F7R 710 engine rebuild

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Well, I bought this on ebay a few months back and itâ€™s been sitting in my â€˜workshopâ€™ ever since, waiting for me to decide what to do with it. It is a 2.0 16v engine, the same as Stanâ€™s, from a phase 1 megane coupe. Basically itâ€™s the same as the Williams Clio engine, but with a few small improvements. Nobody wants to read all that crap yet again though so I wonâ€™t regurgitate it here. The guy I bought it off had been using it in his clio for amateur rallying, running on carbs so itâ€™s probably had a hard life. He also gave me a bunch of other parts such as ECUs, an oil cooler and rad, hoses, manifolds etc.

It came without most of the ancillaries and bracketry etc. and what it did come with was mostly megane stuff. I have a spare 1.8 F7P engine from a 19 that I stripped though so I can just pinch whatever bits I need from that.

Originally I was going to slap it straight in my blue phase 2, but now that I have the black phase 1 to restore, itâ€™s obvious that I have to rebuild it and put it in that when itâ€™s ready.

Black phase 1 project: http://www.retro-renault.com/viewtopic.php?t=5959

The plan is to strip it totally, renew all the bearings, rings, seals, gaskets, pumps and so on, paint the block up nice, and clean all other components so that it will basically be a nice fresh new engine. I will also do a spot of headwork on it, basically just cleaning up the ports and rounding off corners etc. to release a few more ponies. Iâ€™m not going to start buying expensive performance parts and so on, just do the things that I can do â€˜for freeâ€™. I did see a DCOE manifold that could be used for throttle bodies on ebay a while back that went for Â£50 or so and I didnâ€™t bid and have been kicking myself ever since.

So at the weekend I began the strip down.

Plugs outâ€¦ Triple electrode jobs â€“ yuk! Iâ€™ll get some nice NGK or Bosch singles for it when it goes back together.

Cam cover (plastic!) off, looks nice and clean in there which is a good sign!

Head bolts out and head lifted onto the bench.

It was at this point that I took a chunk out of my thumb. With the engine free standing on the floor, cracking off the headbolts proved â€˜troublesomeâ€™. With 3ft breaker bar in hand, I braced the engine against the leg of the bench with my foot. One of the bolts was quite stubborn and when it finally cracked free, I was slightly off balance and scraped my thumb along the sharp edge of the cam housing Shocked

No pics of the thumb sadly, I was busy trying to stop it bleeding. Still, like the macho man that I am, so as not to be beaten I lifted the head off anyway and proceeded to remove the cam housings and cams.

A shot of the bottom end with the head off. I could make out some small â€˜dinksâ€™ in the piston crowns where some of the valves are meant to clear, so this engine has probably suffered a cambelt failure at some point in its past. Any valves that were damaged have obviously been replaced though so no bother to me.

Cams out. These are actually slightly milder than the cams in the standard 1.8 engine, so I think I will use the cams from my spare 1.8 when I put this back together. Again, a few more BHP for free. Every little helps!

You can spot a few drops of my blood in these pics... That's dedication! Laughing

All looks good so far. Next time, once I get my own valve spring compressor, valve removal!

I also need to buy an engine stand to get the bottom end off the floor and start to strip that down. It still has a sump full of oil so thatâ€™s going to be fun.

Total spent so far: Â£205

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Picked up a brand new genuine Renault water pump on ebay for Â£11, even came with a new pulley! Bargain!

Also got a brand new bottom coolant hose. This hose is actually the only one that I donâ€™t have in blue silicon. Cost Â£6...ebay again

Hopefully a few more of the bits I need will crop up cheap in coming weeks and months!

Total spent so far: Â£222

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Got busy today and whipped all the valves out and bagged up all the tappets, springs, collets etc. Yes, the bags are numbered!

All done! Ready to come into work with me so I can spend my lunch breaks down on the shop floor using the die grinders etc. on it.

Here's a shot down one of the inlet ports. You can see the machining where they just jam a cutter down from the chamber side to meet up with the cast port. Because of mass production, it's not blended and there's a nasty step... not good for gas flow! You can also see the very rough cast surface of the port walls - again, not ideal for gas flow. So I can make a nice improvement here.

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

I've been getting busy on the head over the last week, doing half an hour during lunch break every other day or so...

I've roughed out all the inlet ports and gone all the way down to the valve seats on two of them. I'm not removing much material for a couple of reasons:

1. The advantage of the megane F7R head is that while the valves are slightly bigger than the F7P, the ports are a fair bit smaller, so chonking off material and opening them out would intuitively seem counter-productive.

2. I don't really know what I'm doing so if I got carried away I'd probably just f**k it right up.

So all I'm concentrating on really is smoothing out all the machining steps and casting flaws and producing a favourable surface texture on the port walls. This in itself should yield a good chunk of the potentially achievable gain (i hope).

Once I've got all the ports roughed out and exactly the same, I'll start with the sanding drum jobbys that JB told me about to get the surface finish I want.

It's a long laborious job, but one that so far I've found quite satisfying.

Tried to get pictures, but couldn't get them to show anything really.

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Been continuing with grinding the head slowly but surely... quite pleased with the way it's coming along now. Need to buy some of those sanding drum jobbies to finish it off.

Anyway, I had a day off the other day so I decided to get busy with the bottom end...

mounted on the engine stand and drained of oil

Whipped the water pump off, some nice congealed orangey crap in there, no bother, I'll clean it all out.

Flipped it over and took the sump off

Removed the oil pump to reveal the internals... all looks nice and clean so that's good!

Whipped the big ends off

And removed all the pistons/rods

All the pistons look in very nice nick... very clean, so again, that's good!
I want to balance the pistons and conrods up and remove all the casting flash... that will have to wait.

So, proceeded to remove the main bearing caps too

And lifted the crank out

All the journals look lovely and shiny with no hint of scoring so that's nice. I want to get this dynamically balanced, but I'm not sure how much of a benefit it will be, as I think the megane crank is balanced pretty well from the factory. Obviously I don't have the facilities to do that myself and I don't want to spunk money on things like that if it's not going to be that beneficial... decisions Rolling Eyes

then I just went about removing everything else so it's just the bare block

Bores all look good, I'll take it to have the cylinders rehoned, or I could do it myself with a glaze breaker...haven't decided yet. Then I'll clean it up, paint it up pretty on the outside and think about putting it all back together again.

And as usual, that will mean more stuff to buy... piston rings, main shells, big end shells, gaskets, seals etc. etc. the list goes on and on... Â£Â£Â£ <sigh>

Oh well, I'll measure the crank journals up to make sure they're nice and round and so I can get the right size shells...

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Measured all the journals earlier...

mains:

big ends:

As I mentioned earlier, all the journals are lovely and shiny. They measured as follows:

Mains

54.79mm throughout, both axes

Big ends

47.95mm throughout, both axes

A quick look on Dialogies says that's standard non-reground size so I need 54.8mm and 48mm shells for mains and big ends respectively... will get them ordered this week probably.

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Just back from the rebore place. I had the bores re-honed ready to receive new piston rings.

As an added bonus, when I went to pick it up, the guys had put it through their parts washer, so it's really nice and clean now which means I can get on and paint it this weekend without loads of scrubbing first! Yay!

Total spent so far: Â£245

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Got busy on the head again this morning...

Been using the sanding drums to bring the port walls up to the right texture. Getting very very close to being finished now. The other good thing about putting the finish on is that it makes it easier to judge the shape by feel, so it's easy to tell where a bit more material needs to come off to make everything the same/symmetrical. I need to go back and tickle it a bit more in a few places with the carbide bits and remove a bit more material.

A few pics then:

Bit more work needed to finish in the exhaust ports... tricky to get to that bit.

Valve guides still need tidying/deburring

Tools I've been using:

Once I'm happy with it, it's going for a very very light skim and acid cleaning to make it look new Smile

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Well I'm on a roll today...

Made myself useful this afternoon as well and painted up the block in Hammerite smooth blue.

Colour looks a bit cack in this pic, it's a bit darker in reality. Looks nice.

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Quick before and after comparison now the paint is well and truly dry and the masking is off:

Before:
[img:800:600:05d336a3a2]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/24.03/blockstand800.JPG[/img:05d336a3a2]

After:
[img:800:600:05d336a3a2]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/24.03/blueblock800.JPG[/img:05d336a3a2]

Bit of an improvement eh!

I need the flywheel from the black 19 for this engine as I will be using the original 19 management but the toothwheel pattern on the megane flywheel is different (for use with the megane management). The history for the car says it had a brand new flywheel fairly recently too, so that's nice Smile

I decided I do want to get it dynamically balanced so I need to send off the crank, flywheel, crank pulley, clutch basket and all associated bolts, then reassembly can occur when it all comes back.

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Few things to report now...

Crank has been sent off with all associated bits and bobs for lightening and balancing.... should get that back off stan on May 28th at the French Car Show..

Head is in for a skim. When I took it in the guy offered me 3 angle valve seats for Â£3.50 each. I said I'd think about it. After a bit of deliberation I went back with a couple of valves and told him to go ahead with it Smile

Other than that, been cleaning a few bits up...

Valves, all cleaned up. Stuck them in a lathe and used finer and finer grades of emery cloth on them, finishing with scotchbrite:

[img:800:600:6b7e284d8d]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/13.05/cleanvalves.JPG[/img:6b7e284d8d]

Pistons, crap picture but I cleaned all the carbon off them. This was just scotchbrite and lots of elbow grease.

[img:800:600:6b7e284d8d]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/13.05/piston.JPG[/img:6b7e284d8d]

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Picked the head up today, 3 angle seats cut and face skimmed.

4 thou was removed from the face, or 0.1mm in new money. Just enough to get a nice surface.

[img:450:600:1ce0e906db]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/22.05/head1.JPG[/img:1ce0e906db]

[img:450:600:1ce0e906db]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/22.05/head2.JPG[/img:1ce0e906db]

Many a fun hour of valve grinding will now ensue during my lunch breaks.... Smile

Total spent so far: Â£350

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Right, got my crank back from Craig at www.ap-developments.com the other day, he is highly recommended.

Been dynamically balanced and the flywheel slightly lightened.

The whole lot was balanced as an assembly including the clutch cover which is attached but not visible in the pictures. All is marked so that when I take it apart to assemble the engine, I can put it all back together in exactly the same orientation to keep the balance.

[img:450:600:1c9acda665]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/27.08/crank.JPG[/img:1c9acda665]

Here's 2 closeup shots to show the actual grinding where material was removed to balance. A fair chunk has gone in some places!

[img:800:600:1c9acda665]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/27.08/ground.JPG[/img:1c9acda665]

[img:800:600:1c9acda665]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/27.08/ground2.JPG[/img:1c9acda665]

So, now just need gaskets and piston rings and the bottom end can go back together soon(ish)

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

Been grit blasting things at work recently. Unfortunately I'm only allowed to use it on aluminium, and it has to be clean and degreased first. That does however allow me to do all the bracketry, end plates, inlet manifold etc...

[img:800:600:f4fc71c691]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/30.08/inlet.JPG[/img:f4fc71c691]

[img:800:600:f4fc71c691]http://www.renault-turbo.com/neal/F7R/30.08/sealhousings.JPG[/img:f4fc71c691]

Check out the factory fresh look! Didn't take long either, so I'll be gathering up all the aluminium engine bits and doing the lot. If I can figure out a way of protecting the sealing faces and blocking off the galleries on the cylinder head, I'll be giving that the once over too...