ambit

I'm in the midst of tearing down the engine in my 2003 C230 Coupe. Which way does the 27mm bolt on the front of the crank turn to take it off?

Normal (counter clockwise?)
Or is it counter threaded (clockwise?)

Pics for clicks

ambit

incase anyone ever finds this thread, it is 'normal' or counter clockwise to loosen it. And it requires like 170ft/lbs of torque.

For my next question!
I am removing the cylinder head and there is one bolt remaining. Circled here:

The 'slide rail pin' that holds the driver-side chain tensioner is in the way of getting a socket on it. Looks like i need some kind of $150 116 589 20 33 00 Impact Puller for slide rail bearing bolt, basic unit. http://www.samstagsales.com/SirTool/...ompleteset.jpg

Which I'm guessing I can just use something to thread into the slide rail and pull it out the front?

Utahkompressor

I don't have the answers....but thanks for posting pictures!

Now I know what's inside M271.

ambit

There are lots more pics if anyone is interested. We tore the engine down to the cylinder head and took pics along the way.
We got that ''slide rail pin" out with $2.63 worth of washers and a zinc bolt. F that $150 tool
Here's what it looked like when we started tonight:

phate

I'll bite. What are you doing this for?

ambit

Kind of a long story, quick summary:
Had an issue one morning where the car wouldn't start. When it finally did it sounded like hell. Had it towed to MB and they said the timing chain jumped a tooth and there was bent valves and other damage.
Car is out of warranty and I wasn't paying MB to replace the whole engine so I tore it down myself.
And to my suprise last night I didn't see any damage to the valves after getting the head off. So I'm heading to MB this afternoon with the cylinder head to see what they say.

phate

Sorry to hear that. How many miles are on that engine? There's no nicks on the pistons so valves weren't hitting. I probably wouldn't have taken that head to MB. I would much rather take it to a respectable machine shop and have them take a look.

Has anyone played with the cam timing to see if there is power to be had?

ambit

~89k mi on it when it died.
I'm on a first name basis with the one tech there (lol) so I stopped in today and he did some quick checks.
The intake valves do not hold a seal/pressure. I watched the solvent he checked it with leak right out the intake ports but the exaust were ok.
I'm currently pulling the valves out to replace them.

phate

Interesting. Are you getting new seats put in or just having them reground?

ambit

intake valves are out:

I think we'll just be regrinding the valve seats once they come in.
Time for a hefty shopping bill from MB
$123 for timing chain
8 x $18 for valves
$40 cylinder head gasket
$43 for a new chain tensioner
a goddamn $72 bolt that I broke off the front of the cam

and like 15 other little gaskets/seals.

GEDaggett

How did this job finish up for you?

Also do you recall what size bolt you used to remove the chain guide sleve?

C230 Sport Coup

Wow,thats quite impressive,
I've had head off a toyota 20R single cam, FIAT 1500CC SOHC, and
a Honda 550 but I think I'd be quite lost with a dual cam.
How did you go about figuring out how to tear it down?
Did you use alldata or the MB DVD? Or WHAT?
How the heck did you figure it out?

What tricks for lining up the chain once it's fixed?

ambit

Added many pics of the teardown: https://mbworld.org/forums/members/a...-teardown.html

Heh, well ran into some issues.
The person I was supposed to be getting the parts from fell through after about 3 weeks of waiting on him.
So far it has cost me:
timing chain $200
intake valves $33 x 8
Head gasket $50
stretch bolts for cylinder head $10 x 10

and I'm not done yet

The weather here hasn't been co-operating but I took the cylinder head to a shop and they reseated the intake valves and said the new ones look good. But some of the exaust valves weren't holding a vacuum seal so they were going to check them. Shoud have that back by the end of the week


GEDaggett - I'm not sure what you mean, chain guide sleeve? The $2.63 'tool' we created was a 2" bolt threaded just like all the other ones we've pulled from the engine so far with about 1 1/2" of washers on it. There was a little black plastic 'cap/plug' on the front of the timing chain cover that popped out. Pushed the bolt through and threaded it into the post that secured that orange timing guide. As you tighted the bolt it pulled the post from the engine block. I can take a pic the next time I'm over at the garage (if we're talking about the same thing)
[edit] Like this:


C230 Sport Coup - My dad taught me most of this on smaller motors so my friend and I just kinda jumped right into this. I did pick up subscription to alldatadiy (or whoever is advertising on this forum) but it wasn't terribly useful. I ordered the MB service DVD which has more info but kinda
vague on the teardown procedures.
Sooooo it has really mostly been:
These bolts hold that piece in.
We need it out of the way.
Take pics, remove them

Timing chain cover is off:

Going to clean it up and start the rebuild this week I hope.
Once the cylinder head is back and the cams are ready it'll just be a matter of setting everything to Top Dead Center and securing the master link on the chain.

Oxygen

Great information and awesome that you decided to do this yourself, I would have done the same exact thing.

I saw the pictures in your gallery and then found this thread.

Best of luck to you and looking for more updates and pictures.

bumpnzx3

While the head is already off and you are *****-deep in a repair job- why not do a little porting on the head

Nicely done though. Although you've got a lot of money in it- just think how much MB would have wanted for all the work.

ambit

Rebuild has started!
New timing chain installed and timing chain cover re-attached.



bumpnzx3 - Heh, I'll be surprised if it ever runs again. Let alone any kind of tuning. This one is an automatic so I'm not sure its even worth keeping as a beater.
MB was going to pull the whole engine and replace it to the tune of ~$6,000. They said by the time you include labor for this kind of rebuild it wasn't worth doing at the shop.

Cylinder head shop said they reseated the exaust valves and everything is ok. I have some valve stem seals (A 612 050 00 58) to take over and they'll finish it up.
If I get it back tomorrow we'll do most of the rebuild this weekend!
Thanks for the questions/support!

C230 Sport Coup

I'll be very interested in whats required to make everything line up.
I jumped into a repair on a 3.2L water pump, what a mess.
I ended up needing a special tool,
and found a DIY procedure online, so the day was saved.
But jumping in blind, isn't necessarily a great idea.

BUT, that said, looks like things are progressing nicely.
I wonder if you could've just lapped the valves instead of replacing them...

Why exactly did all this happen in the 1st place???
Did the dealer say WHY?

samaritrey

any updates

ambit

Yes! More updates. Added more rebuild pics.
https://mbworld.org/forums/members/a...-teardown.html

I got the cylinder head back. We started the rebuild and promptly broke a cylinder head bolt because I misread 90Ft/lbs instead of 90 N/m.
So we had to take the head back off. In the process of doing that I got a stud for the exhaust manifold stuck in the head too.
We backed the broken head bolt out and drilled the exhaust stud.





Reattached the head, put the cams back in and once again misread a torque spec, causing one of the 20 bolts that hold the cams down to break.


BUT!
We got the cams lined up and chain reattached:


Engine turns over manually just fine now.
Needs some oil, coolant, cam cover and air box.
We plan on finishing up tomorrow night if all goes well!

samaritrey

lol i love the pics of you standing in the engine bay with a drill. lol good luck hopefully you will be very soon

ambit

hehehe, that's not me. That's my friend that caused most of the disasters so far
We got everything put together tonight and the car has a completely dead battery. It's been sitting for almost 3 months to the day.
I could get it to try and start for about 1/2 a second then juice runs out and everything resets. Good news is it does turn the engine!
So we are charging it overnight, hopefully tomorrow night there'll be another attempt!

darkcirc

There, fixed that for you.

Off to pee in your cabin filter. Again.

samaritrey

lol well that is a nice friend to help you fix your car. Mine are all too scared to even help me with mine.

ambit

IT LIVES!
Finished putting it all back together.
Had an issue with the alternator not spinning correctly, fixed that and it FIRED RIGHT UP.
Had a whole bunch of smoke come out the first couple starts and a 'Check Engine'


The car out for its first drive in 3 months:

The check engine actually went off after a couple more restarts.

Some spare parts... lol.


I'm taking it in to MB this week to show some of the tech's that have seen the whole project progressing. My Service Advisor wants to see it running again too.

Ended up costing me ~$2,000 for the work including:
~$1,300 in MB parts
~$300 misc tools and fluids
~$300 for vavle job

C230 Sport Coup

Gawd, I just spent I don't know how long trying to find this thread!
Which way does the bolt turn? Geez, sounds like a newb thread instead of likely the only
person to successfully tear their engine down and put it back together.

Can you provide some detail on how you got the timing set up with the cams and all?
Any special tools required? Excellent job. Too bad about the bolts getting broken.
I cross theaded a manifold bolt (supersprint replaces 4 studs with bolts for unknown reasons) luckily I was able to rethead it with a tap and get a new bolt of the correct hardness from fastenal and it held, wasn't totally f'd. I had to pay a restocking fee, since they normally only sell boxes of 100 bolts, ha, but hell, it was totally worth it, and it still was < $10 for the 4 correct bolts.

UPDATE: I just checked out all your pics...wow, lots of broken bolts! Whats up with that?
Did you soak the head bolts in oil before torquing them?
Some engines have what people call stretchy bolts, you're supposed to replace them so I was told on another vehicle...I didn't believe it and didn't do it, but the bolts didn't break!