Thread: 3.9 V Belt to SERP belt Engine build.

Check out this lifter,not doing much spinning I’d say

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Interim timing cover ,with engine driven oil pump,this is the point of difference vs the v belt distributor driven oil pump.

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Standard worn out timing chain on nylon pulley.
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This is were the interim block gets its name,in between,with this particular block being a good example.
From about March 94 the interim blocks were installed with the camshaft thrust plates,check out the date on the timing cover of this one..no thrust plate or even holes drilled on this one.
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Bugger!!
Spotting this I looked again at the heads,sure enough correct date codes for original and they are 10 bolt heads,but the block remains drilled with 14 bolt, (in between)this changed shortly later also,haha

Always a satisfying moment getting an engine block onto the stand
Removal of mains,crank,cam and pistons sets.
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I bought a cheap metal stamp set and as I removed and dismantled each piston rod combo,stamped a number and direction arrow on the rods and small ends to match up later.
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The beauty of an alloy block being once all this stuff is off,fairly light to pick up,so off to engine builders for a cursory inspection .

A quick once over with his dial gauge told us average out of round wear in the cylinders was about 3 thou worst case.not too shagged,borderline if you read the rave manual tho.
With no prominent cylinder lip, and on a budget,the call was made to merely stone polish the bores,deglaze and return some cross hatching with intent to use standard rings again.

Addressing the concern re the liners sitting slightly proud,I showed him the gaskets and he was convincingly satisfied it looked sound and although couldn’t explain exactly why,confident it showed no obvious signs of liner slippage,ok onward.. asked him to pressure test the block also,which came back air tight.
(As an aside ,just because the block holds pressure and water jacket is not compromised,that doesn’t mean the liner hasn’t slipped but good enough for now

He checked the crank,it had what I would call medium surface gouges and scratches on the journals.
Some looked quite deep,but was reassured that in the big scheme of things after a polish it would be quite useable,instead of machining it and go oversize on bearings.

He was really impressed at the lack of crank wear vs mileage and measured well within tolerance on the very good side,that was good to hear ,just as well as to my uneducated eye it looked a bit grooved.

Cam bearings well worn and looked a bit flogged,new ones going in.

So essentially this engine is having new standard bearings replaced everywhere.
If clearances allow,this saves quite a bit of faffing and expense..

To add to the slightly underwhelming interim mystery finds,,the engine stamp told me it was a low comp 8:13:1 suck..
I had a second hand decent set of 9:35:1 pistons sitting around so we would match the set and would balance the crank to suit ,nice .

Crank balanced with a fair whack of Mallory metal each end,15 and 17 grams each end,this
to balance out the high comp pistons being a different weight of course.

While waiting for the block,time spent tidying up all the ancillaries,Degrease and a wire disc on the drill and took to the timing cover,power steering brackets,aircon and alternator.

On removing the oil pump cover ,lack of oil changes during its life evident,with grit scouring on gears and back of cover.
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Originally these were not available as spare parts, so you had to purchase a new timing cover,good luck with that! At least now you can obtain new oil pump gears.

I have previously tried to sand down the back of the plate with decent success,but having a local solo engine builder and his machine shop on hand ,made a quick trip to see progress and ask him to take the surface scratches off,a couple thou max really,too easy

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Have any supergeeks spotted my not so deliberate mistake in the above photo?
To tell the truth .i had fully reinstalled the entire timing cover before I realised my error.

The oil pump gears have a flat and beveled side,the pic shows the beveled edge facing in towards engine ,I gather correct install is flat to inside.
This minor machining detail would likely make no real world difference , but my adhd got the better of me,so ripped it all off,flipped it,re lubed,Timing cover gasket reset
using the permatex aviation #3 gasket sealer,such good stuff..
below pic is incorrect way around.

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Shiny bits back,now the fun bit

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plastigage showed the bearing clearances to be not too bad at all really for a 26 year old crank.
in the middle of range 0.015-0.055 mm .

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End float right at .003 so that was pleasing ..
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Piston rings,installed using my builders ring compressor,wow,so much easier with the right tools,vs my superc.... nasty one I struggled with previously.
King standard bearings and a new old stock ,likely 10 years old plus,set of standard rings.
So nice using decent branded parts ,nice ring sleeves packaging,instruction pics for install,,and markings on the rings,it’s the small things that make me happy ,haha..

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Note the red plastic caps over the Rod threads To protect scratching journals during install.
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Red and yellow dots show the cap has been torqued to spec,So easy to miss one

Some years ago,there wasn’t a lot of experience yet using aftermarket timing sets.
I recall being quite excited to use a rollmaster cs7000 chain set on a 93 refresh.

Some time later the engine developed a knock,intrigued,pulled the front cover to find a nice gouge where the chain had gouged the front cover and after having freed up some space allowed the camshaft to float back and forth creating the tapping noise on the cover.


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i posted this on here somewhere at the time.Subsequently rollmaster have added the caviat that adjustments may need to be made to cover.
The duplex chain setups being a lot wider than the standard nylon and Morse chain.

Once bitten twice shy,a pre emptive strike on the cover this time.
New camshafts lobe design hold back the cam in the block,as they wear they loose this and tend to float forward.
Land rover addressed this cam float by using a thrust plate or Teflon button.
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Seeing my interim block had no thrust plate holes,took the easy cheap out option and bought a Teflon button kit from v8tuner.
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The button setup is generally too long for plug and play holding the cover off the block ,so needs some shaving and fettling to achieve a theoretical 0.05 end float.
This seemed like way too much faffing,so merely ground down the cover and Teflon button a bit using a dremel,painted the end then fitted it to the block with gasket in place until there were no paint marks left on the inside of the cover

Same deal with the chain gouge.

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With timing cover on, this yellow splotch is an additional confirmation of engine at tdc,as visible down distributor hole Prior to Distributor install..
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The beauty about using head studs is the ability to be reused.
Arp studs from current motor out,relubed and back on newly skimmed(6 thou) heads.
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No issues with head install, did chase all the threads first as some looked ragged taking the bolts off,last thing I needed was to bind up a stud.
No matter what people say,a smidge of sealant around water port makes my mind rest easy.

Torqued to 65 ft/lbs seems to work well into worn alloy threads,never had issues at this setting .

Quality time with my wife hoisting the block into engine bay
Bonnet still on worked fine extended to full height with wooden pole,bit by bit steady movements avoided any collateral damage and that’s with sump and crank pulley installed.
Notice the sided paint coding marks On rockers ,heads.
KISS principle in operation here,meant all bits mated back in orientation they came off, me good at colouring in,ugg! Haha

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Good move on chasing the threads out.

Had an issue on alloy block mercedes where the thread strips out when putting new bolts in.

Process now is that the blocks get helicoil/timeserts regardless.
It's quite rare to need to pull a head on a Mercedes, it usually comes down to severe instances of abuse and neglect, even then, the engines seem to do ridiculously high mileages before the inevitable.
30 year old+ engine, zero maintenance, careless owner leaning heavily on it... something will always give in a situation like that, but it still surprises me how much abuse these things can take before a malfunction.

but all alloy blocks have this issue with threads, so chasing them out is a very sensible thing. if no thread fragments came out and it all looks clean and shiny in there (and dry) then I reckon you are pretty lucky.
If it was a jap engine, the bolts would break off in the block or the head would snap off and leave you with a 6 hour job pulling the head with corrosion-welded shanks in heads preventing their removal.

See, rover v8's do have the occasional redeeming feature

There is some discussion re stretched timing chains,the duplex rollmaster looks fairly decent for a few km’s but oil delivery to the timing cover has been mentioned ,or lack of ,for long term chain stretch.
A free fix is to drill through the front of the block to provide additional oil to the timing chain area for slinging around
onky did this on one side as boss on other side sits higher and not sure how much would reach through.
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The SERP setup has a totally different set of brackets to accomodate the ancillaries,so re using the original parts set to connecting these up.
as an aside,the heads that match these have additional holes drilled to fit the aircon and power steering brackets,if you are earlier heads,you may find having to tap and drill a suitable hole to anchor these brackets.

A lesson learnt from a previous top end job,the heads,gaskets and oil holes don’t always line up which meant in one case I had screeching rockers,getting little to no oil.
I drove it ,rockers off,to a nearby cylinder head guy,a big Maori dude called Ed,now a good mate and he was horrified,,”bro,you can’t drive around like that”
no worries, as there’s no oil up there to splash anywhere..
He suggested using a coat hanger or similar and poking down the hole under the rocker pedestal to clear the oil way.
did this and gushing fountain eureka
Did the same this time prior to installing the rockers just to check
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The heater hose setup On the SERP,is quite different,using a side entrance hole in the plenum vs the underneath entry pipe present in earlier models.
i wished to re use my existing plenum and existing heater pipes that run across the top of the rocker casing.
here’s a shot of the original setup to compare.
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the SERP has a black solid pipe that tucks inside the aircon/alt bracket.
this connects to A branch on the lower rad hose.
I cut this off where it bends at the top of rocker area,and joined it to the original with hose clips.


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Concern was leaking with no flanged pipes,but using hose clips,so far so good.

the other heater pipe works as is,just takes a gentle turn to reach the under plenum pipe,just missing the aircon bracket,nice.
The funny thing was I was able to reuse both the original hoses that came off the back of the original earlier water pump,without cutting at all.
They curved and fitted like bought ones,happy as with that little bodge
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Next little difference was the distributor clearances,to install nicely with ignition module and vacuum advance all attached,it needed the power steering bracket loosened to slot into the hole and mesh with the drive gear in the cover.
Next thing was having adjustability,as it sits about tdc there is little room for adjustment of advance/retard as it’s a bit trapped With only a small arc until it strikes the alternator rib.
Im not sure what if anything would have changed if i’d used all the original SERP parts,but both these little gremlins did make me wonder what had changed?
solution,dremel a channel for the distributor to swing through,just as well I did,as with a mild torque cam installed,I needed to advance the ignition timing quite a bit to get it to idle nicely.

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Another thing I nearly cocked up was installing the engine to gearbox Flexplate,mine had a shim so that was included ,but the gap between the two once tightened up looked to be about 2mm.
i had a cunning plan,I installed washers to bridge the gap,so the flex plate wouldn’t bow,me clever!!

Once again this was all buttoned up,inspection plate back on,after an hour of contortion under the car.

Sat down to read up a bit on flex plates and surprise ,surprise that gap is supposed to be there ,,aaaargh
Dave Ashcroft even adds this note to parts that come through his shop,I gather .

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With multiple sized bolts for the water pump , and having marked the bolts with dabs of paint,I found these excellent pics online ,which someone had made up for exactly the same reason,so no excuse to get it wrong on install now.
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Bit nervous on the first start,what had I missed?
Had power steering fluid near reservoir as the pressure pipe connector from steering box to pump is different so had that empty.
Decided to run just water in rad on first start too,only due to having been told or read something about coolant and head sealing or something to that effect.

Charged the battery for an hour prior just in case.
Wound up the throttle screw a tad so it wouldn’t idle.
No excuses, hit the key...
Roared into life,oil pressure light gone in seconds,too busy for small dance of joy,as juggling between setting the revs to 2000rpm,looking for leaks,and watching the water in expansion tank warm up as thermostat opens.
Really noisey,as even though the lifters got soaked for a day,it was apparently going to take some time to pump them up.

The clatter was so bad ,I did have a thought that part of that noise may be one or more cylinder liners banging into the head,this had been a nagging doubt since the beginning...

After 6 minutes the lifters settled down,replaced with a satisfying and smooth roar,very little vibration evident ,,ok,small dance of joy at this point

got to 100 degrees after about 12 mins,and shut it off,with intent to do cam breakin in two stages.

Building up the km’s while altering revs below 2500 currently.
Will wait till about 500km till taking it higher and back to normal thrash everywhere.

One bug,the idle.
With a new mild torque cam in-place,the idle does slightly vibrate the engine.
Placing a hand on the plenum,you can feel an oscillation as it sporadically vibrates on the mounts and can feel it in the drivers seat.
Having been used to that lovely smooth idle that comes with worn out lobes,haha..
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A bit of adjustment needed on my part, but the trade off is epic

Granted the cam does have a fair bit of lift,so happy to live with it,as on throttle it instantly pulls away,deceptively well,with that new engine smoothness too,that has caught me out a couple times when I’ve looked at the speedo,,nice
Advancing the ignition has settled the idle down so that its barely noticeable now,and the more mileage I do it seems to be smoothing out as well.

I did run it in the garage lights out,and guy fawkes had come early this year!! so splashed out on a new coil and a set magnacore leads,as a finishing touch.

I hope something in sharing this build may be useful,cheers Westy

Nice work! What cam did you use?

Gidday Mecclesbeen enjoying following your project
The cam is not a brand name,but made up by a local shop.
Here’s the cam card.
i asked them to change the exhaust lift to match the intake as originally it was up at .43 ish
and had read the hamill book,where he states anything over .43 may have clearance issues re seals on valves?
To be honest winding the engine over by hand,it looked like miles of clearance so could have left it be,even running the original used springs.
Further observations,it creates great vacuum so brakes are better,suits the auto change points nicely too.
Look forward to seeing your awesome two door up your way one day,cheers

Originally Posted by westy1

......................
Next little difference was the distributor clearances,to install nicely with ignition module and vacuum advance all attached,it needed the power steering bracket loosened to slot into the hole and mesh with the drive gear in the cover.
Next thing was having adjustability,as it sits about tdc there is little room for adjustment of advance/retard as it’s a bit trapped With only a small arc until it strikes the alternator rib.
Im not sure what if anything would have changed if i’d used all the original SERP parts,but both these little gremlins did make me wonder what had changed?
solution,dremel a channel for the distributor to swing through,just as well I did,as with a mild torque cam installed,I needed to advance the ignition timing quite a bit to get it to idle nicely.

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I hope something in sharing this build may be useful,cheers Westy

Nice thread. Your dissy problem is pretty simple, just pull the leads out of the cap and rotate where they go in the cap (in the same order) so you are able to rotate the whole thing to a place where you can set the timing without fouling anything.

DL