Building Blocks

28 Feb Building Blocks

Rather than Legos, we’re referring to engine blocks in today’s title. No intentional misleading here. We would never, ever do that to you.

Before we get to the meat-and-potatoes of the blog title, let’s do a quick recap. Remember when Eric’s Z4M exhaust was finished, but we put the car on the ground before pictures could be snapped of the newly-included muffler and all associated piping? Well, remember no longer! Since the Z4M was back in the air (more on that in a bit), we figured we’d bring you up to speed with some exhaust snapshots, along with everybody’s favorite — weld porn!

Alright, now it’s down to business. First on the block (get it?) is Eric’s aforementioned Z4M. As one of the twelve thousand last-minute additions to the build, we’ll be shipping his OEM oil pump out to VAC Motorsports, who will beef it up with an upgraded oil pump shaft, sprocket and hardware to hold it all together. Apparently there are issues where the retaining bolt on the oil pump sprocket will back off or completely shear off the pump shaft. Most of these problems result in the loss of the motor. Knowing that he’d be taking it up and down the powerband rather often, Eric decided to spring for the upgrade. As a result, we had to drop the oil pump and ship it out. Of course, this wasn’t going to be a clean job, as the oil pump tends to live its entire life surrounded by oil. No problem for us, though; after removing it, we ran it through the parts cleaner and now it’s all neat and tidy, in a box on its way to VAC.

Lastly, we have another motor out and disassembled over in service. A C-class came in with a trashed motor, and since we already have the replacement here to slap into it, we figured we’d get to the bottom of the failed motor and see what caused the issue. Bottom came both literally and figuratively, in this case, seeing as how we’d have to tear the motor all the way down to the nearly-bare block-and-crankshaft in order to check everything. After plenty of inspection, the root cause for failure on the motor was a lifter clip that came loose and contacted the intake camshaft on that bank, causing valvetrain damage. We managed to snag a few shots during the breakdown of the motor. Apparently these things are not the easiest motors in the world to disassemble, requiring a labyrinthine amount of effort to get to the front cover off. Either way, it’s all over now, and the new motor should be getting installed relatively soon.

No weird pictures of FMU employees today. Your humble narrator thinks they’re on to his nefarious plot.