but that doesn't apply to the M111... more importantly I was interested in the SOHC vs DOHC vs 2 valve pushrod camshaft profile requirements, and the already decent flow characteristics the factory blessed us with. The c36 advance stuff was a potential problem solver for down the road...just to get it out there before I forget it.. (basically guys running a larger cam, higher rpm, and needing to get a little less advance due to artificial atmosphere.)

I agree that the intake is beautiful and would be hard to improve on, couple things, but basically as a stock piece it is awesome. factory exhaust ALWAYS is a compromise... so many requirements that make performance suffer, I also agree some power gains are going to be hidden in the exhaust side of things.

I would be curious with what the machine shop says in regards to clamping pressure and thoughts on keeping the head gasket in 1 piece.

And I ran a bore scope down into the cylinders when I initially got my nearly dead 220... 179K miles...same thing, perfect crosshatching. was genuinely shocked at how good the walls looked. again, these things are absolutely incredible in terms of durability.

keep up the good work...
 
#10 ·
Wait why are you taking the camshafts out again?

I've done that on my motorcycle, but just looking at you doing that makes me nervous.
 
#11 · (Edited)
I had what sounded like a sticking valve lifter. Now there is rarely anything wrong with valve lifters, but a properly working lifter will never cycle the oil that's inside of it. So what ends up happening is there is 20 year old oil inside the lifter, which begins to varnish (even if it is high-quality synthetic) and ends up preventing the ball check-valve from closing, so when the cam lobe strikes the lifter, it pushes all the oil from the piston body and the lifter bottoms out, giving that ticking noise.

Anyway, all my lifters looked good from a mechanical point of view, but damn the oil inside was nasty. Right now the internals are sitting in a 50/50 bath of Xylene and Acetone (carb cleaner can't be bought for a reasonable amount of money in non-aerosol form, so I just mixed my own damned carb cleaner). When I put the lifters back together, I'll use my favorite bottle of Castrol Edge 0w-40, keep those lifters working for another 20 years.

Cylinder head is at the machine shop, they should have already tested it and skimmed the surface, I told them to call me should there be any problem with the head, and since they haven't called, I'm assuming everything is well. Not surprising, the engine ran perfectly fine until now, I was just tired of slowly loosing coolant (yes it was indeed coming from the head, you could see the wet spot between the block and head).

Camshaft removal was not as scary as you'd think. It would be a much more challenging thing to do on an inline-6, on an inline-4 you can find positions on the camshaft where 2 cylinders are fully closed, and 2 cylinders are ever so slightly open, so you can easily figure out how to loosen the caps without putting any strain on the camshafts.

EDIT:

Finally figured out how to reassemble the lifters. The problem was with how much oil to put back into the piston body, too much, and the lifter is over inflated, and it may very well stay over inflated for ever, which means you'd always have a valve open. So from that regard, it's 10000% better to have them underinflated, so if I put a little bit of oil in them, it should prevent the lifters from bottoming out when the engine is first started, and then they will inflate properly anyway once they get oil pressure.
 
#12 ·
I'm pretty sure by design it won't stay over inflated. Here is the evidence I have gathered to support that position:



That just seems impossible from ye olde Daimler.
 
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#13 ·
Well ye olde daimler use to have manufacturing tolerances that make today's cars look like they are made from legos. My money is on these lifters staying inflated. I've read a few times on some of the forums here that people had over inflated a lifter and it left the valve partially open for thousands of miles. Besides, you don't need to bave them fully inflated for them to work correctly, you need enough oil for them not to bottom out when the engine is first started, then as soon as oil pressure hits them, they will pump up to their correct clearance.

Wil be picking up my cylinder head tomorrow, got a call from the shop saying all was well.
 
#14 ·
Ok, just a quick little update to let everyone know that I haven't vanished :D

Next week I have 3 finals, so I have been studying, doing assignments and all that fun stuff. In the mean time, I got back my cylinder head from the machine shop, it looks great! It was hot tanked after machining, so it's very very clean (some residue is still left, but it wipes off easily with a rag). No more carbon in the combustions chambers, intake, exhaust and the valve are top notch clean. I'm also in the process of cleaning the block, it is pretty time consuming, I'm going at it with WD-40 and scrub pads. Tomorrow I should have it totally cleaned out, and I will flush out anything that fell into coolant jackets with distilled water and out the block drain. I also replaced all the exhaust studs on the cylinder head. Lifters still haven't bled down from where I've left them :D I've soaked them all in WD-40 as well as the camshafts just to keep rust at bay. I will clean everything one final time before final reassembly of course! I also picked up various nuts and bolts, some coolant pipe, and I've built a new PCV hose system. The small tubes are 3/16th", and the large one is 3/8". I used fuel hose to make a new system, using SAE 30R7 and 30R9, which is rated for oil vapors. It's a very tight fit, but I used some silicone lube to help them get one :D (I'm not going to put any hose clamps, they went on really tight, and without the lube they wouldn't go on all the way). I also got a billion hose clamps to replace some of my coolant pipes, upper rad, lower rad, overflow, bypass, and expansion tank to lower rad. The outgoing pipes were the original ones, I must say they've fared very well! Some high quality rubber pipes those were.

Anyway, things are moving forward slowly. I'm hoping to have the cylinder head installed back on the engine tomorrow, maybe start replacing the alternator bearings in-between study sessions. During the week I will likely only be going really slowly, but hopefully on the next weekend I can get real progress going!
 
#15 ·
I promised pictures, so here goes!



Right after cylinder head was pulled



Speaking of which, returned from the machine shop!



By my analysis, you could port the HELL out of the exhaust side. You could straighten out the exhaust path (see how the valves are blocked off by the location of the port?), and leave plenty of metal between the port and the pressurized oil galleries. By the way, the cool thing about the M111 is that it has 4 pressurized oil galleries supplying the head (as opposed to Japanese engines which typically only have one). Further more, these galleries are not affected my machining the cylinder head, again unlike Japanese cylinder heads, where excessive machining will restrict oil flow to the cylinder head. In theory, you could keep maching way past the recommended spec, you would just have to cut the valves deeper into the engine (not that you would ever get to that point on such a fantastic engine).



Intake side



The intake ports however, they are already perfect! You wouldn't need to increase their size at all, and since the intake manifold is already perfectly matched, you wouldn't need a custom one either! The only possible tuning the intake side would need would be a larger throttle body along with an appropriate larger intake in front of it (again, the intake manifold can easily accept a larger throttle body, it's the spacer that restricts the size of the throttle body, since it's sort of cone shaped).



just a shot of the workbench™



Cleaned the flange on the exhaust manifold (to an acceptable degree for sealing). Intake manifold still dirty, that's for later cleaning :D



A billion years went into cleaning the block. There is still some discoloration here and there, but the surface is perfectly smooth. In any case, composite gaskets can handle a little bit of discoloration, it's only metal gaskets that require the block to be decked before reinstalling the head. Maybe in another 200 000km the block will need machining.
 
#17 ·
Good luck on your finals...

Nice work so far, that cylinder head and the shot of the pistons with the unshrouded valves... it's impressive design and quality.

Speaking of that, you cannot bolt that intake back up looking like that...parts are off, gaskets are new... detail them now....you're killing me.
 
#18 · (Edited)
I'm cleaning everything up as I go :D Don't worry, The intake manifold is going to be shiny before I put it on.

I wasn't able to put the PCV pipe all the way back on the oil filter housing end, it only went on 2/3 of the way, so I hose clamped it down to make sure it doesn't leak. It's a pretty bad spot for it, there's no good way of reaching it, cruise control linkage gets in the way, bunch of harnesses get in the way, the A/C low-side hos gets in the way too.
 
#19 ·
UPDATE: I finished 3/4 of my exams :D Still have one left on wednesday, but anyway, I got the chance to advance the project a little bit! I cleaned the heck out of the intake manifold and installed it, I replaced the fuel injector seals (they come in the head gasket kit!) and installed the fuel rail, did another couple of auxiliary things too. Everything is still being filmed of course, and will be available some time soon on my youtube channel!

Anyway, today I'm hoping to refit the ignition coils. That way I could reinstall the support bracket and the windshield fluid reservoir. I'm basically trying to get as much of the extra stuff done before moving on to the camshafts. I'm trying to leave installing/timing the camshafts at the very end because I won't be using assembly lube, just the usual engine oil, so I don't want the camshafts to sit for very long before I start the engine.

Also, found another suspiciously loose vacuum hose, for the upshift delay solenoid. Just like its cousin the vacuum modulator, there is a rubber hose section that acts as a joint between two hard plastic lines that was so loose it didn't cling to the plastic lines at all. I'm going to run to the dealership tomorrow to pickup some more vacuum hose. I'm debating weather I should do the same thing I did for the vacuum modulator, that is, remove the multiple sections of hard plastic lines and replace it with a single long line with rubber connectors at either end. I'll see how difficult it is to access that hose. If it's too much, then I will just make a new rubber connections and be done with it.
 
#20 ·
Congrats on your exams.

I was considering adding a hunk of shrink tubing and heat gunning the nylon line rubber joint sections to help make a seal, but just swapped out to full rubber tubing, so much easier and cheap, and I don't have to keep a selection of 90 degree rubber elbows around. They're cheap, but locally unavailable.

Looking forward to the YouTube segment.:goojob::goojob:
 
#21 ·
It's true, full rubber tubing would work also, however I opted to keep the hard plastic lines because they are already color coded and they didn't degrade overtime like the rubber did. Anyway, I took a look at that hose going to the upshift delay solenoid, way too hard to get too! So I will just replace that joint where the hose joins the main harness. I got a lot more work done actually, I managed to mount the ignition coils by myself, which honestly is difficult. Reattaching the stupid bolt that holds the P/S pump to the manifold is also pretty damned annoying. I also rerouted lots of vacuum hoses, grounds and what not to make everything look a bit cleaner, and to stay away from possibly hot parts (like the EGR tube). I finished today by mounting the throttle body and shortening the MAP vacuum pipe (new routing made it about 15cm too long). I also lost an ignition coil bolt in the 7th dimension, but that's ok because I cut myself another M6 bolt instead of looking for the one I lost. I'm still missing coolant and oil, which I will buy tomorrow (on my previous trips no one had Castrol Edge 0w-40 a3/b4).

Anyway, tomorrow will be dedicated to studying for my last exam. Hopefully friday I get to fire the engine up :D
 
#23 ·
Thanks frans!

I got the timing correct, despite having to modify the official procedure a little bit. I couldn't fit the exhaust cam sprocket at 20 degrees past TDC, but at 25 everything went on smoothly. Final timing is 25 for intake, 29 exhaust, right in the middle of the chain stretch specifications. It was as I predicted, the timing chain is good until the block needs to be machined.
 
#24 ·
Success!

Engine works smooth as hell. Nothing seems to be leaking for now, time will tell with that. Didn't make the best of sounds right at start up, but about a second in everything quieted down. Lifters kept ticking for a little while longer, but eventually everything silenced out. No exhaust leaks, a little bit of smoke was from spilling oil and whatever on the manifold. Coolant temperature got close to 100 degrees, so I figured there was air bubble trapped somewhere that prevent coolant to circulate to the radiator, so I revved the engine up to force the air bubble out (I saw a huge one pop out of the expansion tank, which I had open), immediately the temperature dropped to ~87.

I did introduce a minor problem, while I was underneath I checked the condition of the center-support bearing (which was fine), I must of bent a heat shield too close to the exhaust, when I do I sharp right turn, I get a tiny rattle that sounds like a heat shield. I will check that from underneath later on. One of the exhaust hangers is broken also (the one near the diff), so that might have something to do with it as well.

Anyway, glad to say that it worked out great, I will go out for a longer test drive later today, and I will try and film that too (from the inside).
 
#25 ·
Found the offending heat shield, bent it back to the correct shape. I adjusted the bowden cable too, for some reason it was holding on to gears a little while longer. The replaced section of upshift delay vacuum tubing had a profound effect on the transmission. Before, the upshift delay was rather weak, it would only give me a few extra hundred RPMs, now though, it hangs on to 2nd for much longer, and even delays third gear a little bit. Once everything is warmed up, it does revert back to normal as it should.

I did a nunch of laps of the 'hood twice with the radiator cap off, it's important to do so because there are sealing agents in the head gasket that activate in the first heat cycle, and until then, the pressure in the cooling system could put needless strain on them. Anyway, engine is pretty happy, which is lovely. I'm thinking April 1028 I'll do a full transmission overhaul :D (it's very needed).
 
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