My Murple

[Adrian E]

That's kind of on the borders of some nice bits of Bristol, and there's a lot of similar old school sites like that around that area due to the victorian explosion in building in that area. I guess chosen for the proximity to where the PO lived than any basic capability? From memory he was in Redland/Whiteladies Road area?

If the PO saw that bodgery I suspect he'd be equally pee'd off that he'd spent good money on work that was done to such a poor standard. For most folks if you can't see it, you'd have no way of knowing.....

[steamship]

Originally Posted by ainarssems

Got to be a tight squeeze to get an A8 in there.

4.9 star rating on Google from 16 reviews!

[pete-p]

Originally Posted by MikkiJayne

Kersteman Garage in Bristol, which if you google Streetview it appears to literally be a lockup-garage. Ironically, I have every receipt from when the car was 1 year old, so I can accurately date all the bodges and hacks and know how much it cost to do the damage

Not heard of them fortunately. I expect they may have known the owner or been recommended, who knows. There are so many garages in Bristol to choose from.

[Ameiseuk]

Originally Posted by Ronin

Wow, how can these people even go to bed at night knowing they've messed something up this bad? I could not live with myself if I did that!

Unfortunately there are people who call themselves mechanics....I see it all too often in the glorious world of forklifts.

I've had to sack 'engineers' over the years for repairing machines in a similar manner - best one was an "engineer" doing an engine rebuild on a Nissan 2.3 diesel engine (aluminum head). He was standing in the engine bay 'torqueing' down the head with a 1/2" drive impact gun......left my employment about 2 hours later

[MikkiJayne]

Got the engine and gearbox split and the engine mounted on the stand. Grot everywhere.







Bugger The cross-threaded bolt has cracked the block. I'm not sure if this can be repaired or not at the moment. If it can be welded in place then it might be possible, but I think hypereutectic alloys have some odd requirements for welding.





If it can't be repaired then I will get another engine out of stock and put that in instead, but I'm carrying on cleaning it up at the moment





I think, if it does go back in, its going to need a bit of an Italian tune-up to clear the pipes a bit

[Ronin]

that is ridiculous! I thought my 2,8QS was bodged because parking sensor connector was held with a zip tie, this is something else!

[MikkiJayne]

Lets call him 'Mr Anti-Midas' and assume he's been everywhere and touched everything. At this point I see his work, sigh, and carry on. I'm going to point out just two more of his little touches, and then stop so the thread gets a bit more positive

I continued stripping and cleaning the engine tonight. I took the unusual step of removing the injector rail on this one because all the inlet manifold bolts are rusty and full of crud, and the injector rail is in the way of getting a tool straight on to them. These are too bad to risk a slightly off-square allen key, plus the manifold needs sandblasting and repainting anyway.



The vacuum manifold system was disconnected when the actuator pods broke rather than fixing it



Lots of schmutz round the base of the manifold, and this is after cleaning!



a little grubby inside, but I can clean this when it comes apart



I turned the engine over and took the inlet manifold off with it upside down



to make sure none of this grit and tar fell in to the inlet ports



I cleaned it upside down too, lying on the floor. You have to pay extra for this



Final Mr Anti-Midas touch - the guide pins always break when the manifold comes off, so he drilled them and held them back in place with small nails. Inventive, but sadly pointless as they are readily available and very cheap



Usual muck in the valley. I forgot to get an after pic, but its all nice and clean now



Condensation aside, the engine is remarkably clean inside for a quarter of a million miles, and the chain tensioners are barely worn. This engine was fitted when the car was on 200K and the engine was about 127K. The car now has 320K making the engine 247K ish. For most of 2020 the car lived in the workshop, and had to be moved in and out frequently, doing about 50 yard journeys. As a consequence, the engine is full of condensation and the oil is quite brown, but this will all evaporate when it gets running again and has an Italian tune-up. The colour inside and total lack of sludge indicates that at least it has had regular good-quality oil changes, and has done lots of nice long journeys.



It wipes clean and is in excellent condition under the coating of light mayo



Ew! Normally this would be indicative of very bad things, but I know exactly why it like this so I'm not concerned



Also this evening Mike and I contrived a plan to repair the broken engine mount boss, without welding it. My tig guy is a trained and coded welder and even he isn't sure what would happen welding the hypereutectic Alusil engine block, so we're not going to. Since the engine hasn't fallen out in the last 120K miles, the remaining two bolts can apparently take the dynamic loads generated in this area so rather than risk damaging an otherwise good engine by welding it we have a mechanical solution instead. Its going to involve some custom tooling, and a custom repair piece to re-form the thread. More on that as it develops

[tintin]

Now, that doesn't happen very often with me - the first one today was Apricity (to describe today's lovely weather in Manchester..), which I though was quite a good one - but Hypereutectic is even an even better one! Day off tomorrow now

[Ronin]

Home come the inlet manifold of V8's is metal, and plastic on 2,8?

[MikkiJayne]

Cost I would expect. The V6 went in cheaper models and so given the larger volumes it would have been cost effective to tool up for injection moulding, plus the port length changeover is a much simpler mechanism. That might not have been practical in plastic for the V8.