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#21

Steve D wrote:

[quote]Jon62 wrote:

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Put the scraper on, pick your favorite oil, and drive the d@mn thing.

“Checking” the #6 rod bearing means disassembling something that’s happy just the way it is. If you toasted the bearings, it’ll knock eventually to let you know.

From what I have read on line, Ranger’s “Preventive Maintenance” program is neither. :laugh:[/quote]
Lol.

Your call Jon. An arguement could be made that if it works, don’t screw with it. Me personally, I like checking. It’s the things that I didn’t check that failed. Pulling the oil pan and installing a crankscraper is a pita. The easy way is to put some gasket goobage in between block and scraper, but the 400 oil pan bolts in, and let the goobage harden over night. Then the scraper will stay in place when you remove the bolts, put the gasket on and then the oil pan. If you’re going to go to all that trouble, you might as well take a couple seconds, pull a rod bearing cap off, and take a look at the bearing. Cost to you is $16 in new rod bolts.

#22

You guys crack me up…Love all the different opinions and comments I see…

I will be in there anyways and will be my first time looking in the engine. I have a couple of weeks before my next event and an open lift to use…May as well look and poke around at everything I can get my hands on while I am there. I planned on doing the gasket, leave over night with the tray thing, makes allot of sense.

So Skeen broke my car right…:woohoo:

#23

If your oil light was flashing on track that is bad news…

I would look at #6 as Ranger suggests…I removed a rod cap once and took it to a reputable engine shop and they said it was toast, saved me a weekend tow/entry fee’s etc. and my light had never flashed…

On the motor where I did have the oil light flash (on the street) I put some STP and straight 50 weight and drove the car on the street for around 5k miles, and then did one 3 hour race, and that was it, motor was toast, you may be able to get away with some quality straight 50 weight and do some DE’s but if you have the pan off I would look at the bearings, you may be able to get some service out of the motor by doing the rods now…

I think the bearing should be a light grey with no scouring or wear in the middle and certainly no blue color, Chuck Baader can chime in and give more info…

Al

#24

Ranger wrote:

Why is it that these aren’t re-useable? Is it because the hammer out and fatigue over the life of the motor and are probably worn out when you rebuild a motor or is it because the bolt deforms during installation? I’m planning to pull my pan and install a baffle this weekend. It only has 29 hours on the engine and I don’t have any rod bolts on hand.

#25

FishMan wrote:

[quote]Ranger wrote:

Why is it that these aren’t re-useable? Is it because the hammer out and fatigue over the life of the motor and are probably worn out when you rebuild a motor or is it because the bolt deforms during installation? I’m planning to pull my pan and install a baffle this weekend. It only has 29 hours on the engine and I don’t have any rod bolts on hand.[/quote]

They aren’t re-usable because BMW says so. BMW must think that either their tightening torque or the pounding that they take in service takes them close enough to their tensile limit that there is risk of plastic deformation such that they fall out of tolerance. That being said, I re-used them once to no ill-effect. In my case they only had a couple hrs on them.

When I was serially going thru engines, you know, like up to last week, I almost bought ARP reusable rod bolts. I was sick of paying for new ones.

#26

Rod bolts are a stretch to torque bolt. They should really be checked with a bolt stretch gauge, but since most of us don’t have one, there is a tightening sequence in the Bentley that gets close. That said, you may be slightly under or slightly over according to a gauge, but you don’t know so you always replace rod bolts once you take them out.

I am really interested in bearing clearance more than anything else. I try to set my motors at 1.5 thousandths on the rods, 2 on the mains. At some point in time, most motors are going to ingest some debris and the bearings will have scratches on them, which does not matter. What does matter is the clearance. That can be checked with plastigauge while the pan is off and I would suggest checking nos 5 and 6 rods and mains. Check the Bentley to get the recommended wear limits. The motor can be have new bearings installed in the chassis while the pan is off.

Note, our motors need all the oil control help they can get. that said, while you are waiting for the gray silicone sealer to set up on the scraper, make sure the back side of the scraper is bent as close to the crank as possible without touching.

Note 2, you don’t need a gasket with the PP pan. Use gray silicone for the scraper, and blue for the pan and enjoy. CB

#27

Now I understand why the rod bolts are one-time use only. When fitting a factory oil pan with scraper, do you recommend gray stuff on the pan or an OEM gasket?

#28

The goop goes between scraper and block. The gasket goes in between pan and scraper. No goop on the gasket.

#29

You do not need a gasket on the stock pan rail…silicone works just fine.

Use gray on the scraper because it is more structural and will hold the scraper on if you have to remove the pan for some reason…and that is why you use blue on the pan, so you can remove the pan without loosening the scraper.

The addition of the scraper moves the bottom of the pan away from the pickup. Not using the gasket basically moves the oil pickup closer to the factory clearance. CB

#30

On the overflow tube for the transmission…Havent been under there yet, what size hose is normally used? Mention of a bottle / reservoir…Something from lowes or hardware store?

#31

Mountain Dew bottle works. I know multiple guys convert the washer fluid reservoir to an overflow. I bought an aftermarket overflow canister, but I am going to swap over to the OEM power steering reservoir and add a breather to the cap.