Westfield v6

So at this point i was properly bricking it, but time to get the big boy pants on and fire it up. Firstly id motored it over with no fuel to check we had oil pressure, which it did, so back in with the fuel and it fired right up! Very relieved. It idled really nicely and it sounded sweet as a nut, much quieter with the new chains and tensioners and guides and oil pressure was very healthy.

So the plan was to put a couple of hundred miles on her to run everything in before a trip back to the dyno. First up had a bit of blue smoke, googling suggested this was normal and would slowly die down with mileage whilst the rings bedded in. I started out doing some running in, revving to a certain point and let the engine braking slow it down slowly building the revs up each time. The engine felt ace, noticeably more lively than previously and a fair bit more than the spare. However even after 200 miles i was getting blue smoke and oil consumption was high. bks. Pulling the plugs showed 3 random cylinders across both banks were oiled up.



As a last ditch attempt before admitting defeat tried the old italian tune up with anew set of plugs, no joy. As it was approaching spring 22 again i didnt want to be off the road waiting for engine work and/or parts so the trusty spare engine was called back into service whilst I sorted the rebuilt one. Id previously ordered some carbon flared side panels, Access on the v6 has always been tricky and these just make life so much easier.



In between getting some more miles under her belt i had alook inside the engine to see what was occuring. Another issue noted on tear down was a coolant weep from the HG area in between banks. As the heads had been resurfaced i put this down to using non oem head gaskets.





Internally it was definitly just the 3 cylinders that were causing the issues.



Some light marks on the bores, but you couldn't feel them with a finger nail.



First thing i checked were the piston rings, now i hold my hands up here the rings were very cheap from rockauto from a brand that i hadn't used before, but seemed to have a decent reputation in the states. But on first inspection they looked fine and all had been fitted correctly. After that i wanted the machine shop to re-check the bores, which they did and all measured up true, and they gave the bores a very light clean up which removed the marks. In the end we found that the 2nd oil scraper ring had the dimples stamped incorrectly, so they were all dimpled, but 3 had the dimples effectively on the wrong face. This wasnt really obvious to the naked eye as they are a different design to oem which are very obviously stepped.

So in effect instead of scraping oil down the cylinder 3 were scraping oil upwards into the combustion end.

On the hunt for new rings, this was very tricky, the main reason being the aftermarket oversize pistons had 3mm oil control rings where the oem and most aftermarket used 2.5mm. At the time no other manufacturers had stock of either pistons with 2.5mm lower rings or other rings in 3mm. A trawl through the Mahle catalogue found some in the end for a mazda variant of this engine used in the states. Rock auto were nil stock though. So ended up ordering through a different supplier who claimed to have stock. They didnt. So ended up going on back order with Mahle and along with new head bolts took the best part of 4 months to get here. Thank goodness for the spare engine.



and new oem headgaskets



Bores nicely cleaned



And on with the re-rebuild





All a bit easier 2nd time round.

In the mean time, summer 22 didnt see as much use as i'd like, I work in the travel industry as an engineer and after 2 pretty desolate years with covid, work went mental and felt as though i needed to make the most of it. But did get a few decent runs in. Including a run up to Mallaig for a chippy lunch.

Good question.

1. I'd kind of lost faith in them and 2. The machine shop had said to put mahle rings in if available.

The new head bolts were coming from the states anyway as they are 10 quid each in the UK Vs 50 quid delivered for 16 from the states. So at the time I believed the rings were in stock it wasn't going to hold me up. If id known the delays on the rings I'd have probably done what you suggested.

Out of interest, what is the fitting process for these? Presumably you have to cut out your previous side panels and then rivet these in their place? And if so, did you cut it in situ or remove the whole panel first?

Car looks great by the way!

Thank you, i didnt take any pics of the fitting weirdly, prob too covered in dust . As the tub is one piece I removed the rivets from the front section and then slid in a piece of sheet steel behind the fibreglass to protect the chassis and cut it with a thin slitting disc in the angle grinder. Can see the cut point in the pic below at the end of the footwells.



The carbon panels are then trimmed to length and fitted. I used rivnuts for these so can be removed in 5 mins for access.

Not quite there yet

Another issue that cropped up during the running in miles, the bloody rad started leaking again, this was the second rad and neither had made 2000 miles, this time it was the same failure, leaking at the joint between the core and the end tank. This time the company who supplied it were completely uninterested in providing a resolution, appreciate it was well over 2 years since buying the original but its clearly not durable enough to be fit for purpose. The company owner ended up telling me it was down to the fact I was using an electric water pump and all the failures they have are cars with EWP's and if i wanted anything from him I'd have to take him to court the crazy thing was i never requested or asked for a free of charge replacement, id only asked could it be repaired or if not would a partial refund or discount be available. During this period it also came to light I was not alone with this issue, at least half a dozen other owners had reported failures, some multiples. All different engine and water pump types. So clearly just a crap product.

After a brief phone call with Colin at Creative Aluminium Fabrications had another rad comissioned, this time using a decent quality core and also to a custom size, keeping the same mounting points but an additional 50mm height added onto the lower end. Quality and service was second to none and no issues with it to date.



The car had always kept coolant temps under control very well, however had struggled a bit with oil temps. So the new rad was probably a bit overkill as the increased frontal are probably meant it was now over-cooling during normal use. However the engine does struggle a wee bit with oil temp, continued 'enthusiastic' use would see oil temps creeping up to 120 degrees, so the plan was over this current winter to fit a laminova heat exchanger, which is why I wanted to build in a bit more headroom to the cooling system.

Also over summer 2022, the urge to do something on the induction side returned. Researching this shows that there are a few AJ30s on throttle bodies, but no before/after write ups. The only off the shelf kit from jenvey is also very expensive and even they haven't got any info on any potential gains/losses. Its also way too tall to have a hope of fitting under the bonnet.

During covid I'd started to play around with cad and managed to get OK at some stuff. So Id taken inspiration from the Jenvey lower manifold for their SF throttle bodies, but with a reduced overall height, i ended up with the following design and then started to see about getting them made.

Next couple of updates should hopefully bring me up to date.

At the end of summer 2022 the plan was to get the rebuilt engine in (again), bed in the rings and make sure everything is ok before going any further with the throttle bodies. So the spare was whipped out again. During the last 500 miles or so i'd experienced a bit of clutch judder, mainly on downshifts but was spreading into low speed driving too. The competition clutch i used now has a lower torque rating than when I purchased and was possibly starting to overwhelm it a little? Although I never had any slip. On removing the clutch the flywheel did look like its been getting a little warm.



So while it was out dropped it into a local engineering shop to have it checked and resurfaced, it had some really weird wear with some high and low spots, any ways it was resurfaced and looking a lot better



Clutchwise, after reading some decent feedback i went for a bofi racing clutch, https://bofiracing.co.uk/servicing/transmission/cl...

So the engine went back in, made good oil pressure, fired straight up, set straight to a fast idle to carry out leak checks, all good and no bloody smoke!!.

Letting it all cool down however, my joy was very short lived. A whiff of coolant led me to a leak in the central valley again, right from the head gaskets. Just on one cylinder, but then as it cooled more became apparent, oh ffs



A quick rough and ready pressure test rigged up with a schrader valve and a bike pump showed all cylinders on both banks had weepage, some worse than others. I was annoyed at myself with this as i dismissed there being any problem here when i had it the last time, dismissing it as dodgy head gaskets rather than getting the heads checked, but when you've had a machine shop skim them......

Anyway after a couple of days sulking i whipped the heads off, and yes youve probably guessed they weren't flat. I took them into the engineering shop that did the flywheel. He confirmed theyd fked the heads, longitudinally flat, but not laterally. So the faces at the inner edges were rounded off, meaning the gaskets would seal the waterways. You can see below with the engineers blue



He reckoned that they would need a good chunk taking off to get them flat and without knowing exactly how much was taken off first time round they were effectively scrap. I went straight to the place that did the work on the way home and was expecting them to deny any wrong doing, however the owner didnt, they held their hands up, admitted theyd fked up, he suspected someone who wouldnt normally do that task had done them, gave me the money back i paid for the work and some on top. I didnt expect them to be so open and I could have probably pushed for more in hindsight but whats done is done, no point dwelling on it.

Now what to do. The cheapest option would have been to use the heads off the spare engine (after a refurb) or write off this troublesome engine all together and totally rebuild the spare, using a different machine shop obviously. I did price up all the parts again on rockauto and with the dollar exchange rate being st things were a lot more expensive than first time round. I had also stumbled across some brand new crate engines for sale at a very reasonable price, for just just over 2k. After a bit of deliberation I ended up going with the brand new engine.

Engine #3



Engine came fully dressed, so lots of brand new oem bits to sell, stripped down.



Nice to open one up and everything is pristine.



So far between the new stuff and salvageable old stuff ive recouped well over half the cost of the new engine, without having to resort to man maths its actually working out to be the sensible choice.

I admire your persistence.
That crate engine at £2k seems excellent value for money and hopefully negates all the risk of buying an unknown history/condition engine.
Hope all goes well now.

Your car was the colour inspiration for mine. I think i got paul to go 1 ral code lighter just so it wasn't the same

I hear you on the manifolds, they are cheapo but do work, and other v6s who've done the tubular custom manifolds havent really seen much in the way of gains, especially vs the cost with making effectively 2 systems. The chinesium ones are still a bit better than the oem ones which are effectively just a log manifold. Its something that remains on the to-do list.

That will sound bloody epic!

I want to do this to my Alfa now.

That crate engine seems like a right bargain! Great update as ever, really enjoying it.

Yes it definitely was. The only other place selling them I found was listing them at 4.5k. Retail book price from Jag was just over 10k.

Some other mind boggling figures, when cross referencing all the part numbers of all the ancillaries and parts I didn't need the total was well over 4k. The AC pump alone from Jag is 1100