Duder's Beige Brick - ARUNDL - 1981 242 DL +B230FT

Saw your engine installation pictures on face book and your doing it wrong.... There is not nearly enough beer, permatex, and vice grips involved....

cosbySweater said:

Saw your engine installation pictures on face book and your doing it wrong.... There is not nearly enough beer, permatex, and vice grips involved....

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I know right...there is a distinct lack of cigarette/cigarillo/vape smoke from my garage as well, and no gin or bourbon either. I must have screwed up majorly somewhere along the way.

The swap project moves forward, but not without some bad news.

I have to thank Karl and Alex for all of their assistance so far, without which I would have been pretty far behind my goal of getting the swap done by this Friday. My weird migraines persist - it's been over 17 days now. Some good days and some bad, but at least I'm mostly back to work.

So I haven't made as much progress as I'd hoped, but still took some significant steps.

First was getting the alternator sorted out. I have this Denso 100A that I pulled from a 940 in the junkyard, which is nice because it's 5 lb. lighter than the Bosch unit. So I thought everything was interchangeable except for maybe some terminal changes needed in the harness. I mounted the alternator with the late-model 240 tensioner on new poly bushings. Brand new Conti belts, 10 x 920. But for some reason the tensioner would run out of travel before the belts were remotely tight. I pulled the alternator and compared the mounting lug locations to my old 240 alternator and the 940 Bosch 100A - and they are all the same. The belts are actually 5mm shorter than I had on the B21F, and the tensioner is the same length as the old bracket on the B21F.

So WTF? After getting ready to throw something across the garage, I took a look at the B21F water pump pulley in comparison to the B230FT pulley. Sure enough, the B230FT unit had a slightly smaller diameter, slight enough not to notice but significant enough to prevent full tensioning. I cleaned & painted the old B21F pulley and swapped it out. Belts tension up just fine now. Perhaps there's a difference in NA vs. Turbo pulleys, to up-speed the water pump with a smaller pulley for higher cooling output?




Next was an abbreviated service of the M46 and Laycock overdrive. We gave both a cursory cleaning, pulled the overdrive, and Alex started yanking it apart. I'm not a big fan of blowing trannys, but we had to do it. My tranny was literally blown apart in the garage for a few days. There were pieces of Laycock everywhere.

I bought the ipd "mini service kit" for the overdrive but was disappointed when it came time to install parts. It came with the wrong output shaft seal and wrong o-ring for the speedo drive. Luckily the originals were OK to retain for now. I didn't split the rear housing from the main case because the ipd instructions were very vague in this area and said only to do so with a service manual. Shouldn't they have included the instructions for that part?

I also didn't have the right pin spanner to loosen the 3 plugs under the OD drain pan, so I left those in for now as well. I did get new o-rings on the pistons and the solenoid. Everything got cleaned up, new gaskets installed where possible, and reassembled. 2.4 liters O'Reilly's finest, cheapest ATF Type F was poured in.



I got the bellhousing off and input shaft seal and gasket replaced (also not included in the ipd kit).




I didn't get any pics of my JVAB flywheel / Saab 9000 Aero pressure plate / Clutchnet disc combo after it was bolted together. But here's some photographic proof that Karl will occasionally set his phone down and do some real work




We almost forgot to clearance the bellhousing for the LH2.4 VR sensor, but remembered pretty quickly after thinking through a mental pre-flight checklist.




Here I was furiously turning the load leveler on my engine hoist which makes me look like some kind of begloved troll.




My hoist doesn't have a long enough arm to get the engine and trans back far enough, but with a combination of carefully timed load leveling, iterating on the downwards / inwards shuffle, and some hearty shoves back while lowering the hoist, it settled down on the new diesel mounts.





The next day we got the exhaust manifold with its brace and the stock MHI 13c turbo installed. At this point progress was looking good for finishing by Friday.

:huzzah:

Looking sweet!

Nice!

Tidy work, sir. Very tidy indeed.

You'll be driving in no time. I had the same tensioner frustration when I put my alternator on. I had 230 pulleys but I think one was 92 NA, other 91 T and were different

Hey Duder, rekon you could do me a favour and get Karl to contact me?

He's been avoiding my messages for the past few months about some parts I am owed, and think its about time he came clean and stopped avoiding me.
Let him know that Ghettobird, or Julian would like for him to return his messages so we can work out where my bloody parts are.

Sick build by the way, things are really coming together

Lookin good Chris!

Yea there's two different sized water pump pulleys. You should get the bigger one later on.

Thanks for the comments guys. Made it up to Davis but not in this car

If this were a Top Gear episode I'd have been forced to take the backup car looming in the distance, but fortunately in this case it's a TDI wagon which is a great road trip vehicle.

There's an issue with my clutch stackup on the 242. Throwout bearing doesn't engage on the pressure plate fingers. I'll have to get to the bottom of that if I'm feeling better next week.

Bummer the car wasn't ready in time. At least it's close to living again.

welp, you'll just have to take it to ipd.

Basically.

It?s really a awesome car you?ve got, but honestly is the M46 worth spending money at?

Why don?t you try to find a Getrag from a Volvo 260 or 780 or convert a BMW Getrag.

The stock M46 overdrive is crap and will remain so, I doesn't stand very much power.

The easier alternative is use a M90 from a 940 with the Machined M46 flywheel from early 740 series.

Most parts needs machining before they can fit together but in the long stand it be worth it

Her is a link to my own car with a + 550 Nm clutch an M46 flywheel, and M90 gearbox in combination. It stands well for 8000 rpm and 650 hp

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?p=5139845#post5139845

So which WP pulley is that? I think I had to use a 957mm belt on a '94 or '95 engine that I'm using but I have the B21 style alternator tensioner. By that I mean the oldest one where you just pry on the alternator and secure it. I want to swap out with the late one like you're using. Which years came with those?

Yeah, bummer that I couldn't get this running in time for Davis. I had a good time while I was feeling OK, and it was great seeing everyone there and the big turnout of sweet cars. The drive back south was excruciating - but the good news is I found out what has been causing my persistent headaches. Spent all day in the ER yesterday and was diagnosed with Intracranial Hypotension, in other words low spinal fluid pressure meaning that it's leaking somewhere. With all my leaky old car projects it's only fitting I suppose.

Going to concentrate on getting my head fixed before making too much more progress on the 242.

per0lund said:

It?s really a awesome car you?ve got, but honestly is the M46 worth spending money at?

Why don?t you try to find a Getrag from a Volvo 260 or 780 or convert a BMW Getrag.

The stock M46 overdrive is crap and will remain so, I doesn't stand very much power.

The easier alternative is use a M90 from a 940 with the Machined M46 flywheel from early 740 series.

Most parts needs machining before they can fit together but in the long stand it be worth it

Her is a link to my own car with a + 550 Nm clutch an M46 flywheel, and M90 gearbox in combination. It stands well for 8000 rpm and 650 hp

http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?p=5139845#post5139845

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Thanks for the suggestions, but the M90 was never available in the US and therefore has to be shipped from overseas (not a trivial expense). I've spent about $250 to refresh the M46 including the custom clutch disc which lets me run it with the larger 240mm pressure plate and flywheel. Any trans swap to a Getrag or T5 would cost much more than that, and I'm trying to limit the spend for now.

The M46 in this car has never given me any problems. It shifts nicely, no grinding, and the overdrive works reliably. Whenever it starts having issues I will upgrade to something better, but for now while power output is <200bhp it should be just fine.

The flywheel and pressure plate I have now should work with another disc to let me run whatever trans I eventually swap to. Allegedly the Saab 9000 Aero pressure plate can hold about 550 N-m (400 lb-ft) as well.

AndrewNance said:

So which WP pulley is that? I think I had to use a 957mm belt on a '94 or '95 engine that I'm using but I have the B21 style alternator tensioner. By that I mean the oldest one where you just pry on the alternator and secure it. I want to swap out with the late one like you're using. Which years came with those?

Click to expand...

The pulley in that pic is the original one from the B21F that came out of this car, which had the non-tensioning alternator tensioner/bracket. I haven't verified this but I suspect that all the later B230 NA 240s used the same size pulley. I got the tensioner from a '93 240 in the junkyard but I'm not sure when it went into production.

Edit: very strange that you are using a 957mm belt with the old style tensioner - it's the same length as the newer style (I checked). Unless one of your pulleys is drastically larger than mine or your alternator is spaced outward more, I can't see how 37mm of additional belt length would ever tighten up...

My brother had intracranial hypertension as a result of a blood clot caused by an exploded capillary. Less deadly for it to leak than to build up I guess

Wow, that sounds intense. Initially we were thinking it might be hypertension because of my symptoms, but two more MRIs found evidence of hypotension and did rule out a blood clot. The ER doctor said that the blood clot & subsequent hypertension was extremely rare. Crazy that your brother had it but I hope that turned out ok.

Well the M46 should work upp to some 250 hp, at least the reinforced version I don?t remember whether it was the J or P model. Be careful and avoid full accelerations with the overdrive in, and definitely avoid to switch to overdrive with full throttle.

The gearbox itself isn?t that bad it?s the overdrive that is the real problem.

You find M90 gearbox only at 940 models after -93 and some cars where produced still with M46 that year.

Some cars these years also have the M47 gearbox but that gearbox is not a option at all, it?s a really lousy gearbox.