The Subaru SVX World Network   SVX Network Forums
Live Chat!
SVX or Subaru Links
Old Lockers
Photo Post
How-To Documents
Message Archive
SVX Shop Search
IRC users:

Go Back   The Subaru SVX World Network > SVX Main Forums > MOD Mania > Proven Engine Enhancements

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 09-10-2007, 10:43 AM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
lan's engine build and engine build how to

In this thread I will document the build of the engine going into my ebony SVX. This engine is being built with the same ECUtune parts being used for the EG33s being put together for forced induction by other members of the forum but a noteable difference in the build is that I have the tooling to ensure a higher level of precision in the machining and assembly of the engine. In this thread I will share pictures and explanations on how this level of precision is attained.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 09-10-2007, 11:26 AM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
I started checking the machine work on my bottom end in order to prepare for assembling my engine. First let me say this isn't something you do the day you expect to put the engine together. That would be assuming you won't find any problems and as my case illustrates that isn't a fair assumption.

Here's a picture of my crank. It sure looks great and up until about half way through my check it measures out great too.


Here's my NSK Japan 2-3" outside micrometer closed down on a 2" standard and zero'd out. (I kind of collect nsk japan micrometers). It is accurate to .0001" which in technical jargon is commonly called a "ten" which is short for one ten thousands of an inch. The first use of this micrometer is to measure all of the crank journals and crank pins. The crank pins are what the rods connect to. The crank journals are what ride inside of the block. We take two measurements of every journal, 90 degrees apart to check for roundness/out of roundness. Everything checked out round and my pins measured to ******" and my journals to ******".




So far so good. The next thing we need to do is make sure our crank is straight. To do this we install bearings into the odd number cyllinder block for the #1 and #5 journals. I actually don't have the correct bearing installed in the #5 location in the picture. It wouldn't matter for this test but I corrected it anyway because in the next step we will be installing all the bearings.

We then drop the crank onto those bearings and isntall a dial gage to the block so that we can check for run out. I use the keyway in the crank nose as indicator for how far I have rotated the crank. Rotating the crank 1 full revolution any bend in the crank will show up as run out--the difference between the high and low measurement displayed on the dial gage. The dial gage is zero'd out in the picture but it doesn't have to be. The only thing we are looking for here is a movement in the gage. If there is no bend there is no movement in the gage reading at all. Everything looked good through journal #5 then I found 5 tens run out on journal 6 and 12 tens run out on journal 7. Visually that means on needle moved half a tick mark on that gage on #6 and over 1 tick mark on that gage on #7. That means there is a small bend in the crank between journal 5 and 6. I need to send it back to the machine shop.




The next issue is our oil clearances. The home mechanic typically uses plastigage to to check his oil clearances but plastigage is only acurate to 5 tens. I can do much better. I have a digital bore gage certified to .00005" The bore gage has to be set with a standard and I'm using my 2-3" outside micrometer as the standard so that limits my acuracy to 1 ten but that is 5 times better than plastigage before even considering reliablity and repeatability. Plastigage also doesn't give you #'s you can use for machining; it just tells you if someting is acceptable or scary.

What we want to do is cage the bearings. Caging bearings means installing them into the block and into the rods without the crank and then measuring them. The difference between the outside micrometer readings of the crank and the bore gage readings of the bearings is your oil clearance. You will find that the readings of the bearings in the factory parts, particularly the main bearings have a large amount of variability.




The eagle rods I am using are ground much more precisly than the block and have very little variability. My caged rod bearings have a bore of ******" to ******" giving me an oil clearance of ** to ** tens. This is a little tight but I am using coated bearings so 4 tens of that is dry film coating. This is as tight as I'm comfortable with but i'm comfortable with it and won't have them mess with the crank pins anymore.

The bore of the caged main bearings had 8 tens of variation. Remember my measumrents indicated that the machine shop ground all the journals to the same size even though I had paid them to cage the bearings and grind accordingly. Obviously I have 8 tens of variation in my oil clearances with oil clearances ranging from 1 thousandth to 18 tens. This I am not happy with. I'm going to go ahead and get a set of larger bearings, cage them myself, and specify the size to grind each journal to.

Last edited by longassname; 08-06-2008 at 09:39 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 09-10-2007, 12:36 PM
SVXRide's Avatar
SVXRide SVXRide is offline
Official AutoX Part Breaker
Subaru Gold Contributor
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Midlothian, VA 23112
Posts: 8,138
Registered SVX
Michael,
Very, very nice! So, who's Ian (your alter ego?)?
-Bill
__________________
Retired NASA Rocket Scientist

Most famous NASA "Child" - OSIRIS-REx delivered samples from asteroid BENNU to Earth in Sept. 2023

Center Network Member #989

'92 Fully caged, 5 speed, waiting for its fully built EG33
'92 "Test Mule", 4:44 Auto, JDM 4:44 Rear Diff with Mech LSD, Tuned headers, Full one-off suspension
'92(?) Laguna, 6 spd and other stuff (still at OT's place)
My Locker
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 09-10-2007, 12:38 PM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
um that's an L...every on here calls me lan so why fight it

Quote:
Originally Posted by SVXRide View Post
Michael,
Very, very nice! So, who's Ian (your alter ego?)?
-Bill
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 09-10-2007, 02:11 PM
sicksubie's Avatar
sicksubie sicksubie is offline
Registered User
Subaru Bronze Contributor
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Holden, MA or the White Mountains
Posts: 3,812
Send a message via ICQ to sicksubie Send a message via AIM to sicksubie Send a message via Skype™ to sicksubie
So are you saying my build is less precise?
__________________
Former:
1994 Barcelona Red(x2), 1995 Brilliant Red, 1992 Liquid Silver, 1992 Ebony(x2), 1992 Pearl White (x2)
Current:
2017 Ford Raptor
2017 Kawasaki KLR
1995 Guards Red Carrera
1995 Spec-ish Miata - track car
1957 CJ-5
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 09-10-2007, 02:35 PM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
Is that insulting to you? My understanding is that your engine has the factory oil clearances and that Tom checked them with plastigauge and didn't find anything scary. I'm just describing the process to move the tollerances out another digit.


Quote:
Originally Posted by sicksubie View Post
So are you saying my build is less precise?
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 09-10-2007, 03:05 PM
cdigerlando cdigerlando is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: Longwood, FL
Posts: 1,422
Thanks

Very nice. Thanks for the write up. Good thing you checked your crank with the dial guage. You can't pay for that kind of piece of mind.
__________________
Chuck D.
1992 Subaru SVX LS-L - Heavily modded turbo
2002 Subaru Impreza WRX- Turboxs stg3 & Susp. Mods
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 09-10-2007, 04:11 PM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
thanks,

lol, I paid for it..I just didn't get it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by cdigerlando View Post
Very nice. Thanks for the write up. Good thing you checked your crank with the dial guage. You can't pay for that kind of piece of mind.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 09-10-2007, 04:22 PM
sicksubie's Avatar
sicksubie sicksubie is offline
Registered User
Subaru Bronze Contributor
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Holden, MA or the White Mountains
Posts: 3,812
Send a message via ICQ to sicksubie Send a message via AIM to sicksubie Send a message via Skype™ to sicksubie
I said that in jest.... I have 110% confidence in the work that Tom did.
__________________
Former:
1994 Barcelona Red(x2), 1995 Brilliant Red, 1992 Liquid Silver, 1992 Ebony(x2), 1992 Pearl White (x2)
Current:
2017 Ford Raptor
2017 Kawasaki KLR
1995 Guards Red Carrera
1995 Spec-ish Miata - track car
1957 CJ-5
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 09-10-2007, 06:21 PM
TomsSVX's Avatar
TomsSVX TomsSVX is offline
Maniac modifier
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Branchburg, New Jersey
Posts: 15,489
Registered SVX Classic SVX
To be honest Mike is gonna need his tolerences to be larger and more precise for his plans... Running tons of boost and hoping for over 600awhp you are gonna need it. For Bobby and my builds, we are not going to that extent and a tighter motor will leave us with more longevity. Our clearances are to the upper end of the spectrum for stock clearances and I think we are perfect right there

Tom
Reply With Quote
  #11  
Old 09-15-2007, 06:56 PM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
The cyllinder heads are ready to be sent out for thermal barier coating of the combustion chambers and exhaust ports and I've made crates to send them out in.

They are ported and I do mean ported not port matched. What was done is kind of hard to grasp unless you've actually done it before and probably impossible for me to explain but maybe you can visually see how free flowing they are now. There was a lot of room for improvement just cleaning up the castings. There were some pretty nasty ledges and missmatched surfaces around the valve seats so removing those was 1st and foremost. After removing the casting seams and cast surface it was obvious there were some great opportunities for improvement in the bowls and deep in the ports.


Here are just a couple pictures of the heads:




Here are a couple of close ups of combustion chambers where you can kind of get a look out of the intake ports:




Here's a close up of a combustion chamber where you can see some exhaust bowls:




Here's a look down an intake port:
Reply With Quote
  #12  
Old 09-15-2007, 10:11 PM
SVXRide's Avatar
SVXRide SVXRide is offline
Official AutoX Part Breaker
Subaru Gold Contributor
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Midlothian, VA 23112
Posts: 8,138
Registered SVX
Quote:
Originally Posted by longassname View Post
um that's an L...every on here calls me lan so why fight it
Michael,
that was a joke
-Bill
__________________
Retired NASA Rocket Scientist

Most famous NASA "Child" - OSIRIS-REx delivered samples from asteroid BENNU to Earth in Sept. 2023

Center Network Member #989

'92 Fully caged, 5 speed, waiting for its fully built EG33
'92 "Test Mule", 4:44 Auto, JDM 4:44 Rear Diff with Mech LSD, Tuned headers, Full one-off suspension
'92(?) Laguna, 6 spd and other stuff (still at OT's place)
My Locker
Reply With Quote
  #13  
Old 09-15-2007, 10:17 PM
SVXRide's Avatar
SVXRide SVXRide is offline
Official AutoX Part Breaker
Subaru Gold Contributor
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Midlothian, VA 23112
Posts: 8,138
Registered SVX
Michael,
Beautiful work on the heads! Did you do them yourself, or farm it out? How many hours went into each head?
-Bill
__________________
Retired NASA Rocket Scientist

Most famous NASA "Child" - OSIRIS-REx delivered samples from asteroid BENNU to Earth in Sept. 2023

Center Network Member #989

'92 Fully caged, 5 speed, waiting for its fully built EG33
'92 "Test Mule", 4:44 Auto, JDM 4:44 Rear Diff with Mech LSD, Tuned headers, Full one-off suspension
'92(?) Laguna, 6 spd and other stuff (still at OT's place)
My Locker
Reply With Quote
  #14  
Old 09-16-2007, 01:07 AM
longassname's Avatar
longassname longassname is offline
Just some dude.
 
Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Miami, FL
Posts: 3,986
Significant Technical Input
For time's sake I was going to have someone else do them but I got tired of leaving them sitting around their shop and gave up and did them myself. I'm well tooled up it and know what I'm doing so I decided to just sit down and knock them out. I'd say I personally put 12 hours of solid porting into them myself. I have another shop that dissassembled them, knocked down the guides, and then reset them and bead blasted the ports and chambers, and surfaced them when I was done.


Quote:
Originally Posted by SVXRide View Post
Michael,
Beautiful work on the heads! Did you do them yourself, or farm it out? How many hours went into each head?
-Bill
Reply With Quote
  #15  
Old 09-16-2007, 02:16 AM
Ricochet's Avatar
Ricochet Ricochet is offline
I brought some ham.
 
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Columbus OH
Posts: 1,868
Send a message via AIM to Ricochet Send a message via MSN to Ricochet Send a message via Yahoo to Ricochet
did somebody say 600awhp? My interest is piqued
__________________
Brian
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:58 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
© 2001-2015 SVX World Network
(208)-906-1122