The Quarky Engineer

For those of you thinking you just have to see a 10 min video on measuring stuff… Here is a video I made of how I am measuring the clearance for the rod to crank bearing surface in the EZ30R. I am by no means an expert, so feel free to correct me if something I am doing something wrong.

Being an engineer, I used this technique 4 times on the same rod and crank bearing on 4 different occasions just to make sure the method was somewhat consistent. The results were surprisingly good, all being within 1/10,000ths of an inch.

The factory (non turbocharged variety) clearance spec is .0009″ to .0020″, however with the motor built in turbocharged form most builders would try to be in the .0015″ to .0025″ range. My other turbocharged EZ30R (currently in my WRX, running since 2008) was built by me with clearances of right around .0020″).

Calibrate twice, measure twice, Calibrate twice again. Or something like that. 🙂

I have been taking apart the EZ30R motor that was in Jeff’s SEMA car. It sat for a number of years, and probably has 5-10k miles on it.

The main bearings looked fine.. very little wear, and no significant damage. The rod bearings were trashed. Pitting in all of them, significant surface wear, and uneven coating. The cranked looked fine, but might need a polish.

Next up I’ll re torque the case and measure the bearing clearances as it sits now, just to know how to was. I’ll also measure the piston to cylinder wall clearances and the rod clearances.

The pistons look fine. Very little side wear.. lots of carbon on the top, but not surprising as the car sat for years with very little run time, lots of small starts, and lots of time with rich mixtures. I’ll get new pistons only because I’ll have the bores cleaned up a bit. This is a sleeved block, so easy to overbore a tad.

I have been working on an open source data acquisition system for the last few months, and have posted a few of the progress reports here. If you are interested in following any of the development or would like to contribute some of your mad skills to the cause, I made a dedicated Facebook group for that very purpose! It is called Open-CANDAQ.
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/199921407078871/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel)

Feel free to join, I’ll keep the spam to a minimum, and the nerd level at the operating point of dilithium crystals.

Getting the wrist pins out in an H6 with the wide Pauter rods is turning out to be a real pain. Since there are 3 cylinders/side, there is a very small margin of space in a stock motor where you can use a long screwdriver to push out the wrist pin from the other side. [ Unlike in an EJ, there are two rods in the way instead of one ]

With the wider then stock Pauter rods there is no room at all. The only way to get the pin out is to pull it. I used a blind puller on one side which worked, and that enabled me to get the other two on that side.

The blind puller isn’t long enough for the other side ( the distance from the case to the pin is a bit longer).

I guess it is time to fab something up.

Wow. 8 years old. On those occasions you think the next generation is somehow lazy or unfocused, look at this. This is the result of dedication and hard work. I love it! (youtube link says 7 years old, but other description said 8)

Thanks to Eric Rosenberry for the as usual incredible work with the chainsaw in getting the driveway cleared up! We missed you Eric Bryant and Will McCloskey.

I decided to dig into one of the EZ30D Gen 2 motors that I got from Cobb’s race program. I knew it was ‘built’ to some degree, but I didn’t know exactly to what extent.

I knew it had custom made camshafts (by Kelford), which are billet steel cams made specifically for the EZ30D Gen 2. The factory camshafts in the this motor have variable intake timing as well as a variable left system designed by Porsche.

You can see the ‘Germany’ marking on the factory intake cam buckets. I believe these buckets are almost the same as the turbo 996 ones.

These cams replace the factory system and do away with the variable lift. Since the lift system is part of the bucket tappets, you have to switch to using the normal exhaust side buckets with variable sized under bucket shims.

The heads have been clearly rebuilt, and new larger size intake and exhaust valves installed.

The biggest surprise was that the block was sleeved. I think the pistons are custom from CP with a coating on them. I’ll finish removing the heads, then crack the block open and check the bearing clearances, rod setup etc. I suspect this has the custom Crower rods designed to use EJ rod bearings instead of the slightly smaller EZ rod bearings.

It is always good to find things looking this nice on disassembly.

It would appear I like 6 cylinder flat turbo motors.