July 5, 2020.

I’d really wanted to get the cam covers stove enameled, that turned out too hard to do in the current situation. Stove enameling appears to be a very uncommon process in Australia. Instead I went with VHT Engine Enamel paint, I did the full 3 part system and it looks pretty but is rubbish, I don’t think its bonded to the aluminium at all and small knocks chip the paint easily. I do not believe that the primer is suitable for aluminium, but I got duped into believing it would be ok by the guy at the shop even though I had misgivings about it.

You live and learn I guess. The plug tube seals were replaced after painting.

Below is with the covers back on the motor.

6 of the 8 coil on plug (COP) igniters will bolt to an existing hole in the cam cover, the COPS are too long and don’t seal against the cover, so its possible for the plug tube to fill with water, as shown below.

The gap has been filled by using 25mm hose which fits over the plug tube tightly and sits inside the seal that comes with the COP. The picture below shows those parts and the spacer for bolting it all down.

Assembled it look like this…

which hopefully keeps the water out.

Next I needed to get the design done on the timing belt cover, below shows the 3D printed prototype, I’d tried to make it fit the engine as a single piece but failed at that, so there’ll be a join where the visible gap is.

The real thing will be molded from this in FRP or carbon. The grey lump is the prototype water inlet. Space between the front of the engine and the firewall is minimal hence all this effort.

The aim with the engine is not to finish it completely, but rather to finish it enough that I can put it and the transmission back in the car and then finish off the rest then. This is as making the parts such as the belt cover are going to take some time and there’s other things that I can be getting on with when the drive train is back in.

I also printed off prototypes of a couple of small parts, that I’ll cut out on my MPCNC machine once that is up and running properly.

Before I put the transmission in again I wanted to change the oil in it, as its possible it may not need come out of the car again, and it cannot be done when its in place. This meant getting out the drain plug from the Porsche G86 transmission, this has a 12 point 15mm tamper proof drain plug done up to 45nm. I could not find a tool locally and didn’t want to pay $30+ to get one delivered only to ever use it once.

Before I’d found out how tight it was done up I attempted to print a tool to undo it, that was a fail, now knowing the tightening torque I believe the load on the tool was about 5x what the plastic would stand, so its little wonder it failed.

After that I realised that the old head bolts for the engine were very close on size, just needing a hole in the middle and the root of the points relieving a bit to fit. It still needed to be hit with an impact wrench to get it out but its out now and nothing is broken.

Below, the tool that worked, the print that failed and the offending stupidly designed pain of a fastener.