2.0 8V bottom end rebuild (by idiots)

[bump_drft]

Ah yes, we thought that might be the case, but there were nuts on it already tightened so we thought maybe that was wrong.

edit: nevermind I found axle nut torque: 233 ft lbs! That's a lot!

[Dieselman]

I found axle nut torque: 233 ft lbs! That's a lot!

It's due to the drive-shaft clamping the two halves of the wheel bearing together. Don't forget to fit the castellated nut and R clip.

If you don't have a suitable torque wrench, just use a horizontal 3 foot bar and hang 78 Lbs from it, or 32kg @ 1 metre. Gravity will do the hard work for you.
Alternatively, weld a socket on to the bar at the appropriate length and use a torque wrench that can generate the reduced torque figure.

[eyesoreracing]

Success!

Sort of…. We’re running and driving now, but still working through some problems. We were stumped by the three coolant temp sensors under the distributor. All three are connected, but the connectors seem interchangeable. Are these sensors calibrated the same, or does it matter which wire goes to which sensor?

[Dieselman]

They should be colour coded, Blue, Brown, green. Without checking they may have the same resistance values.

Do you perhaps have a picture from prior to taking it apart?

https://www.catcar.info/citroen/?lang=e ... I9PQ%3D%3D

More importantly, it's good to hear the car is now fixed. What was the gearbox clicking noise?

[eyesoreracing]

before pictures aren't all that helpful, since we have no reason to believe things were correct before we took it apart. There has been a lot of poor maintenance and repair in this car's history...

The transmission noise is still there, we had our hands full enough with the engine work and were afraid to have too many things apart in a horribly disorganized shop. It is clearly on the input shaft, as we can hear it at idle and it goes away when we step on the clutch. We're hoping to get a new fill plug with a magnet on it so we can fish for debris every now and then. The gearbox still shifts great and the noise is only noticeable at idle. strange...

We're still struggling to set the timing. We found the mark on the flywheel (under the intake hose, suspension hoses, and a chaotic tangle of wires), but the timing marks on the bellhousing seem to be a series of 5-degree (?) increments with no clear indication of which one is TDC. I'm not sure what I'm aiming for, so for now we just keep advancing the timing bit by bit and it keeps running better and better. When it starts knocking or running worse, we'll back it off...

[bump_drft]

Hey! No fair calling it a "horribly disorganized shop"!

FOR THE RECORD: it's not a shop, it's a garage where I store all my random nicknacks, and occasionally squeeze in a car.

[Dieselman]

Check the Bosch R6a, LE-jetronic manual for the correct order of the sensors, it shows them.

As for the ignition timing, I would think the most forward mark is TDC and the advance timing marks are rearward of there.

[eyesoreracing]

Well, this is fun...

I've been driving the car for a week, trying to sort it out, and after a long enough drive (~20 miles) to get the oil up to temperature, it sometimes makes a pretty horrible noise at idle. This Friday the noise was worse than ever. Sounds like this:

https://youtube.com/shorts/lScIqDFrkNI? ... I9htGUEwyp

I hoped it was the hydraulic pump for the suspension going out, but when I loosened the v-belt and stopped the pump, the sound was unchanged. Sounds and feels (with my hand on the engine) like a rod knock to me.

A few days later, after getting my hands on an oil pressure tester, I fired it back up and the noise was gone. 70-80 psi at idle when the oil is cold, Plenty of pressure to float an unhappy bearing, I guess. So now we can say the noise only occurs with hot oil.

After a cold start, it sounds like this:

https://youtube.com/shorts/J0Fw1MQqIcc? ... l-1ph_0KC0

So today we pulled the pan and all the rod bearings look like this:



Clearly crank and bearing are making some contact. Not good.

If I understand correctly, the UX10 engine started in 1990 (this car is a 1990) with 25mm wide rod bearings and around 1993 switched to 20mm wide bearings. We got the 20mm wide bearings by mistake (that seems to be all we can find) and just crossed our fingers and threw them in there. Almost worked...

So what do people with 25mm rods do? Where can we find the wider early bearings?

We also coundn't find any specific bearing clearance specs for this engine, but a quick plastigauge test suggests they're right in the normal range:



Frustrated and stumped...

[eyesoreracing]

I see there were two different factory part numbers for the rod bearings, but I don't understand what this OPR number is.



Here's the data plate from our car:



I don't see any number sequence with enough digits to be that OPR number.

[Dieselman]

King Bearings list P/# MB5129AM KING but for the RFZ engine and it shows the width to be 20mm. You could contact them, however on their online shopping site they don't show the 2 litre engines at all.

Work your way through this list and either make contact with the supplier, or directly to the manufacturers, such as Kolbensmidt. See https://www.kmotorshop.com/en/article-l ... 0?filter=0

The part numbers you require are for the R6a engine, 95650951, or 0606 J5.