Engine Rebuild
Tired Engine! Too many miles! Time to Rebuild

After suffering low oil pressure for sometime and experiencing some crankcase pressure we had our oil analysed by Lotus. The first analyses wasn't good, with high contents of metals and water found, confirming some contamination which led Lotus to believe our engine was suffering from excessive wear. Further investigating would require the engine to be stripped, which is obviously expensive just to see what the problem is. Our oil pump was rebuilt, but didn't help with the low pressue. So before it decided to let us know, we had SWLC strip and rebuild our engine to Sport 300 spec.

On stripping our engine SLWC found a few issues. Our engine lost oil pressure over time due to general wear, although it's not possible to be entirely sure. This caused wear to the bearings and two burn out valves which could have been caused due to the tappet adjustment.not being adjusted regularly enough. On a plus note the pistons were in pretty good condition, with the liner showing wear of a 50,000 car, which ours is.

Oil Analysis
Our second oil sample still shows high levels of Lead, Copper, Silicon and Sodium. The levels are actually increasing indicating wear is still taking place, Lotus really expected the oil contaminates to have stabilised to normal. On a good note, fuel, water, and glycol contaminants were back to normal so there is a big improvement over previous results, Lotus were previously concerned about headgasket failure.

Rebuilding

This job will take a few hours. Engine removal 6 hrs, Engine Rebuild 42 hrs, Refitting Engine 6 hrs.

You will need the following parts:

You will need the following tools:

 Engine Out!

        

 Engine Strip!

     

 Engine Block Clean Up!

               

 Engine rebuild!

      

paint

   

Sealent 10 minutes. liners

   

Liners pushed in 'rubber mallet'

     

Liners clamped in

    

cleaning before bearings going in

      

bearing coated with graphogen grease, disolves once oil in

  

Crank assembled

     

pistons in (find pictures of pistons going in

   

clamps stay on right until the end to make sure sealent isn't broken while pistons are fitted.

  

permabond for sealent to oil pump

  

head goes on

 Engine Paint!

         

 Engine rebuild!

   

ancellory bolted on next

     

cams inspected and reassembled, graphgeon up

             

checking tappets with feeder gauage to get shims correct

  

Measure shim to get correct. Sometimes this needs doing 2 or 3 times to get correct

          

Manifold goes on

  

last cam housing going on

  

inlet manifold put on

    

engine mounts and back half of plenuem

   

setting belt tension

   

Engine rebuild completed

  

Sport 300 flywheel fitted after removed from engine stand, which is black in colour from treatment

 

Clutch is fitted with clutch aligning tool and gearbox mounted

 Engine and Gearbox Goes Back In!

            

2 engine mounts and 2 gearbox mount. Sits on top and bolted in. Driveshaft fitted onto splines of gearbox while 4 inch above the mounts

  

LEW's Verdict

I

This rebuild was performed by SWLC on LEW's 1992 SE

If you have any comments, feel free to e-mail LEW at admin@lotusespritworld.com