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Saving A 245 Turbo, or How Not To Do This Sort of Thing

I'm sure advertising's frowned upon on this site, but my car's sat through a 6.0 & 7.1 magnitude quake with its front end raised on these Harbor Freight ramps. Car is still standing as far as I can tell. Consider it an endorsement of sorts. The aftershocks have calmed down enough that I can think about getting back to work.

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Now that the Earth's stopped trying to tear my house into pieces and my Miata is back in one piece again, I got back to work.

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As I predicted, that drain seal in blue is basically toast. It didn't help that I monkeyed around with it changing the oil filter. The bolt is a little out of reach for my current tool set so I'll approach this tomorrow morning with a flex head ratchet. I guess I could drop the exhaust manifold but that seems a bit silly.

I also spot some weeping from the 19mm banjo bolts in orange. And of course, my wrench set only goes up to 17mm...

In happier news I did get the passenger seat rails unstuck and got a better idea of how to fit new seats. I'm going to splurge on a new rear lower bench cover (pretty reasonable) but the fronts I'm thinking either WRX seats ($200-$300) or fitting some Recaros if I can't source any blue cloth seats. A seller on local Craigslist boasts about a fleet of 240 parts cars so I may have to see if there's some matching blue seats in my future... Black leather is nice, but not when it's a solid 100+ deg. F in the summer...
 
Well I figured out what was wrong with the passenger seat. The rail is fine, it's that the foam slipped past the frame and limited the adjustment bar's travel.

Of course, a bigger problem is the new tires for my other car! That's going to limit my budget for some time...
 
I wasted $12 learning that the oil feed banjo bolt (orange square in post #102) is 22mm. I splurged on the ratcheting 19mm thinking it would be great for the tight squeeze. Gave it an extra 3/4 turn with my shiny-new 22mm wrench so hopefully that addresses the seepage. 100% certain that addresses one leak since I've seen it physically leak from there. :grrr:

Question: I still need to pull the 14mm (guestimating) bolts holding the oil return line (right-side blue square in post #102) but I'm having trouble reaching the inner bolt. Has anyone been able to pull them with the turbo in the car? My brain argues there's a combination of extensions that I can use, but past TB knowledge suggests pulling the manifold+turbo and replacing the drain that way.
 
IIRC this are M6 screws.
10mm head.
If M8 => 13mm head.

I will check this evening, good luck, Kay

On the bigger screen than my mobile I see more clear: Your car is with the old Garrett Turbo
M8 and 13mm head of the screw.
My most beloved tool to undo and do this:

https://www.sonictoolsusa.com/3-8-drive-13mm-cardan-socket-12pt-shallow

good luck, and relocate your oil filter, this is pita to change.
 
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I wasted $12 learning that the oil feed banjo bolt (orange square in post #102) is 22mm. I splurged on the ratcheting 19mm thinking it would be great for the tight squeeze. Gave it an extra 3/4 turn with my shiny-new 22mm wrench so hopefully that addresses the seepage. 100% certain that addresses one leak since I've seen it physically leak from there. :grrr:

Question: I still need to pull the 14mm (guestimating) bolts holding the oil return line (right-side blue square in post #102) but I'm having trouble reaching the inner bolt. Has anyone been able to pull them with the turbo in the car? My brain argues there's a combination of extensions that I can use, but past TB knowledge suggests pulling the manifold+turbo and replacing the drain that way.

That lower return line is a bitch. Creative usage of swivel or wobbler socket extensions will do the job.
 
Really like this car, nice work so far!

Not sure how the access is on 240 Turbos, but I had the same issue with the drain pipe (although it my case it was both the seal leaking AND a crack in the tube itself) and due to access it was vastly easier to just pull the manifold and turbo together with the hard line and install a Yoshifab -10an block drain fitting. That way it won't leak again and you improve serviceability in the future too.

It was a good opportunity to do the exhaust mani gaskets as well, since mine were well past their sell-by date- but not sure what yours are like.
 
After a couple earthquakes I got back to work. Those of you following the Maintenance & Nonperformance section have seen the thread I put up regarding the drain pipe removal.

Here is the procedure that I cobbled together from various sources:

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1.) Clean the deposits off the face of the drain. I took some sandpaper and did a few light passes. Clean the other surfaces. I used a rag with some Simple Green.

2.) Put white lithium grease on the gaskets. Brush it on if you must. Especially on the lower O-Ring. Put some anti-seize on the bolts.

3.) Insert lower gasket into the hole in the block. Rotate slightly so you can put the palm of your hand onto the face of the drain. Apply firm, even, and direct pressure while ensuring that the ring does not bend or twist.

4.) Rotate to align with face of turbo drain opening. Place lower-flat gasket on the pipe face. Mate upper pipe surface to turbo opening and begin inserting the 14mm bolts with washers. I felt fancy and used two new ones. In hindsight I maybe should have just used a gasket that hadn't fallen onto the cardboard I placed under the car, but it looked fine. It was layers of grease on grease.

5.) Tighten to finger tight. Use whatever cobbled together mess of extensions, U-joints, and flex ratchets to finish the rest of the job. I went tight + 1/4 turn. I'm not joking about the cobbled together extensions. That was a sight to behold. The $7.99 Harbor Freight extensions I bought for the seat saved me.


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Also, the wastegate fell off. The vacuum hose joining it with the turbo decided it didn't like getting jostled around so it just split into two. At least I was able to give it a thorough cleaning before I'll reassemble it.

------OTHER SOURCES------
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eypBfv3OEQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HufgSY5oBg8


I may be in the market for a ZF rack in the future as well as an iPD front swaybar kit.
 
Step 6: Blast the heck out of that lower oil drain oring and the pocket it resides in with brake cleaner so it is free of oil and then goop the F$%^ out of it with red hi-temp RTV. I completely filled the pocket and gave it a good finger wipe around the drain tube so it has a decent radius where it meets the block.

I had that gasket fail on me twice, and after replacing it twice I gave up and gooped the F out of it with RTV. It could have been attributed to crankcase pressure, but it definitely stopped leaking after that.

As for the wastegate actuator, it should have a bracket mounting it to the turbo compressor housing with a couple 10mm bolts IIRC. Not sure how it falls off, the arm should also be cotter pinned or C clipped to the turbo's wastegate.

It's looking good so far! Congrats on the progress!!
 
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Did some light cleanup work while I was under the hood. Cleaned up the corrosion on the coolant reservoir strap so that's looking fine. The battery tray looks ghastly so I will be cleaning that up and putting some new bolts on there in time. Much of the tray itself is salvageable, just dirty.

Note: when installing the wastegate pressure line without taking out the turbo, install the line onto the wastegate before putting it back on the turbo. Difficult is an understatement. Trying to service a turbo without taking it out is like trying to stuff a turkey while it's in the oven.

The stray cat who hangs around threw up next to it so I hosed down the underside and the area around it. Still got a bunch of crud but a ton of oily sand just got washed out, as expected from a redblock owned by a surfer. The cat was evidently displeased so he marked my Miata.

I'm also toying with illustrating all this to keep my drafting skills sharp. Stay tuned on that.
 
oiUpusw.png


Did some light cleanup work while I was under the hood. Cleaned up the corrosion on the coolant reservoir strap so that's looking fine. The battery tray looks ghastly so I will be cleaning that up and putting some new bolts on there in time. Much of the tray itself is salvageable, just dirty.

Note: when installing the wastegate pressure line without taking out the turbo, install the line onto the wastegate before putting it back on the turbo. Difficult is an understatement. Trying to service a turbo without taking it out is like trying to stuff a turkey while it's in the oven.

The stray cat who hangs around threw up next to it so I hosed down the underside and the area around it. Still got a bunch of crud but a ton of oily sand just got washed out, as expected from a redblock owned by a surfer. The cat was evidently displeased so he marked my Miata.

I'm also toying with illustrating all this to keep my drafting skills sharp. Stay tuned on that.

get a plastic battery tray from a later 240.
 
IT'S ALIVE!

After spending a comically long amount of time making sure everything was done right, I finally got the car buttoned up and fired it up. It still seems to hesitate on first idle, so I have to give it a bit of throttle, but it settles at 900-1000 rpm. It also stayed bone dry while I let it run for a few minutes, so I guess it really was one of the banjo bolts that needed some cinching. I'll take it off the stands tomorrow and haul some yard waste to the dump this weekend.

Four long months and hopefully I can have this back on the road soon (hey didn't I say that about a year ago?). Then I can start on the next phase(s).
 
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Good news: It looks like I solved the drivability issues. Car makes power and drives very much like a modern car with mushy suspension. Bone dry all around! It survived the trip to the city dump to get rid of some yard waste.

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Bad news: It failed its smog test and it wasn't even close. I was told high HCs mean lots of unburnt fuel. The previous owner mentioned his mechanic had to adjust the timing and this was back when the in-tank pump & accumulator weren't working. Would I be wrong in thinking that having all the fueling system all fixed up like it should means I need to take another look at the timing?

The car is also due for a cambelt replacement so I guess I'll tackle that next. If all this fails I might just part it out in the For Sale section, but let's not think about that yet.
 
Haven't had time to get back into the car due to travel and work, so it's back to parts collecting!

I was about to swap the timing belt when I noticed the water pump puking coolant, so it's time to replace that too. New Hepu pump is here, with the lower hose and extra studs on the way. Thinking about flushing with some premix 50/50 for now.

Also a new battery cable since the old one is missing a lot of sheathing.
 
Timing belt and water pump are good to do at the same time since most of the hardware removal is shared.

When you install the new water pump though, make sure that upper rubber gasket where the pump meets the head is positioned correctly. This is critical. Loosely mount the bolts for the water pump, then pry/apply firm upward pressure to really seal that "pump to head" junction before finally torquing the bolts to spec. You basically want to "pretension" the rubber gasket to ensure a good seal. It will leak otherwise.
 
Nice work! I have a 1983 240 turbo wagon and love it but need to take care of an oil leak, which I guess is the turbo return line too so your picture helped me-I'm just not ready for the job yet. The water pump was a huge pain, I did it 3 times and I still have a tiny leak from the top "hat" as they say-might use a tiny bit of rtv next time I do it but it's so minor I'll wait. I'd say check the upper "hat" mating surface(which I may not have) with a mirror and make sure it's real smooth-I do not like the pressure fit of the water pump design but besides that part I love the 240. I enjoy your write ups, keep on going, you will get through smog eventually.
 
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