[Peter.]

Back at it tonight, I've cleaned up the block, changed out the cam chain & bottom pulley, guides, fitted new gasket and set the head in place with the bolts only lightly nipped up. Not going to torque it up in the dark so I'll wait for tomorrow after work to do that.

Question: I have my cam locking kit, fitted those onto the cams, put the pin in the flywheel and everything is nicely locked in place. Obviously I'll have to remove this to torque he head down and I have yet to fit the cam wheels and tensioner. What is the procedure here? The bottom cam sprocket is a friction drive, not keyed to the crank so presumably I can leave the bottom pulley bolt slack, fit the cam wheels, put in the tensioner then once the chain is all fully sprung torque up the bottom pulley to lock the cam chain drive sprocket in place and the timing is set?

 

[RedSector]

It this what you are after ?

 

[Peter.]

It this what you are after ?

Of course it is, thank you once again.

Pete.

 

[Peter.]

Well, today has been a marathon and no mistake.

I got the cams all timed and torqued yeterday afternoon after work, just leaving re-assembly of the manifolds and ancilliaries today which should have been an easy run.

Got it all put back together, cranked it over. I got a few half-hearted pops but nothing else just cranking.

I went through the various steps - check spark, check compression, pull the cover off and check cam timing. All three perfect. Pulled the injector rail and gave it a quick crank - all injectors firing as they should. Tried a few more times until the battery started running down a bit then put it on charge for a while.

Went back and same thing happened, just a few weak attempts to fire and nothing else. Decided to pull the injectors out again and check that they were continuing to fire as the cranking went on. Did this and the oddest thing happened. With the injectors firing into the free air behind the intake manifold, they engine was actually trying to run. Ok, so it's over-fuelling so much that it's running on the little vapour being drawn in the air intake/injector holes. I pulled off the throttle body to check the operation and it seemed to be working correctly. So then I thought, if it's overfuelling it should rev straight up with no throttle blade to restrict it so I put the injectors back in, left the throttle body off the intake but still plugged in. Cranked the engine and it started and idled (very roughly). Whilst it was running I grabbed the throttle body and held it onto the manifold and the idle settled right down.

I didn't understand any of this at all but I went ahead and fitted the throttle body, fixed the injectors into place, test-ran it and it fired up normally but idled rough (more on why below).

After this I re-assembled everything except the battery box and cold air intake. Ran the engine up again and it was a bit rough running. As it warmed up it was clear that it was not running on No1. Swapped out the coil for No2 and now No2 was not running, so we now have a dead coild.

So, I'm at a complete loss to explain the above shenanagans, the over-fuelling and why/how it righted itself, but I'm pleased to say that the engine is up and running and once I fit the new coil I'm sure it will be back to it's good old reliable self.

 

[Peter.]

To wrap this up, I fitted a new coil and the car is now up and running nicely again. Of course it's also had a good de-coke and a new camchain so here's hoping for many more happy motoring miles for my daughter.

Thanks for everyone who contributed and a special thanks to @RedSector for the time he's spent posting diagrams and service documentation for me. This was invaluable to me and I would have found it all quite difficult otherwise

Pete.

 

[CallMeFoxie]

Did you manage to reset adapations? Not sure if there's any regarding fueling though. If the engine was running hard maybe it needed more fuel before the rebuild? Cannot explain it any other way

 

[Peter.]

Did you manage to reset adapations? Not sure if there's any regarding fueling though. If the engine was running hard maybe it needed more fuel before the rebuild? Cannot explain it any other way

No I didn't, I have no software for such things only basic ODB scanner. Certainly it did plenty of idling before I took the cylinder head off as I was trying to diagnose the misfire.

 

[Peter.]

Well, the story isn't finished yet. Today she was driving, got the message of doom back up and motor running rough. I suspected another coil going bad and not wanting to be changing another valve I ordered 3 more coils.
Error turned out to be P0011 which I gather is over-advanced intake cam. Now I checked the operation of the VVT motor and it homes itself and seemed to be operating properly. The rough running corrected itself when the engine was re-started and so far the MIL light hasn't returned since clearing the DTC's.

So, what's the most likely cause? The cam timing is 100% correct I checked it at least 3 times when it wouldn't start after the rebuild. The locking kit slipped onto the cams and settled into place perfectly.

 

[CallMeFoxie]

I had P0011 last week as well, however I have been having troubles with cold drives where it struggled around 2500 - 2800 RPM and on the first rev to these RPMs it would completely cut fuel for 5 seconds, also it would idle at 900 RPM instead of 800 RPM. If I restarted with the engine hot it would work fine.

I got a new VTi solenoid (from ERA, cost 50 pounds) and took the old one out - it was filled with all kinds of junk (the engine has 13 years and almost 120k miles, from which 45k has been done over the past 3 years driving across europe). So far it seems to actually be fixed, done two routes (about 150km in total) and it has not re-appeared.

 

[CallMeFoxie]

I tracked it in this thread Engine performance lower when starting cold or even... (read from the top if the symptoms sound familiar)

 

[Peter.]

This engine is the 8FS version with the mechanical VVT actuator, I don't thnk it has that valve.

New symptom this evening is it's giving low oil pressure warning on idle, along with the above.

I am wondering if it is anything to do with the cam sprockets? They have an oil feed to them, though I don't have a clue why or what the sprocket gubbins actually does. Could the oil pressure warning and the P0011 be related?

EDIT: @CallMeFoxie It does have that valve. I thought that the worm-screw actuator was in lieu of the oil colnenoid but I've since found that they do different things. I have cleaned the valve which has a moderately gummed up filter screen.

 

[Peter.]

Okay, so I've put an oil pressure gauge on the engine and when it's cold I get 2 bar at idle but as the engine warms up the idle pressure drops away until it's at half a bar when the coolant temp gets to 80. after that I stopped the engine. I guess the oil pump is shot.

From cold:

After 5 mins of running

After 10 mins

After 15 mins I shut it off:

 

[Peter.]

I've removed the sump pan and oil pump. Having stripped the pump it has some wear but it doesn't seem excessive for a 70k miles engine. Thehousing is not gouged out save for a small patch right at the oil inlet port. the rotors are not badly scored and the gear faces are perfect. Rotors measure 25.92mm and 35.95mm. I have no clue what the wear specs are to check them.

Inside the housing

Rotors:

It's a lot of money to replace the oil pump if it's not the cause of the issue bearing in mind I'm already £400 in now

 

[RedSector]

The crowns and the bore should be generally speaking defect free, and they are not.
I'm half convinced the pump is an issue, you have some scoring of the top/crowns of the pump gear rotor edge nearest photo, hard to judge if that is bad enough. In addition to the scoring in the oil pump body in the photos, which together may be excessive?

I could not locate any data specifically about oil pump serviceability limits.

Just trying to rule anything else out.
There appears to be an oil solenoid, I'm wondering if it in play here.
And since you have the oil pan off, have you checked end play in the crank. Potentially, just to rule out, if the bearings have an issue, this could cause low oil pressure as it heats up (you normally can hear this through and what is left of them would have been in the oil, and I suspect you would have picked up on this).

General question:-
The valve that died originally is at the end or close to the end of the oil pressure train, so-to-speak. Would this explain how the valve got to burnt out ?

 

[Peter.]

Thank you RedSector,

The pump in that PDF looks similar except mine does not have an oil solenoid or electrical connection. It has a large spring inside which presses on the black plastic gear housing.

I do not believe that we have thrust bearing or end bearing wear significant enough to cause oil pressure issues as there is zero bronze debris in the sump. As you might have gathered I am not familiar with Peugeots in particular but I do know my way around an engine, built my own turbocharged landspeed bike (including the whole turbocharger system) so I'd recognise the signs of worn ends/mains/thrusts. The sump is back on currently and I am ordering a replacement pump. I will get some feeler gauges in the thrust bearing when the sump comes off for fitting the new pump and check the clearance.

I believe that the burned up valve is down to the failing coil.

I must confess that the low oil pressure issue is not a new one. My daughter reported it recently (before the valve went out) and I took a look at the car, found evidence of oil coming from the pressure switch electrical connector. The engine sounded healthy so I preumed it was just the switch failing, told her not to worry about it and bought a new switch to replace the failing one. Only got round to changing it when the valve went out.

Pete.

 

[Peter.]

New OEM pump fitted and it has not cured the oil pressure problem. It's improved slightly, but then I have fitted a new pump.

This is most perplexing to me as the oil pressure when cold is a steady 3 bar, it drops slowly as the oil heats up until (now) at full oil temp and at idle it gives a low pressure warning yet still runs and sounds , doesn't knock on rev or overrun and apart from the low oil pressure warning (also checked with 2 separate gauges) it sounds perfectly normal.

Instinct tells me that it does not have worn crank bearings, it would certainly knock at half a bar of oil pressure if they were worn. I think it is the dephaser sprockets so I am going to exchange those next.

 

[Peter.]

Well, after dumping £190 on an oil pump and £95 on dephaser pulleys I think I have found my oil pressure fault:

I had ordered the new seals mid-week since I was taking the top off to do the pulleys, but they haven't turned up as of yet.