[thomp1983]

Hi guys,

I bought a 2008 mini 1.4 with a misfire, it turned out to be a burnt out exhaust valve on cylinder 3. I stripped the head off and replaced all 8 exhaust valves and checked the inlets for straightness everything appears fine. I reassembled everything put the head upside down and filled each cylinder level with the gasket face with paraffin and none of it leaked past the valves so I'm happy the heads fixed.

A friend lent me a locking tool kit that appears to be a cheap ebay special, before refitting the head I wound the crank round so all 4 pistons are level with 1 & 4 on there upward stroke and inserted the flywheel tool, i'm happy that's correct as I can't turn the crank in either direction.

I then refitted the head to the block with a new head gasket and fitted a new timing chain assembley (crank sprocket, guides & chain with new bolts, cam sprockets left loose on the cams.). I then wound the cams round to fit the locking tools, I had issues fitting the exhaust tool first time due to the cam wanting to constantly rotate from the valve spring pressure. I managed to get it on and would the inlet cam into place, what concerns me is I've had to tap the locking tools into place with a rubber mallet to get the the bolt holes to line up.

I then fitted the pre tension tool to the head and wound it up finger tight as I don't have a small enough torque wrench for the tis setting. I then nipped the crank bolt up to 40nm and the cams to 20nm, with the locking tools all removed I've turned it over 4 times and with the flywheel locking tool in the hole the cam tools now just drop into place so the timing appears right.

My concern and the point of this whole post is regarding the accuracy of the chinese locking tools? is there another way of confirming I've got the timing in the correct position? the writing on both cams is nicely at the top and the locking tools fit in easily but i'm concerned that I originally had to knock the cam tools into place to get them to line up with the bolt holes in the head.

Another question is do I need to get another bolt for the crank pulley as the timing chain kit didn't come with one so I don't know if it's reuseable or not?

Thanks
Chris

 

[thomp1983]

a couple of pcitures of how the cams look with the tools in place

 

[thomp1983]

Thanks Mike,

I've a 27mm spanner so that bits fine, I've ordered a new crank bolt from bmw so I'll fit that.

So with the timing its basically suck it and see? I've got a copy of ista d so that should be as to show me the vanos readings, do you know what there supposed to be for reference?

The cam locks I have are a decent fit to the cam cutouts theres no slack in them I just don't know if they've been machined correctly compared to an OEM tool.

Thanks
Chris

 

[thomp1983]

thought i'd update this, cars been back together since yesterday, I did the touching positive lead to earth with the ignition on and figured out how to reset the adaptations in ista. Car seems to drive fine, idles hunting a bit but i'm assuming this is the car relearnign everything. there are no unexpected codes in ista d although I've yet to find how to read the vanos positions.

Car passed it's mot this afternoon with decent emissions figures so I'm fairly happy my cheap timing tools have done the job properly, I'll be doing a decent journey in it tomorrow with lots of different types of roads so hopefully that won't throw up any issues.

Thanks for the help,
Chris

 

[thomp1983]

cars now done about 80 miles, I finally worked out how to reset the vanos adaptions in ista the results are shown below

as you can see the results are bang in the middle of the acceptable ranges so all seems well.

Thanks
Chris