The past 5 weeks have been full of pleasure and pain.
The coilovers went in with not much trouble.
Only issue being that the front two wheels were scrubbing the housings. But that was easily sorted by loosening off the strut bolts and pulling the wheels out slightly. They now have around 2 to 3mm spacing between the wheels and the coilover housing.
The ride height worked out perfect and is sitting around stock. She now soaks up bumps in the roads nicely better than stock in my opinion (Clicks set to: 10 in the front and 16 in the rear). The ride so far isnt as harsh as everyone has made it out to be. But it seems that its still getting stiffer with each drive so it may get worse.
Whilst I had the front bumper off I fixed the passenger side mounting point as it broke some years ago through towing. Nothing like a little bit of Araldite to solve all problems....and a bit of mesh. I also did a bit of rust prevention on front whilst I was at it and added a new lick of paint to it also.
As for the red one. Ive taken the engine out to assess the damage.
The timing belt was holding in there still to my surprise.
The tensioner had let loose like I thought. But there was a lot more than met the eye. Turns out that the correct tensioner bearing assembly was not put back on the engine when rebuilt. It was -0.5mm out compared to stock and with an incorrect washer behind it meant that it was out another -0.5mm. Those coupled with the bearing itself having 1mm of movement in it bringing the total to 2mm out. It now makes sense why the belt kept walking and wearing as a result.
I removed everything that was incorrect and replace it with all stock items and put heli-coils in to solve the stripped threads on the tensioner itself. Put everything back together, set the timing and put the engine back in the car.
I started the engine; everything was going well and it was idling great. Then tragedy struck! The engine dumped all of its engine oil onto the ground. My head sunk straight into my hands and Im thinking to myself why do I deserve this. It seemed that now the oil pump had given up the ghost. So the engine came back out and the T-belt off again. Oil pump came off and it appears that the pump itself is fine except that it was never replaced for a new one. Instead the engine rebuilders only put in a new bearing. Which is fine except the bearing has 2mm of movement in it....
Nonetheless it was evident the main seal is shot and now new one is required.
Whilst this engine has been nothing but bad luck to me. The negligence of the engine rebuilders truly irks me, especially with how much I paid for it to be done. I wont continue on with the rant but I am dumbfounded by the shortcuts taken in the rebuild which don't seem any easier than using the correct parts.
The saga will continue....