hey

i am a new bravo owner, i bought "Adrian Bravo" bravo off him

https://www.fiatforum.com/members-motors/199136-fiat-bravo-1-4-12v-1997-degas-grey-modified.html

im hoping to restore it to its former glory, at first try and repair the original engine (1.4 12v) and in time drop the 1.6 into it.

so i thought id just say hi

im going to start work on it tomorro, i have taken it around the block, and i have head a knocking from the near side front, it only knocks over uneven ground, just woundering if anyone could take a wild guess as what it might be.

ill no more tomorrow when i have taken the wheels off and so on

welcome

Hey Ilsonemo, Nice to see you made it home alright. It was nice to meet you.

I never had any suspention knocks. I was getting an intermittent click that went away but I put that down to the sticky caliper. Im sure most things on the car like ARB drop links/bushes topmounts are the parts it was made with and it was sat on my garden for a couple of months. I always planed to fit a 1.8 anti roll bar, would be well worth the effort.

Did it seem quick on your test drive? Did the clutch feel nice? Those old tyres on it are shocking mind they really drag it down, probably egg shaped. I just finnished polishing my 1.8 yesterday which took 6 days all in all :spin: Today new radiator.

Best of luck with the car, as I said if theres anything you want to know just give me a shout. I have some timing tools if you want to borrow them for free I will post them to you. Those two spare injectors in the boot are both good by the way.

If you strip the engine I will be really interested to see what you find make a thread on your project

Hey

just a quick one

ive spent a bit of time on the car today, had the engine to bits sort of.

ive stripped the head off, not yet had the pistons out but will do tomorrow.
I have found that the cylinder block is not as clean as Adrian left it haha, but it wasnt to bad to strip down.

when i took the exhaust manifold off i did find oil around cylinder 4 outlet which i thought was a bit unusual as non of the others had oil around them.

Did manage to price some bits up also:

piston rings set £86
head gasket set £34
head bolts £16
oil filter £2.60

Before i removed the head










Head removed

sorry about quality of pictures, taken on my phone

cheers Adrian

just a question for you, how did you get the pistons and cylinder so clean without scratching them ?

cheers

Adam

Fantatic, nice to see you getting stuck in. This will be my favourite thread I see the exhaust bolts stayed in the head this time.

I used a green scouring pad soaked in petrol. Test them first, some give off lots of fluff but i found one that held toghether nicely.

Are the bores ok?

You know the bolt that holds the exhaust to the block. I have 5 spare I can post one if you need one free.

Oil round the fourth exhaust outlet might be significant. Maybe the head is cracked and its going right into the exhaust. Have a look at the back of the valves see if any are filthy. I think the 12v's biggest weakness is its ECU setup, maybe 3rd party ECU would look after it better.

Im really looking forward to updates

cheers, i shall clean everything up tomorrow and check the head thoroughly, the bore's looked fine just alot of carbon substance stuck to the pistons.

Just in case the head is cracked i will price one up at the local breakers yard. im hoping to crack on with this, but bit low on funds at the moment so bear with me haha

cylinder pics

C1


C2



C3


C4


as i said sorry about quality only taken on phone

Nice one

I think you type up the pics wrong, mixing cylinder 1 and 4, but 2 and 3 are right

You count them from crank to gearbox
Crank | c1 | c2 |c3 |c4 | gearbox

Adrian your cracked head theroy may be true, when i removed the oil cap earlier it had white gunk inside it, which kind of backs it up

sorry i just remembered

hum doesent look like a great deal of oil has been burned in the engine otherwise cylinders would be filthy so looking at the oil usage it had in adrians hands a cracked head next to an exhaust manifold port could be viable but that would also mean allot of exhaust presure building up in the head and breather system

also it wouldnt be raw oil in the exhaust after a run it would be burned surely would explain the smoke thou

also that amount of oil going into the engine would foul a plug or some

exhaust pressure pushing into the head throu a crack and pushing oil/ breather gasses into the throttle body maybe

the selenia oil seem to have done a fantastic job of cleaning up the cams and head anyway

rings and a new head maybe the way to go see if that sorts it's problems

looks like the cars gone to a good home anyway

ilsonemo said:

Adrian your cracked head theroy may be true, when i removed the oil cap earlier it had white gunk inside it, which kind of backs it up

sorry i just remembered

Click to expand...

Was it a lot just a bit on the back of the oil cap? I think thats down to condensation. If there was a real water problem the head would be full of white gunk and the head looks good as new in the pics. The drained oil looks ok from what i can see.

When my sisters rover's head gasket failed under the rocker cover it looked like an ecclare with the top ripped off and the drained oil was like cold coffee.

Update

cleaned the pistons while in situe, they are all looking nice again, checked the head out cannot see any visible cracks, but when looking into the 4 exhaust ports 3 out of 4 had oil on the exhaust valve stem. only one dry stem. could not get a picture of that though phone is useless.











do you think the exhaust valve seals have failed ? the inlet valves all looked fine.

The valve stem oil seals where brand new original fiat parts that came with the head gasket, they where fitted by a local engine machine shop and I had the valve guides checked. So they should have been spot on.

Im not sure how the exhaust valves should look after use exactly. Maybe a book or profesional advice could help.

Is this black mark still on the cylinder wall? You can see it on my pics aswell (this is the block you have in the car cylinder 4). I was adviced it would scrub off but if you can confirm its still there?.

I didnt see the black marks on the cylinder wall, but i will take a better look tomorro just concentrated on the head and the pistons today. i dont think the exhaust valve stems should be leaking oil, i have 1 compleatly dry out of 4. it like when they leak, it would be dropping into the cylinder when the exhaust valve opened. then burnt and so on.

ilsonemo said:

I didnt see the black marks on the cylinder wall, but i will take a better look tomorro just concentrated on the head and the pistons today. i dont think the exhaust valve stems should be leaking oil, i have 1 compleatly dry out of 4. it like when they leak, it would be dropping into the cylinder when the exhaust valve opened. then burnt and so on.

Click to expand...

i bet the machine shop fitted the seals and the pushed the valves throu them

this nackeres them every single time as the sharp edges were the colets sit rips them

provided with the seals from fiat is a little plastic shield to place over the valve wile it is in place and slide the seal over it and down the valve stem alowing it to miss the sharp edges at the top of the stem

Right i think my next plan of action when i have a free day is to drop the the leaking valves out and replace the seals also check for cracking of the head arround the valves, as i have heard thats one of the usual place for cracking.

In answer to Adrians question the cylinder still has a slight black mark but not as bad as your picture.

The Sultan said:

i bet the machine shop fitted the seals and the pushed the valves throu them

Click to expand...

Cant trust anyone :bang: next time I do it myself.

just a quick one. would i get valve stem seals in a head gasket set ?

also how do you remove and fit new ? i have never had to do them before so this is all new to me

cheers

Yeah the full kit has the vlave stem oil seals. You need a special tool to remove the old ones.

on a less severe note i was thinking about fitting that spare rear bumper and possibly the tailgate spoiler.

I no how to fit the bumper, but i am confused about the spoiler i see no way of fitting it.
I asume it is a standard bravo spoiler, it is the same as this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/FIAT-BRAVO-TA...arts_Vehicles_CarParts_SM?hash=item5ad762346e

while i cant do anything engine wise i can do the cosmetic side of things. will crack on with the engine once cash flow is better