Story of my nearly complete engine rebuild. Lots of pics.
02-05-2019, 03:33 AM
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Story of my nearly complete engine rebuild. Lots of pics.
A little background. I am a self taught decently knowledgeable in auto repair but have only been working on vechicles for the past year and half. I have a friend that inhereted his late dads tools and shop, his dad was a 18wheeler specialized mechanic his whole life, and shop is even on family property which is like 40 acres. This is where I did the repair. Another friend that is machinist and builds engines for custom speed boats. And a friend that is a used car dealer and will get me commercial pricing on all parts at AutoZone or O'rillys, for those who don't know is usually 30-60% off and you can negotiate price to an extent. I have worked on vehicles with my friends and done alot of work on my previous truck to get it right so that was my experience and my resources.
I recently got myself in a position where I was out a vehicle and low on money but had to figure out a ride. To be honest I had my trucks rear-end go out and then 2 days after that go to jail on a probation violation where I had to sit for 22 days and lost the truck in turn. I get out Christmas eve. Christmas is Tuesday and immediately start looking for rides. I quickly realize that the only way I am going to get something I can afford and enjoy driving is I am going to have to pull one out of my ass. By Friday with the help of my mom track down a 2006 Cobalt SS in an ad that say the car was making alot of noise, which then he shut it down and had it towed pep boys. Their mechanic told him the timing chain tensioner was jammed and that the ride was not to be cranked until it was fixed. Obviously concerned that the engine had skipped time and sound was likely heads and valves hitting inside the 2.0 ecotech interference engine. None of this was in the ad except for the timing chain tensioner. The ad continued that the ride had been sitting for 18 months and needed it moved. This was on FB by the way. My response is 17 mins after he posted this. I respond to his ad and offer him 900$ cash in hand, send him a pic of the money and say I will have it gone tomorrow, I was actually on my way back from test driving a piece at that time and had my friend with the shop at his house driving me. He accepts and I make it happen.
***I'm going to post pics as I go and then continue typing my story. In order. Thought some of you might like this.
The engine is a 2.0 LSJ Supercharged. And built on the EcoTech 2.0 block.
Me and my buddy hook up his trailer with an electric wench and go pick the car up.
Ok so we get it back and I start by remove air intake, then serpentine belt, the hoses, supercharger, spark plugs/coils cover, , spark, plugs and coils, fuel rod and injectors, Then crankshalf cover. My machinist friend cleaned my injectors to brand new qulity by soaking thme in some sort of oil he has at his shop that he used inside the engines he build. Specifically by soaking the parts in some sort of oil, lubricant which also seems to act a solvent. But it is definitly a lubricating mixture. Then finally I pulled the crank shaft cover and got my first look a the crankshaft and timing chain.
Next step is to remove the timing chain cover and see what happened. Also the tensioner is a bolt on the back of the engine. This was broke as said in the original ad. Jammed like hell. So what I am saying is he was able to see the tensioner and know it was timing chain without ever getting to the point we are at now, for those that dont know this stuff.
What happened is a screw that was holding the timing chain tensioner broke. When this happend the slide itself broke into pieces, allowed slack to get in the chain, The chian with slack slammed the tensioner and broke. And allowed the chain to skip teeth, cause the enine to jump time and allow heads and valves to hit. The last pic is the part I bought to fix the fact the screw had broke off inside the block. This piece screws into a port on the outside of the block and holds the tension er slide in place. I found this online and O'Rielly's had the part shipped same day from another store.
I was working on this through the night and in the morning I realized I forgot a tensioner. So my machinist friend has the idea of looking up the engine and seeing what else that block went in. My friend is a volunteer firefighter and someone donated a Saturn to his department for them to chop up. Turns out that saturn is on the eco tech 2.0 block. And sure enough it has the same tensioner in the same location. We take it out. Go back to his shop, clean it and soak it in oil. Get it in near perfect shape and use that for my tensioner. Also at this time I came up on a 2nd engine for me to build on. I am looking into boring it out and stroking it currently.
I have no pictures of when I pulled the head and had to swap 3 valves. We ran a compression test and knew that engine compression wasnt right before we removed the crankshaft cover or pulled the head. I have no pics of this unfortunately that for some reason got backed up. I'm looking around to track these down now to upload
Andways we pieced eveytihng back together and below you can see the video of the first time I crank it up and she turns over and she sounds great. I love the car and love how I came up on it. Let me know what you guys think.
I recently got myself in a position where I was out a vehicle and low on money but had to figure out a ride. To be honest I had my trucks rear-end go out and then 2 days after that go to jail on a probation violation where I had to sit for 22 days and lost the truck in turn. I get out Christmas eve. Christmas is Tuesday and immediately start looking for rides. I quickly realize that the only way I am going to get something I can afford and enjoy driving is I am going to have to pull one out of my ass. By Friday with the help of my mom track down a 2006 Cobalt SS in an ad that say the car was making alot of noise, which then he shut it down and had it towed pep boys. Their mechanic told him the timing chain tensioner was jammed and that the ride was not to be cranked until it was fixed. Obviously concerned that the engine had skipped time and sound was likely heads and valves hitting inside the 2.0 ecotech interference engine. None of this was in the ad except for the timing chain tensioner. The ad continued that the ride had been sitting for 18 months and needed it moved. This was on FB by the way. My response is 17 mins after he posted this. I respond to his ad and offer him 900$ cash in hand, send him a pic of the money and say I will have it gone tomorrow, I was actually on my way back from test driving a piece at that time and had my friend with the shop at his house driving me. He accepts and I make it happen.
***I'm going to post pics as I go and then continue typing my story. In order. Thought some of you might like this.
The engine is a 2.0 LSJ Supercharged. And built on the EcoTech 2.0 block.
Me and my buddy hook up his trailer with an electric wench and go pick the car up.
Ok so we get it back and I start by remove air intake, then serpentine belt, the hoses, supercharger, spark plugs/coils cover, , spark, plugs and coils, fuel rod and injectors, Then crankshalf cover. My machinist friend cleaned my injectors to brand new qulity by soaking thme in some sort of oil he has at his shop that he used inside the engines he build. Specifically by soaking the parts in some sort of oil, lubricant which also seems to act a solvent. But it is definitly a lubricating mixture. Then finally I pulled the crank shaft cover and got my first look a the crankshaft and timing chain.
Next step is to remove the timing chain cover and see what happened. Also the tensioner is a bolt on the back of the engine. This was broke as said in the original ad. Jammed like hell. So what I am saying is he was able to see the tensioner and know it was timing chain without ever getting to the point we are at now, for those that dont know this stuff.
What happened is a screw that was holding the timing chain tensioner broke. When this happend the slide itself broke into pieces, allowed slack to get in the chain, The chian with slack slammed the tensioner and broke. And allowed the chain to skip teeth, cause the enine to jump time and allow heads and valves to hit. The last pic is the part I bought to fix the fact the screw had broke off inside the block. This piece screws into a port on the outside of the block and holds the tension er slide in place. I found this online and O'Rielly's had the part shipped same day from another store.
I was working on this through the night and in the morning I realized I forgot a tensioner. So my machinist friend has the idea of looking up the engine and seeing what else that block went in. My friend is a volunteer firefighter and someone donated a Saturn to his department for them to chop up. Turns out that saturn is on the eco tech 2.0 block. And sure enough it has the same tensioner in the same location. We take it out. Go back to his shop, clean it and soak it in oil. Get it in near perfect shape and use that for my tensioner. Also at this time I came up on a 2nd engine for me to build on. I am looking into boring it out and stroking it currently.
I have no pictures of when I pulled the head and had to swap 3 valves. We ran a compression test and knew that engine compression wasnt right before we removed the crankshaft cover or pulled the head. I have no pics of this unfortunately that for some reason got backed up. I'm looking around to track these down now to upload
Andways we pieced eveytihng back together and below you can see the video of the first time I crank it up and she turns over and she sounds great. I love the car and love how I came up on it. Let me know what you guys think.
02-06-2019, 08:35 AM
#2
Pretty sure that Saturn has the 2.2 L61 Engine, not the 2.0 LSJ like yours. The tensioners in these were known to have problems and have since been redesigned. I would highly recommend ditching the tensioner from the Saturn and going with a new unit.
You also can't really bore out an Ecotec block for more displacement. The sleeves are thin as it is. The difference between the 2.0 and the 2.2 Ecotec's displacement IS the stroke. The 2.2 is a stroked out 2.0. Bores are the same diameter. No way to stroke a 2.2 further that I know of. If you stroked the 2.0 you would have to run the 2.2 crank but I don't think the reluctor wheels for the crank trigger are interchangeable even on the 07+. 05-06 crank I know is different and the ECU has zero tuning support.
You also can't really bore out an Ecotec block for more displacement. The sleeves are thin as it is. The difference between the 2.0 and the 2.2 Ecotec's displacement IS the stroke. The 2.2 is a stroked out 2.0. Bores are the same diameter. No way to stroke a 2.2 further that I know of. If you stroked the 2.0 you would have to run the 2.2 crank but I don't think the reluctor wheels for the crank trigger are interchangeable even on the 07+. 05-06 crank I know is different and the ECU has zero tuning support.
02-06-2019, 03:25 PM
#3
Senior Member
I tried to use a low mileage used chain tensioner on my built 2.4, first thing it did was skip a tooth. I even forced oil primed the engine prior to startup using an external pressure pot. I then put in a new NAPA tensioner, after some hard hits the tensioner broke internally, it was making chain slap noise and the tensioner was no longer 1 unit, the snap ring hopefully found a happy place in my sump. I bought a new GM tensioner but haven't put too many runs on it.
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