Albi Blue 200 >> BMW E46 Track Car

Sent the spare block off for machining, same company that did the last one, with the mind set of copying exactly the same progress and engine I built last time
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I also bought a donor M54B30 as I was a few parts missing to build a full engine. I had a look through the spare parts shelf... Choice of heads...
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Looked into the costs to repair the CNC head, safe to say they're out of my budget now, also looked into getting one of my heads CNC'd but again the costs didn't seam to be worth the gains.
I started making some templates and taking lots of measurements around the ports and looking at the port shape. Much easier when you have a standard head the ported head side by side
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Stripped the valves out of the spare head
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Spent a few evenings going at the head, constantly referring back to the damaged one.
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Finished exhaust ports
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Finished inlet ports
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Fresh head and valves lapped in
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Checked the rings in the bores, same as last time, right at the top of the BMW recommendations but right in the middle of Mahle recommendations.
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Bearing clearances checked for the mains and big ends, will notice I have also drilled and tapped the block for the additional tensioner for the oil pump.
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Stripped and rebuilt the Hopwood Motorsport oil pump, pulled out the pressure relief valve as it was little bit noisy on the previous engine, gave it all a good clean and reassembled
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ARP Head studs
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Freshly painted block in bright silver. It's nice to start fresh anyway.
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Schrick 272/256 camshafts refitted
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Noticed that the helical gears have slipped at some point, probably during the contact when the engine failed, I have reset these using the steel ruler at 12 o'clock technique.
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Final timing up, decided to retard the inlet cam by 2 degrees just to create a little more clearance between the valve and piston at max inlet cam advance
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14th September, the engine went back into the engine bay. Only 2 months after it all went wrong... So much for a winter rebuild.
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Following my original comment earlier, keeping with the same process I did back in 2021, opted to run in the engine on proper running in oil while on the dyno, shame it only gets used for an hour or two but it worked last time.
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Engine bay all boxed up ready for starting...
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Always love reading your updates Tom. It was a massive shame when the engine let go at Cadwell, you and Foxy were absolutely flying!

I've been following the build on Insta (as most of us probably do now), I knew the moment you pulled this engine that we'd see it rebuilt before Christmas:grin:
 

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