Will it start or not start? That is the question! - rebuilding our Volvo MD 11D engine!


Ok, weather improved, and other things out of the way, time to continue with our engine project.

Finally, the weather was warm enough so that I could spray paint all of the engine parts you saw before on my work table. They are looking great again!

I opened the liner/piston kit, removed the pistons and all seals, and installed the liners into the cylinder block. An easy job.

Next, every piece had to be brought back onto the boat, which required multiple climbs up the ladder. My exercise for the day.

Next step was to grease and to fit the sealing rings (yellow O-ring) for each respective cylinder liner in the groove of the crankcase and to place the 2 shims (0.2mm and 0.3mm, in that order for me) on the crankcase face (this has to be done when new liners were installed, as was our case. If we would have used the old liners, we could have used the same type/number of shims previously found on the engine).

I then heated the pistons with the heat gun and pushed the piston pins into the opening of the piston roads. No problem here, as long as the pistons were heated well enough!

I lifted the cylinder block/liner unit onto the rear piston and had the unit rest on some pieces of aluminum extrusion. Clamping the piston ring device over the rings (mine is of the sidewise removable type), I placed the pistons into the liner and turned the flywheel so that the piston entered the opening. A click by click sound let me know that the rings had placed themselves into the liner. After pulling out the piston ring clamp, I lowered the cylinder/liner unit into crankcase. Done.

Same procedure for the next piston/cylinder. Both procedures took only a few minutes.

In my previous blog I had mentioned that taking the compression chamber measurements were crucial. The final compression chamber was supposed to be 0.8-0.9 mm, (0.0315-0.0354"). I had built a tool to force down the liner into the crankcase from some extrusions, but had, initially, issues with getting reliable measurements of my “A” dimensions. My electronic caliper, although suggesting that it can measure up to 1/100 of a millimeter, it did not. My repeated measures suggested fluctuations in the vicinity of 1/10 of a millimeter mm (0.0315-0.0354"), i.e. not better than the tolerances prescribed by Volvo. Not good enough!

Ok, taking a piece of aluminum extrusion, I fitted a micrometer dial and got now reliable repeat measurements. Based on these calculations for the dimensions of “A” (4.39x mm for both cylinders) and “B” (3.51x mm for the heads), I determined that I had to remove one shim (0.3mm) in order to arrive at an s=0.82x mm. That I did by lifting the cylinder/liner unit by about one inch and snipping and pulling out the corresponding shim.

Being a bit “anal” about it, I retook all the measurements, and they agreed with my calculations. Hey, we are in business!

Here is my set-up for the clamping tool and for the tool I built to take the measurements.

The rest was straight forward. Cylinder head gasket placed, push rods placed, and lifting the cylinder heads into position and hand-tightening the nuts. For the next job I needed 4 hands: mounting the water cooler and the 2 gaskets was a bit tricky, I did not manage that alone and Marleyne had to give me a hand (actually: 2).

Loosely tightening the water cooler to the heads placed those into proper position, and I could proceed with bolting/torque down the heads (11kpm), followed by tightening the water cooler to the heads. Done!

Rocker arm assembly next; I backed off the rocker arm adjustment screws by a few turns to keep them loose on the push rods. In our case, one of the push rods had to be replaced, it was bent. Next, valve clearance adjustment, decompression device adjustments. Done!

While I had prepped the parts, I had the injectors checked. One was found to need a new tip, the other one was fine. I installed the injectors and torqued them to specifications (2 kpm). To make sure everything is properly in place, I turned the engine a few times by hand via the flywheel. Looking good, nothing touching.

Putting the alternator, starter motor and cables back into place, it looks like we are all done now and ready to go!

Doesn’t Marcel look pretty again? (in real life, the old and new colours look the same, but not on the camera - go figure!)

Soooo?

Still on the hard, and no running water available yet, we “schlepped” 50l up into the boat.

Well???

After some stuttering and coughing, and dealing with a very cold engine (still no summer here!), first one cylinder fired up, then the other one, and all of sudden the engine began to settle into a rhythm and moved towards a smooth run. We have LIFT OFF!


Time to celebrate!