Engine Timing

I haven't done this, but you should. Google: replacing the head gasket on a E15 engine.

Very well put.

I'd add that a few(or many) digital pictures will be priceless when phillip starts opening those ziplock bags at reassembly time.

Lyn

by the way whats the TDC

I'll take the liberty of answering for bobc, and spare you the suspense.

TDC is top dead center, the highest point of travel of the piston during compression and exhaust strokes. You want the piston at TDC on the compression stroke. Both valves closed. The exhaust valve will be open on the exhaust stroke. You don't want that one.

Your ignition timing is set relative to this position (TDC), usually, a few degrees before.

Thanks. I was home away from my computer all weekend.

Hello bob c,

GA to you Sir. Great advice!

Take care.

Well you have a real job a head of you and there are many things that if you do them improperly you will be doing this job over again, maybe even worse! First of all if your E15 is second generation you will have to deal with cam timing and it is very critical!!! If you get the cam timing wrong everything else will be wrong including the ignition timing. Depending upon the year and application the management system will vary and so will the settings of everything else. Some will require new head bolts as they are what is know as torque to yield and must only be used once. If you attempt to re-use them you will suffer another head gasket failure. As for using anything on your head gasket you typically don't, but there are copper treatment sprays that are very good at sealing head gaskets and will help greatly if the deck of the block or the surface of the cylinder head are slightly less than perfect. I have been a heavy line mechanic for over 35 years and if you tell me what year and model your engine is from I can give you very exact and specific information on the task a head of you! Here is my private Email: johnd7618@cox.net I am currently the Jaguar Car clubs of America technical support expert.

hey john youre really right i have to do over everthing the engine was timed incorrectly and at the first tumble the tapix which pushes the valves broke so i now have to double work.

Hello phillip,

Wow, you certainly have some bad luck with the tappets broken.

With reference to the tappets and springs and especially the valves. ............

Unless it has already happened, keep the two valves the spring/s and tappets for each piston together, but separate, from each other piston and tappets, springs etc. So you have four set of gear. The valve assembly should go back on in exactly the same order in which they were when you removed the head. Each valve will have 'worn' in a particular way and you cannot mix them or change them round. It is the 'seat' of the valve which is the bit that stops the gasses from going places they should not! So if you mix them you will need to 're-seat' them. Not a difficult job but, it take patience. If you have not mixed the valves up or one is loose after the tappet breaking, no problems if it is still in the head.

The broken tappet, may have been the problem all along? Though it would not have caused the head gasket to brake. Perhaps your engine has reached it's 'major service' time? ..........................

Can you tell me/us if it was a tappet that broke or was it a spring or washer? Have you had a chance to look at the site I list? It looks very helpful with a move by move picture set up.

But it may also pay you to download or get a 'Haines' car maintenance book. The advantage is, you can study what you need to do anywhere and once you think you can handle it, take the book out to the car with you and follow the pages............ Good luck! Take care.

Hello phillip,

Have we been wasting our time as you had already scrapped the engine?

If you still have the engine and are prepared to do a bit of work? From my point of view I cannot see how what you were told by the mechanic can be correct! It is very rare but a tappet may have had a flaw in it and broken that way. But unless a spring broke and got stuck under the bit of spring that was left and the top 'pointed' part of the valve and did not leave enough space for the 'rocker to rock'. It could have broken that way but it is not the end of things by any means.

Let me explain more. The belt drives the shaft which the rockers rock back and forth on, working to push the springs done and in turn to push and return the valves. You should be able to put a spanner on the end of the rocker shaft and turn the top part of the engine over with the bottom piston still assembled, as long as you remove a battery terminal so it does not fire, and also remove the Ignition plugs. You have to have the valve gear run in sync with the bottom cog on the timing chain. But the setting of the timing, even if it is 180% out, ............... so the plugs fire at BTC (Bottom dead Centre) it will not brake any part of the rocker/valves/springs section on the cylinder head. There is nothing that comes up and makes contact with the valves inside the piston chambers so, nothing to connect with or brake any gear to do with the valves at all. Take the rocker cover of any old or new engine and remove the plugs. Nothing else. You will be able to turn the whole engine over and watch the valve system work. You can see the top of the valves which are held in contact with the cylinder head inside the piston chamber you see?

Having said all that, if the tappet which holds the end of a valve did brake the valve would or could drop out of the head into the cylinder. But that would give you a whole lot more to worry about that a blown head gasket, because it would almost certainly be pushed through the top of one of the pistons and complete jam your engine. Take care. I feel a little cheated to say the least. Unless you through the engine out just because part of the tappet was broke?

If at all possible - and I mean "AT ALL" possible, obtain a shop manual for your car. If you anticipate doing other maintenance or repair in the future, buy it. If you are absolutely certain that this is the only time you'll ever work on it, consider checking your local library system for one. This will answer those questions about stretch bolts, timing marks, how to locate TDC, etc. You will need the torque settings - and a torque wrench! - if you are to succeed. For some cars / engines, manuals or portions can be found online, but it is still useful to have the hard copy in hand while you work. A friend with tools, who has done such a job, is worth investing in, at least to the level of a coule of six-paks of his favorite brew or equivalent.

Guest - I wish you would register. I will add a GA under your screen name if you do, because I think that you deserve it.

He definately does have a big job ahead of him but it sounds like he's interested in learning and for that I say KUDOS to him! I had an uncle who showed me how to change the brake shoes and pads on my first car. I was 16 at the time and was grumbling about how much I had been quoted to have the brake job done. My dad had died when I was 8 and my mom had a mechanic do all her car work so I wasn't really familiar with the idea that you could work on your own car. My uncle turned his nose up at the price I had been quoted and roared, "Why the parts won't even cost $10! That's highway robbery!!! This is the uncle who would ask for the used tires that his siblings would discard when putting new tires on their cars. I don't believe he ever bought a tire in his life. He just ran the "worn out" ones that were given to him. Maybe not the best policy but certainly cost effective and frugal. My uncle took me down to the auto parts store and we bought the shoes and pads together. He made sure we got the right parts for the car I had. I was amazed at how little the actual parts cost to do the job. I remember he sat outside in a lawn chair in the shade with a cold one and gave me step by step instructions. Made me do every bit of it myself but was there to help if I got really stuck. Explained everything to me. Showed me how to bleed the lines afterwards and explained why. Showed me how to adjust the shoes with the little spoon tool and explained why. When it was all done I was very tired and dirty but had a perfectly running car with perfectly working brakes. I was ecstatic! It cost me only a fraction of what the mechanic would have charged and somehow having done it myself gave me a new feeling of pride! I still do the brakes on my vehicles to this day and I'm 47 now. I always know they are done right and don't have to worry about them.

Hi TDM,

A GA to you Sir, .................... for your honesty. I hope other young people (may be?) are inspired to be Engineers after reading your post 7?

Sounds like you learned pretty much the same as me. You also seem to have had a relatively poor childhood. Sorry about that and, hope you do not mind me being honest? I started at about the same age. Tried doing brakes because they were the only part I could reach, as I am a bit of a short ass!

It was shoes then of course but we seemed to need to check them every six months or so. The 'bleeding' was a 'learned art' but therapeutic when I knew what the brakes were before we started and, how much better they were after bleeding? I got the first couple wrong with the springs fitted end for end. Dumb, but I was learning. I learned the second time we had the brakes to do, to look, and take in how everything was assembled.

Actually doing the job also taught me that it was the best way to go. Hence the choice of my saying for my profile: HEAR & you FORGET <-> SEE & you REMEMBER <-> DO & you UNDERSTAND, the last bit is the most important!

Take care my friend,

Baby Bear. I do like your tag line and so true. Doing is the best way to learn. I think my uncle understood that because when he first offered to help I thought he was going to do it for me. lol. At the time I was a bit put off but realize now what a BIG FAVOR he did for me by making me do all of it and just coaching me. I actually had a pretty good childhood except for the part of losing my dad at 8 years old. I think that sucks at any age though. My mom decided raising us kids in the city (Detroit) by herself wasn't a good idea so she sold the house immediately after Dad died and moved up north to live near her mom (our grandma) who lived on a 260 acre farm. Mom bought 80 acres and us kids had plenty of room to roam. Good hunting and fishing. Ponds and streams and woods and fields. We could walk the 3 miles to our cousins house. Life was pretty good. The change was probably good for us too. A new start. Your stories of putting the parts in wrong is funny but I can certainly relate. My uncle taught me to do one side at a time and I could always look at the other side for reference. Of course the other side was all backwards because it was the other side. I had one drum assembly fall apart on me and by the time I realized there was a problem and got the wheel off I had bits of twisted metal and pieces floating around inside the drum. The shoe assemblies were the hardest with all those pieces and springs.

Hello TDM.

How you doing?

Thank you so much for the reply post. Did you see, as I understand it, the OP (Original Poster) seemed to be asking that question as a theory, as they have thrown the old engine? Either that or it was a school question? Which we are not supposed to give the answer to.

I would have loved life on that farm! Loosing your Dad so young is real nasty for sure, but I think your Mum had her head screwed on as well?

Yeah, know what you mean about kind of copying the other wheel and did that on the second car I did which as it happens just a week afterwards. I did not know but someone had been watching and knocked on my door and asked if I could do their brakes as well! I sometimes found the brake shoes kind of sprung out towards me after putting the springs on............

Take care.

Hello phillip,

http://hondaswap.com/general-tech-articles/how-change-head-gasket-lots-pics-71528/

Go to this site. Do not let it overwhelm you! If as I think you have the same 4 cld single overhead cam engine, you can print out the page or print each pic one by one. Look at your engine and gradually match-up the various parts that you need to remove.

You may like to take the advice of 'bob c' on the 'bags'. Some good advice from him!

The main thing to do is, after taking the plugs out, wind the engine to TDC (Top Dead Centre) and before removal of the timing belt................. Clean a spot on the engine block so it is free of oil, the use a pencil or marker to make a mark on the timing belt- cog and the lower drive-cog. Make the marks on the block line up with a mark you make on the cogs. Try not to move the cogs as you remove the head. But if you do, you can still turn them to match up with the marks you made, and not have to guess!

Try not to move the springs and or the valves on the head!

The engine block is half the engine and with the various bits like carb' (perhaps) still left on it is very heavy. Two people make removal easier, as is pointed out on this site above.

The head-gasket moves around a lot and as you will see on this site above, four pencils will hold the gasket in place and you should be able to place the head over the pencils and, the gasket will stay in place.

If you may forget what links go where after putting the head back, put labels on the cables and lines as you undo them and tape any loose bits like small gaskets and or any rubber 'O' rings to the line it belongs to.

If the top of the pistons are black or 'crusty', you can try to clean them but in doing so make sure nothing drops into any of the oil holes and water holes. Wipe the whole top of the block to clean it and use a clean rag or tissue to apply a this layer of engine oil. Just enough to clean anything off and make it look 'shiny'.

Let me/us know how you get on and you can get back in touch at any time if you need help as you assemble the engine again.

Good luck!

Dear colleague.At the moment of detaching the head, before you remove the timing belt, use a marker (white is better) and carefully mark where it was positioned the gear. Then, when you remove all the bolts and the head comes loose, remove it carefully and you won't loose the original position of the gear, as this vehicle is "overhead camshaft" and the springs will keep it all in place.Clean the surfaces to receive the new head gastket (carefully, do not allow dirt to come into the cylinders). You can avoid dirt by usiing newspaper inside each cylinder as temporary plug. Never use "steel brush" to clean the surface. You may use a brass brush that won't scratch surfaces. Then when all is clean (both surfaces), remove the paper carefully (you may want to use a vacuum cleaner first, to absorb any debris from the cleaning process). Install the new head gasket clean, NO need for any oil or glues. Then replace the head and temporarely hand torque the bolts. Then torque the bolts to the specified lbs-sq ft (around 80-90, if you don't have the manual handy), and in a cross pattern (first one corner, then the other, then in an X starting from the center). Then re-install the belt by playing with the tensor. This should cover it all...good luck.

Hi hmunozg22cr,

GA to you Sir.

Good advice.

One more comment.

If your head gasket failed, you probably have a problem with the cooling system. Check the electric thermostat at the radiator....is probably faulty and is not starting the fan at the correct temperature (or not at all). Fix this first or you will have a new head blown again...

Rgds

H.M

If this E15 engine is an overhead cam design, and it is an interference engine*, wrong cam timing can cause the results you describe. At the end of the exhaust valve cycle, the piston is very close to the top of the cylinder block. If the camshaft timing is allowed to be off by more than a tooth, the piston may hit the valves. It can then bend the valves, brake the valves, punch a hole into the top of the piston, or just bend up the tappets, rockers or push rods that move the valves.

If you had been a little more free with the facts on this project, perhaps you could have avoided this problem.

Any time you are changing the camshaft timing sequence, a good test is to remove all spark plugs and turn the engine over BY HAND in the direction of rotation. After 2 complete revolutions, if you have not bound up while turning, it is a good sign. By the second complete revolution, you should be back at the cam to crank timing marks that you started with.

* An interference engine is one in that will physically hit valves into pistons when camshaft to crankshaft timing is incorrect.

Hello bob c,

I agree with what you say about the timing cycle. I tried setting mine and was 180° out! With the thing firing at BTC (Bottom Dead Centre) it was never going to start because there was zero compression!

Still, we all have to learn................. I think the timing is probably the most difficult to set. Even after it is set, if you have a vehicle with a 'distributor' you can fine adjust the timing by loosening this slightly and twisting.

Take care.

One of the issues I see from people is alack of understanding that the ignition needs to be timed as well as the valve events. Now with multiple camshafts, each cam needs to be timed to the crankshaft events. Engines with a balance shaft also need to have that timed. Time, time everywhere is time...

Hi bob c,

I understand what you mean. But have not timed any multi shaft timing set ups. I had a single overhead cam on my car. Another thing, I do not think many people realise just how small the space it at TDC? Often with the head milled out to give the valves room to work?

The link I put onto the site yesterday (Monday 17) explained some details and a 'redneck' way of straightening a valve. It would be fine in a 's-it' engine but hardly the thing to do as a matter of course? I think perhaps the OP was not telling the full truth, as there was very little detail and then the OP said they had thrown the engine out! WHY? Get yourself a hand-book sit down and study the part you want to work on and start getting your hands dirty, eh? If the engine was thrown out it makes very little sense as there was (apparently) nothing wrong with anything else to do with the engine? Weird, or a lie!

Take care my friend

Hello phillip,

And or anyone else who may be interested.....................

This clip from you tube is how to set valve timing and straighten bent valves..........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAU-omdBmI8&feature=channel

Take care to all!