Picked up the engine last night. As is typical, the first rain we have had in over two weeks decided to tip down on me as i was trying to shift an engine and gearbox lump around in the dark
Placed in the back of Transit just behind the bulkhead, you couldnt even tell it was there as we drove back from Hatfield to Norwich. We had been to Legoland earlier and Shaun was at the Ace Cafe meet most of the day, so we finally arrived at around 8.30pm.
After much messing about we were on our way and arrived back to Norwich at 11.45pm.
This morning i took a closer look at the 'new' lump, which looked like this -
Now its been my intention to remove the bits i need from this engine to make mine good again. Suspect is/was the turbocharger unit, and the clutch on mine is well past its sell by date, with 116k on the clock and travel up the top, and light slip in cold weather.
I had a look at the service history of the lump and it all checks out, not only that, i saw the car it came from which was very clean indeed, all good signs.
So i set about removing the turbo, a simple task in theory with the engine out, but it still took close to an hour!
The oil feed pipe is buried at the front of the engine, and the manifold/turbo cannot be removed complete, i ended up taking the turbo off the manifold first. Access was fiddly, so a near impossible task with engine in the car, far easier to take it out!
Something i noticed, the turbo compressor outlet hose join, the one which blew on mine was good shape on this, but had the original OE spec clips, whereas mine had jubilee clips, a sign of some work in the past, for what, who knows?
I was very happy with the turbo, condition wise it is as good as new, with virtually no play in the shaft, turns very freely and the compressor blades are only slightly pitted, which seems to be quite a common thing. No cracks on the turbo nor the wastegate flap area, a good thing!
The exhaust side of the turbo is actually a pretty good design, with the wastegate outlet cast separately to then join at the downpipe outlet, which helps with flow and reduces boost creep. Its just a shame the compressor side is a bit small.
Once the turbo was off, the manifold could then be removed. A couple of nuts were a bit loose. Once the manifold was off, it was inspected and found to be in good health too. You will notice i mention they are separate...i need confirmation from Jim on his spare turbocharger unit as i was sure they were cast together as one unit, but on this 99 V S2 engine, not so. I wont know if my one is the same till the engine is out.
The next area is the key to what i think may be the problem with mine. The manifold goes over a steel gasket, and behind the steel gasket is seperate composite gaskets over each port, possibly made of asbestos or similar.
The middle two gaskets were flaky, outer two not so bad. But it was clear that even on this low miles engine and not driven hard, there was definite signs of exhaust gas escaping past the gasket face and onto the cylinder head. The noise on this one would be minimal, and i am hoping mine is similar but worse!
Having seen this, i am pretty confident to say its the gasket blowing and not the manifold cracked. Because of this, the chances of my own turbo and manifold being in good condition has increased, but i couldnt take the risk of stripping it down and finding something more sinister.
Below are some more pictures of my progress this morning.
The turbocharger unit
Turbocharger off
Looking good in here.
Manifold gaskets in place
Close up of dodgy gasket
Soot over the head core plug area to right of exhaust port.
Rear of gasket, and semi circular area of soot from exhaust is obvious
Steel gasket plate
Exhaust manifold
The manifold design is poor. They tried to make it compact and succeeded but the flow would be dreadful. I can see why you can get aftermarket ones. Huge potential for improvement in this area. With a bigger compressor and better manifold this engine would be doing close to 200bhp straight out the box.
The turboless engine now sits in my garage. Next job is to get the gearbox off to remove the low miles clutch.
In all honestly i may sell the engine on with either my current turbo or the original. I would love to keep a spare, but it will take up space and i need to claw back some of the cost thanks to a Peugeot purchase!