My Alfa Romeo 33 rebuild - FIRST TIMER

[Guy Croft]

If I turn the cam pulleys so all the valves are closed, no belts attached and then prime with the starter motor?

Given the firing order you are unlikely to arrive in that happy situation but by all means have a look at it..

G

[Brit01]

I have the cam supports attached to the heads and it's possible to have them at a point where all the valves are closed.

The right one naturally settles with the valves closed of course.

The left one, just turn 1/4-1/3 anticlockwise and all the valves are closed. Attach the heads to the block. No plugs, no belts, crank it up with the starter motor for some 30 seconds or so until the oil is up to pressure.


Then turn the crank so all pistons are not in contact with the heads (ie away from valves), then turn the left pulley back to TDC, then the crank back to TDC, slip on left belt, turn right pulley into position and slip on right belt.

Let me think about this carefully.

[Brit01]

Another option of priming the engine with oil:

Is the oil sensor next to the filter proceeding the filter or before it?

If it is after the oil filter non-return valve then I could remove the sensor fit an adapter and pump oil through manually so it fills the passages/cam housings/cranks etc.

So 2 possible options.
Does anyone see any cons with these options?

[LanciaNut69]

Reason is I don't want to prime with the cams rotating with the assembly grease on the lobes and tappets.

Hi Brit01,

I know this may be a silly question, but why not prime the engine with the cambelt and cams attached? It strikes me that you run the risk of more damage by not attaching everything than not. I confess I have no experience with the Boxer engine and do not know if it is an interference engine or not. Logic to me says, if it's not then the position of the cams makes no difference as the pistons will miss the valves anyway. If it is an inteference engine then turning it over and 'hoping' you've found sufficient space where all valves are closed to me just isn't worth it. The assembly paste is designed to provide sufficient protection to the bearing and lobe surfaces until the arrival of the oil.

Just my twopenneth

Darren

[WhizzMan]

Just prime it with the ignition disabled, no spark plugs and no fuel in the carbs. It is an interference engine and the valves may look closed, but they are not. You probably won't hit anything, but going through all this trouble is, in my opinion, just silly. Priming is most important for the crank bearings and, to a lesser extent, for the cam bearings. If you grease all those up before putting it together you will be fine. This is not a formula one engine but a robust 8V boxer that has been made to be able to deal with this sort of thing.

[Biancorally]

Hi,

about priming, here's how I prime my TC engine with belt mounted.
Directly with the drill on the oil pump.
I do not think that's possible on the Boxer.

Regards

Daniel

[Brit01]

Just prime it with the ignition disabled, no spark plugs and no fuel in the carbs. It is an interference engine and the valves may look closed, but they are not. You probably won't hit anything, but going through all this trouble is, in my opinion, just silly. Priming is most important for the crank bearings and, to a lesser extent, for the cam bearings. If you grease all those up before putting it together you will be fine. This is not a formula one engine but a robust 8V boxer that has been made to be able to deal with this sort of thing.

okay guys yes probably not worth the effort and yes the boxer is a robust engine.
I will just remove the ignition, no plugs, belts attached and timed correctly, detach fuel lines from pump and prime it with the starter motor until I see sufficient pressure on the gauge.

BUT what I will probably do is to use the open main oil channel on the block (where the aftermarket pressure sensor goes), to run oil down it to fill that part and this will run down into the oil pump gears and chamber)
Also take out the oil sensor alert next to the filter and fill that with oil - which I think should fill the filter with oil.



Thanks.

Biancorally: No it's not possible as the oil pump gear is driven off the crank gear unfortunately, which also makes it tricky to line it up correctly which also in turn rotates the distributor.
Pump shaft has to be slot in at the exact angle at TDC, then the distributor slotted onto it from above making sure it's pointing to cylinder 1 at TDC.

[Brit01]

pretty happy with the flex-hone results.

Ready to start assembling now. When it warms up a bit. We had a windchill of -8 this weekend. Garage was a freezer.
20w oil was almost solid! Lol

[Guy Croft]

Nice one.

Hope you washed it very thoroughly with a brush & hot water and powerful detergent.

G

[Brit01]

oh yes several times, also with a toilet brush on the end of the drill with lots of strong detergent with hot water as I saw on one of the pics here (good idea the toilet brush), until the kitchen paper towels came out clean, then some wd40 wiped off with paper towels and yet more wd40.

[Guy Croft]

Excellent!

G

[Brit01]

Thanks GC.

Great tool and so easy to use yielding great results as we see from the photos.

Hope I can beat the ~190 psi compression I had before after some break in time. Or at least the same. If less then I will be very disappointed.

I would not have removed the pistons/rings if it was not for the huge amounts of burnt oil and carbon build up on them. It was impossible to clean them in the block without debris getting down the sides between the rings and not a good practice IMO.

[Brit01]

I'm investigating the hydraulic tappets for my drivetrain.

Well here are some photos and weights:

A sample of an Alfa OE tappet that was supplied with my new cams on the (bottom photo) left
62grams and a different concave shaped hole.
Right damaged ones taken out 75 grams! (OE? I don't know - the hole is different and also the weight).

So aren't the Alfa OE tappets supposed to be identical??? Also they have a 15 gram difference and oil hole shape difference. They have no markings on them either. Also I heard they tend to have a high failure rate with the boxer engines

The new INA (034 109 309) ones shown with the straight hole (silver) weigh in at just 50 grams - nice and light for the drivetrain and are German. I have 8 of these installed awaiting trial. Quite possibly better than the Alfa OE tappets. German engineering.
Cross referenced with the OE tappets. Also the 050 INA can be used but were 42 USD each here!!
Also stamped with all the coding.

[Brit01]

mmm come across my first assembly issue.

left bank pistons slid in nicely with the new rings.
Big ends shells fitted, 20 Fm - stamped on them, same as the old ones as these were fairly new.

When I measured them the old ones are 1.87-1.91mm!!
New ones 2.10mm!!!

So when the rod ends are attached they are too tight around the crank journals for the crank to move freely.

But both new and old sets are stamped with 20 Fm -.

Or did the previous mechanic put oversized ones on and the crank was so tight when new, which is not good at all as they should slide on a bed of oil no?

These Alfa big end shells have a middle groove and not a hole like some.

:

Doing some further research I suspect the seller has given me the wrong bearing for my Alfa, even though it did say Alfa romeo on the pack. Strange.
The new ones are Fm (Federal Mogul 66625RA).

I'll need to measure the journals again and visist the shop 9and murphey's law of course, the only receipt I can't find is this one!)

[Brit01]

Further research - the new ones are correct for Alfa romeo 1.7

Some previous mechanic/owner put non Alfa ones in - oversized -20 but they measure the same as the Alfa standard bearings.

66625RA are for Alfa 1.7 engines which are the new ones I have.

I think the standard bearings will be the ones I need and not 0.20mm oversized. He must have put oversized ones in because he didn't have the correct bearings for Alfa!!!!!