Hi folks,
After a little help,
I have a 1.6 mx5 engine I'm lookiong at stripping, I'm pritty new to stripping engines, (I have done one at college a few years back).
According to the haynes manual, to take the head off you need to remove the cams as they obstruct the bolts. To do this they tell you to aligne the
cams using the marks on the block and the cam belt pulley and then remove the cams, however, the cam belt pulley is completly rusted and there is no
signs of any marks to aligne the cams. I persume this is to make the alignment process easier when it comes to re-assembling the engine.
Could I just remove the cams as they are then worry about aligning the cam shafts once I have finished rebuilding?
Any help would be appriociated.
Don't quote me on this but I expect you are correct, with lining up the marks it would put the engine cylinder 1 at top dead centre, If in doubt,
remove the spark plug from cylinder 1, poke a long screwdriver down the hole and rotate the engine until the piston comes to the top and none of the
valves for cylinder 1 are depressed (remove cam cover). This will put you at TDC on the compression stroke.
But all in all it shouldn't really matter what rotation your engine is in when disassembling.
Dave
Thats brilliant, cheers for the reply, great help.
Ill give that a shot after work and hope for the best ha.
Yep, I also believe it's preparation for reassembly. To be honest, I've cracked open a fair few engines now, and I've never been able
to keep things still so I have to realign before assembly anyway!!
May I ask why you're opening it up by the way? Opening up a 1.6 MX5 engine is not overly recommended, they are generally decent engines but the
crankshaft pulley can cause you problems if it's put together wrongly. All I'm doing with mine is a bog standard service.
There's no need to remove the cams to take off the head. i've done it plenty of times without and access is fine. Note that you'll
need an 8-sided socket for the head bolts
The Cam pulleys are both stamped I and E for alignment. These should be lined up with the V shape stamped into the pressed steel backplate behind the
cambelt.
Thanks again for the help,
Slimmy- Im opening it up because the head gasket is away. I'm disassembling it so I can send the head away to get skimmed.
Smokey- I didnt realise you could do it without removing the cams, the haynes manual tells you to remove them so I persumed this was the only way. Ill
need to remove them anyway, the lad thats skimming the head is also going to re-lapp the valves and valve seats.
On that note the mx5 Haynes manual is the worst Haynes I've ever had. Full of obvious information like when disassembling X part ensure to you
note where the hoses attach to. Instead of telling you where they attach to because you didn't note this and that's why you're reading
the manual in the first place.
Good for torque settings and specs only.
quote:
Originally posted by luke2152
On that note the mx5 Haynes manual is the worst Haynes I've ever had. Full of obvious information like when disassembling X part ensure to you note where the hoses attach to. Instead of telling you where they attach to because you didn't note this and that's why you're reading the manual in the first place.
Good for torque settings and specs only.