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150k B23e Stripdown - Opinions on work required please

bugjam1999

Member
Joined
Aug 18, 2015
Hi All,

I recently helped a friend dismantle this 1984 (I think?) lhd 244 GLT with 150k (miles), which was a pretty rare car in the UK- it was imported from Canada some time in the 90s. Unfortunately at some point it failed to start and was laid up in a garden for the next 20 years before my friend bought it, mostly for the front end. The years had? not been kind. Although the interior was in good shape as the car hadn?t leaked, there were some pretty big holes in the sills, floor, other places on the body and around the windscreen.
Still, it was methodically taken apart and nothing of value was thrown away. I took the engine from it, which is again pretty rare in the UK, a B23e with a 405 head and K cam on it. I?ve partially stripped the engine for initial inspection and wonder if you have any comments. The car had a BW55 automatic gearbox in it.




Cam ? my friend took this out before I saw the car, but it was in the head and the cam cover/oil filler cap were both in place. Quite odd to see rust on the bearing surfaces, I?m guessing a bit here but I suspect that in all the efforts to start the car, the oil in the head just got rubbed/pushed out of the bearings eventually? I assume the oil pump is pretty marginal when only being spun on the starter. How much effort was made to start the car is lost to the mists of time, so I?m guessing here. I?ll make some effort to polish the cam and see what I end up with.



Cam bearings surfaces ? light hazing on all of them. I assume, as above, that the oil pump is marginal on the starter and the hazing was caused by the rust spots on the cam?







I took the sump off and removed one main bearing cap and one big end cap.
Main bearing ? no damage to the crank surface, the bearing in the cap has lost part of the coating in one patch.






Big end bearing ? no damage to the crank surface, the bearing in the cap has lost part of the coating in one patch.





Underside of the head ? unfortunately I didn?t take a photo, but it looked good ? no corrosion at all and a solid intact fire ring around each cylinder. It?s a big coolant passage head, but I expected that.

Cylinders
A little scoring in each, the worst is number 1 cylinder with one line I can just catch my nail on and a weird discoloured patch at the top of the bore - the last three photos are of cylinder 1.








So, any comments? The plan is to throw it into a friends B21 equipped car with a mechanical fuel pump and a weber carb on it, but subject to how much work that might be, that plan might change.

Cheers
 
Looks good in there. I would think that some honing and cutting the ridge at the top should be enough. New bearings and rings with a valve job on the head and you have a refurbished engine. I've put a worse looking B cam in to a friends car and it was fine.
 
Great, thanks- I?ll speak to the local machine shop and see about having them do some of that.

Is there any benefit in skimming the head more than just to make sure it?s flat- ie to bump the compression ratio up a bit?

Also, the 405 head has injectors holes in it which we can buy bungs for from sts machining, as well as egr ports in the exhaust. Those ports are much smaller- just weld them up?

Cheers
 
The head can be cut for some more compression. But you'll want to make sure you measure the piston height for the tight squish so the engine won't be sensitive to knocking. That engine is a high compression engine so you don't want to go too much higher with the compression. The pulse air holes are perfect for pipe plugs. I tapped the holes and installed pipe plugs from Home Depot. I think they were 1/8 npt if I recall correctly.
 
Ok great- we?d measure correctly etc. Before having the machine shop cut anything more off than a skim.

Tapping and screwing in plugs is an easy solution, we can certainly do that.

Cheers
 
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