Hijet 1.3 TWIN CAM... (errm, I mean, broken camshaft)

Hello all,

Bought a 1998 (reg'd in Jan 99) 1.3 16v EFI Hijet project for the grand sum of £200 a week or so ago. 40k miles, full service history, minimal rust, two original keys... But she's a non-runner (I'll get to that).

She was signwritten for a company when I bought her, so I've smudged this on the pictures...



Nice, clean bodywork! Seats aren't torn to shreds either! Bargain!

I put a battery in and turned her over. Nice compression, but upon inspection (rocker cover was already off, along with HT leads) there were no sparks and strangely half the valves weren't moving. The camshaft was snapped in two!!



The journal caps which housed the camshaft were all okay, except number 3, where the cam had snapped:



The wear on the cam had wrecked the journal in the head too:



Miraculously the valves hadn't smashed themselves into the pistons, I verified this upon taking off the head. The pistons, although a little carbon-coated, look remarkably good, as do the bores. I'm going to gently clean the carbon-crust off the pistons, and scrape the remainder of head gasket material off the block.



I can only imagine this little van was overheating, possibly due to a stuck thermostat, air locks somewhere in the system, or simply a lack of oil changing. Or a combination of these things. I'm going to clean out the block as best I can, and make sure oil and coolant are flowing as they should around the engine.

HighlyJetted has sent me a new head and thermostat housing for a very reasonable price , they're at the UPS depot in Norwich now (unfortunately closed at weekends), so I should have these on Monday. I've also got a new thermostat, two new oil filters (for flushing every last bit of crap out of the engine) and a nice new head gasket. In the mean time (I haven't really done much this week on the van) I've been using mum's hairdryer (there is a proper heat gun about somewhere...) to heat up the signwriting and peel off the letters. Fortunately the paint hasn't faded much, so a little t-cut and turtlewax has got the affected sections looking rather nice and shiny!



Thought I'd start a topic for my little van, as I'm imagining I'm going to be doing a fair bit of work on her. Will hopefully have a running van soon-ish if all goes to plan this coming week. I'll keep this updated as and when I get on with stuff.

Special thanks to HighlyJetted for advice and parts, I'll be gentle with the new head and won't let the cam seize!

Cheers guys

Looks pretty tidy, be worth doing I reckon. Needs alloys tho

Needs a running engine first! I have a set of minilights (pretty sure they're not the actual 'minilite' wheels) I am hoping to fit one day. Need some hub adapter / spacer things. Minilights are 4x4" (101.6). Shame about the damn hub sizes on Hijets.

I would skim that head too before I put it on personally, thermal stress is a funny old thing in alloy heads!

Plus make sure you clean the oil feed lines from the filter and the pickup gauze

Oh and do the valve clearances while the head is off to the cold measurements in the manual as its Apollo much easier than doing it once fitted, and you'd be amazed how smoothly they actually run.

Cheers HJ, I'll assess the situation tomorrow when the parts arrive. I think I probably will give it a little skim, I don't want to be tearing the engine apart every 5000 miles or so, so best to do it right first time. I don't get to use my feeler gauges nearly often enough, so I'll take my time on the clearances and get them as good as I possibly can. I have to admit, I'm getting quite excited about this little van, never driven a Hijet before

Looking at your cam shaft, yours is the stage after this one that I took apart.....

https://hijet.forumotion.com/t1864-collisions

To ensure I sell a decent quality product to someone, I strip the head down, inspect all the journals and the cam, and the wear.

Looking at that mess, you HAVE to take the sump off and clean it out, clean out the oil pickup, and blow though the oil feed lines.

Otherwise you'll shag that new head.

Like the guy I sold one too a while back..... 2 running hours later snapped another cam shaft!

Okay, cheers, so I think my plan is as follows -

Drain the oil out
Remove the filter
Remove the sump
Clean the crap out of the sump with a brush and petrol
Using a little paint sprayer compressor thing (don't have a proper compressor) spray thin oil and air from the top of the block down through all the oil feed lines (so any crap comes out the bottom)
Ensure the oil pickup is nice and clean
Clean off the crankshaft with some thin oil
Refit the sump
Fit the new oil filter
Fit the head
Fill with oil
Fit the thermostat and housing
Refill the coolant
Run it for a short while (very cautiously)
Change the oil and filter once again

Anything else recommended? I will pressure test the cooling system as well to find any leaks. Hopefully (fingers crossed) this should result in a nicely running engine (no more oil-starved camshafts!)

Cheers

Just been reading through the manual again, I now see what you mean by the oil strainer and pickup pipe. Am I right in thinking I need to take the flywheel and the plate underneath it off (and whatever else needs to come off) before I can take off the sump?

You can get the access cover off the bottom of the sump. Loads of 10mm bolts.

I have not tried to clean out the oil pickup in situe via this cover!!

But I have cleaned out my sump on oil change via the access plate on the bottom of the sump.

Taking the whole sump pan off may be doable, but I do not know as only done it to engines on the bench.

Ah okay, shame my van's not at home, I will have a proper look underneath it tomorrow. Looking at the EM section of the manual it seems to involve removing the flywheel etc etc, but in the LU section it seems as though the oil pan comes off on it's own. I think maybe the oil pan can come off without removing anything else, but if I wanted to remove the oil pump I'd need to get the flywheel etc off first. I think the oil pump is fine, I imagine that pickup pipe and gauze is full of crap though. I haven't seen this access plate, not sure which bit you mean? Although granted I haven't had a proper look under the van! I'll see how I get on tomorrow. Cheers HJ

You will see it!

Again I look at your photo of the snapped cam shaft....

When ever something like that breaks like that sheer cut that happened.

I wonder how much force does/did it take to make that happen!

Engines are truly amazing how they work so reliably.

Think about the forces that the rods are under on the fire stroke!!

It still amazes me. Here's another one of the cam in higher resolution:



You can see from the centre to about 1/2 of the radius is actually different to the outer part of the cam. The outer 1/2 of the radius must have got so hot that it physically changed the structure of the metal. That is some serious oil starvation. The actual wear before it sheared is fairly small, it seems it was just friction causing enormous amounts of heat to build up. At that heat I guess any tempering processes to harden the cam during manufacturing were lost, causing a massive massive failure! Quite a novel souvenir though!

Also another one showing the heat build up in the rockers. It had got so hot that the rockers had basically started to weld themselves to the shafts, and were near on impossible to move!

There was just no oil up there at all it would seem.


This is the point where an engine becomes a lathe/miller  

Well, after a busy couple of days...

I have a running Hijet! Started first time once it was all back together (and the coil packs were plugged in the right way round). Hilarious little thing to drive. Doing the valve clearances so meticulously really payed off, it is SO smooth!

The oil that was in there originally was somewhere between marmite and treacle. It was so old and rank that it had split into about 3 different layers and consistencies, with a TON of sludge in the sump pan. Washed the block, oil pickup and sump out with petrol and compressed air several times before filling with the new oil.

Got a bit more to do before MOT-ing it, (new wiper blades, possibly back brake lines) but it runs and drives!! Hooray!

Cheers guys

Good job Sir! Do you still feel £200 was a bargain?

  Nice to see one getting fixed

Well done geeza! Did u take a pic of your prepped block face? I'm curious how it cleaned up.
Day 3 & I'm still waiting for my head to be ready, so maybe a sump clean could keep me busy, just a gasket req'd I guess... Was it easy off & on?

You don't need a sump gasket, use some instant gasket type product.

Well done on getting it back together NC, make sure you keep an eye on your water for a bit.

 good job feels right smart when it all goes to plan  

Cheers everyone! I will keep this updated as the project moves along towards MOT-ing and actually taking it for a proper drive. Unless I drive around in circles for hours and hours on end I don't think I've got enough space to see if she overheats or not! The temp gauge just moved off the little black stop thing today, after a few cautious minutes of driving. Fingers crossed everything is okay!

I'm going to change the oil and filter again tomorrow (or whenever I next run it), just to flush any last bits of crap out of the engine. Treat it to some nice fully synthetic oil. The oil in there now hasn't gone black, so I think the flush cleared it out pretty well.

PFM - I do feel it was a bargain, the total spent is waaay less than some other running ones I've seen, plus I love this sort of thing. It was not an easy job by any stretch of the imagination, anyone who says it is is telling porkies! (Unless you've got experience with Hijets, and know about the various little quirks). Plus I am enjoying the satisfaction of reviving a non-runner

Logi - Now I can start thinking about fitting those alloy wheels

raydreadz - I didn't take a picture of the block face, I meant to take loads of pictures but once you're on a roll with stuff it's difficult to remember! I used a sponge scourer to remove the main bulk of the gunk from the block face and opted for a stanley blade held at a really shallow angle to clear the rest of it. The tricky part is masking off all the oil and water channels so no gasket gets in there, for that some sheets of kitchen roll folded then gently pushed in with a screwdriver did the trick nicely. The sump was a NIGHTMARE. There's 14 bolts and 2 nuts to undo, and the gasket cement they use to bond it on makes it a bit of a nightmare job... Good luck on that, if your van is off the ground it would make it a lot easier (mine wasn't )

HighlyJetted - Cannot thank you enough for getting those parts to me so quickly and so nicely packaged . No idea what I'd have done without this forum and the knowledge and experience people, especially you, have put into it. The workshop manuals are the difference between torquing things up properly, and murdering bolts on and damaging stuff. I'll be draining the coolant and replacing it as I just used water for testing purposes today. I need a radiator cap too, I only got one with the van, so the rad is uncapped currently. It looked like a little fire engine when it braked hard, water shooting out the top of the radiator!

rich the mechanic - It certainly does! I'm normally very good at disassembling stuff, scratching my head and leaving it in 'to do' piles, which never seem to get done. But this actually went back together, for which I am very very happy

well done mate, take my hat of to you

nc30 wrote:I'll be draining the coolant and replacing it as I just used water for testing purposes today. I need a radiator cap too, I only got one with the van, so the rad is uncapped currently.

I would advise against running it at all without it properly filled with coolant (which cannot be done without the front cap on due to the heater matrix bleed pipe that goes to the front radiator cap barb). Fill it properly - I fully recommend the pressurized fill method using some form of header tank on the roof of the van, this way you can get rid of 99% of the air in the system first time.

By filling the system properly first time, you can ensure the idle control valve gets bled properly, the heater matrix bled properly, the thermostat area/water pump bled properly, the cylinder head bled better and you can also have a better idea of the success of your repair due to the amount of water level change you will get in the factory fitted header tank over the first few warm up cool down cycles.

Even with the pressurized bleed method,I find I lose around 2cm of water out of the header tank after a couple of warm down heat up cycles, then it stays constant if the system has been successfully fixed. I draw a line on the water lever when cool, or use the MAX line as my filling level.

If you don't bleed it properly, expect to have to refill the header tank after it has cooled down for a fair few heat cycles. Thus you do not know if you are losing water, or just bleeding out the air.

This is why I do the pressure bleed/fill method when I put coolant in them.

Also, I always replace the caps, unless they look almost new. And I clean up the seat they fit into. I have a rotary wire brush the size of a 10p coin that I put in my drill, and bash out all the crud in the cap fitting hole, giving the new cap a fighting chance of a seal.

When you warm it up, one of the first tests is to check if the coolant hoses are nice and firm, if they are flaccid, you are in for trouble because either A) the system is not holding pressure due to a leak or poor cap etc - or B) you have so much air in there that the expanding water volume from heat is not enough to overcome the "sponginess" of the air. The trouble will occur as the water is allowed to boil - which causes an increase in pressure/volume, which causes a purge of water to the header tank, which means the coolant system won't work - and thus you go round in circles  

I'm on power rant mode it would seem!!!

HJ, I appreciate the power rant, it's all good. The engine has only run for about 60 secs at a time (not even warm!), I'm aware of the lacking coolant situation and that is the next stage of fixing this little van. All that was done today was freeing up the stuck clutch and dawdling about a little bit checking stuff. I did see a youtube video of somebody describing bleeding the coolant system on a 1.3 LPG... I can't imagine who that was !! Very helpful stuff by the way. My (one) radiator cap is nice and clean, little bit of corrosion on the top of the cap (it came from the rad, the filler cap under passenger seat was missing) but it works fine and the rubbers are lovely and clean, as are the fitting holes.

As I say, all the vital fluids are being replaced next, and a new rad cap installed ready for new coolant and bleeding. The only reason today for starting it was to check it actually works (considering the state it was in when I bought it)! It's certainly not going to be doing any miles without the proper coolant system in place. Don't want to be taking the head off again any time soon!!!!!!

Still got a fair bit to do. Put the water pump pulley on before the top cam belt cover (oops), so need to take that off and install the cover. Again, engine was simply tested today to make sure it ran. Will be pressure testing the cooling system once I get a new rad cap.

Would avoid fully synth on an old engine, better off sticking with semi.

Reckon that's clean enough? sorry to ask so many questions, only I have no reference as it's my 1st. Since this photo I've given it a light rub with 600 grit wet & dry on a sanding block but it is still a bit stained from the old gasket.

I think your being a bit OCD!!!!

(That looks better than perfect pal)

I'm glad I didn't take a pic of my block now!! That is amazingly clean! Awesome job. Mine looked nowhere near that nice!