Tagged: Rocker Cover

A bit of bronze.

The bolt extraction kit turned up the other day! I had it sent to work so I didn’t miss the delivery and after I got chance to give it a go. The plan was, according to the kit, to drill out a pilot hole with one of the supplied Cobalt drill bits and then screw in the reverse thread extractor to wind out the broken half. I’d borrowed the 18V Makita from work to get a bit more power but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be powerful enough. There’s not much to drill but neither drilling slowly, or quickly really made an indent in the bolt. I tried and tried but I wasn’t making any progress so for now I’ve reassembled the rocker cover and I’m driving around at a sensible speed until I can sneak in some time after work and use the power drill and our own cobalt bits.

That being said, I did get the rocker cover finished. The black was a bit boring for me so I dug out a can of Ford “Roman Bronze” I had lying around and used that to add some colour. It’s meant to be slightly metallic so I followed that up with a couple of coats of lacquer to bring out the shine but also to add some protection. A couple of heat cycles later and it’s coping with the heat just fine.

Apologies about the mucky trim, I’m going to give the bay, and the whole car a good clean tomorrow.

It’s only nuts and bolts.

That’s pretty much how I refer to any job on a car. Nuts and bolts. Something that should be simple with the right instructions. That is until one snaps, then it’s panic stations.

One of the jobs I’ve been putting off since hearing about it, is replacing the “lift” bolts on my engine. It was one of the first things I read when buying the car that earlier models came with badly designed and badly installed bolts that actuate the “lift” part of the variable valve timing. It was said they can snap when the engine is in use or when trying to get them out to replace them with the new improved bolts that were fitted to later models. Having one snap on me and having to try and fish a broken bolt out of the head is possibly one of my worst nightmares.

Guess what… it happened.

I was all set today to get the rocker cover off, whip out the old bolts, fit the new ones and give the rocker cover a lick of paint. Of course all this had to happen late in the afternoon after watching the Formula one but after reading the how to (here) it didn’t seem like it would take that long.

Don’t ask my why my rocker cover has writing on… I don’t know. I really think this car has a shady past and the engine is involved in that somehow (maybe a replacement?). The rocker cover put up a bit of a fight to remove. It took a good few “taps” with a wooden block and hammer to free it up, a good sign it hasn’t been off before. If that’s the case, I had a good chance that the engine has the old, weak bolts.

That was proven when the first one I attempted to remove, the intake side, came undone too easily. It seemed to have quite a bit of thread coming out though so I wasn’t sure at first. My fears were realised when I came to the end of the thread and only found half the bolt. Panic stations. Can I drive the car like this?… How can I get the broken bolt out?… Do I trust myself to drill it out?… All questions that popped into my head. Luckily, and I use that word loosely, the second bolt came out fine but I’m still stuck with half a bolt in my engine.

Apparently you can still drive the car around, it just won’t have “lift” so it isn’t really advisable to go over 6K RPM. I’m not even starting the engine until it’s fixed though because, A: I don’t want to risk any damage occuring and 2: I don’t want to put all the rocker cover back together just to take it off again. I’ve ordered a Snap On screw extractor set which should arrive and then hopefully I can have a go at removing the broken bolt. Until then… I’m cycling everywhere.

Well after that big blow I decided to crack on with refurbishing the rocker cover. I’ve stripped a few Honda ones before and always done Nitromors and soapy water but with this one I’ve done it a bit different. Firstly, it was covered with dirt, oil and grime so I had to get rid of that. I used some of my Citris degreaser from my bike and a good stiff brush to work around the entire cover to clean all the muck off. Parts of it were pretty thick so needed a good few coats of degreaser but it all soon came off. I then went to work with a wire brush, getting off any stubborn corrosion before using some sand paper to key up the surface. The original paint (if there is any) didn’t really look damaged so I didn’t feel the need for Nitromors. After a good clean with some hot soapy water and a blow dry I could start painting.

I wanted to retain the OEM aluminium look but I didn’t have enough VHT paint left in my can so I had to apply a couple of layer of black. Black is boring though. I do however have a can of bronze paint left lying around, unopened so tomorrow when the black is completely dry I’m going to give it a coat of bronze and see how it turns out.

That’s about it for today. One tiny snapped bolt stopping me in my tracks. I just hope I can use this extractor kit properly when it arrives and remove the bottom half safely.