I killed my 2.8TDI

[White Elephant]

Just wanted to add a bit of what I thought was interesting info for the RD28T drivers out there. As a benchmark figure, and just for a laugh I decided to get a price for a brand spanking bare motor from Nissan. They had one in a crate in Melbourne for the lovely price of...wait for it...$9660 inc GST. I also rang a few places to see what it would set me back for someone else to rebuild it for me and came in at about $8150.

Just thought I'd share so that anyone out there who has a RD28T can have an idea of what you would be looking at if you are unable to do it yourself.

[White Elephant]

It's Alive! Finished the rebuild on Thursday night and she fired up first kick after bleeding the injectors. Took her for a nice 50km test drive and all is well...phew! Ended up costing me about $4300 all up, but I saved myself a swag load of coin by doing it myself. I didn't end up getting too many pics because I was on a mission getting the job done, but I will post up the few that I did get when I can!

So I did, bearings and rings,(deglazed the bore as opposed to rebore) new head, new water pump, new tacho sensor, turbo overhaul, injector service, timing belt, replaced a few hoses and cleaned everything up, exhaust manifold and turbo dump pipe painted in aluminium finish flame proof paint. So it's all preety now as well. I will get a some photos of my rig as well as the overhauled engine complete to show you all!

[growler2058]

Bloody oath mate good job glad it worked out well

[White Elephant]

Bloody oath mate good job glad it worked out well

Cheers Growlers, it was a bit of a mission, I don't think I've ever taken so much bark off my hands and elbows, but the sense of self satisfaction when she fired up was all worth it!

[growler2058]

I bet it was I was stoked when i fit my Lokka hahaahaha

[White Elephant]

I just thought I'd pop an update in this one. My apologies for not getting any of the photos up as yet, I'm back to the grind now and time is short...anyhoo...the motor is running sweet after the rebuild, I've managed just over 500kms and she's settling in nicely. I will drop the oil and filter this weekend and put some good oil in her. Only one issue since getting the ol girl back on the road and I should have thought of it when doing the rebuild.(hindsight is a beautiful thing!)

For anyone who has a radiator with plastic tanks, if you cook your motor, get a new radiator as well! The plastic goes very brittle and gives way, I found out the hard way! I was just Lucky that I wasn't too far from home when the stub for the top radiator hose busted clean off and spilled my coolant all over the road! I managed to get her home without cooking the motor again (phew) and got a new Copper/Brass radiator from Natrad the next day. $440 for a 2 row, was thinking about putting an alloy one in, but I've heard conflicting reports so I went with what I knew.

Anyway, I just thought I'd pop that bit of info on here just in case anyone has a similar problem and forgets to pressure test the radiator or what not.

[White Elephant]

Ok, so I'm finally getting around to putting up some photos from when I rebuilt the motor.

This is the block just after I pulled the head off...nasty. I managed to get the scoring out by simply honing the bore with a medium grade cylinder hone, I used Kero to lubricate rather than cutting oil. I did however have to cut the ridges out of the top of the cylinders with a ridge removal tool before I could get the pistons out because I didn't want to damage the pistons-saved a lot of dollars because the pistons were all fine once cleaned up.

[White Elephant]

I do apologise for the lack of photos, I was just on a mission getting it done, didn't want to grease up the Mrs camera either...

This is a little bit better view of some of the scoring...I think. They weren't even a thou deep so after I deglazed the other cylinders and honed the scores out of 4 & 5 I just put standard bearings and rings back in. (There are multiple grades depending on how much you take out of the bore, for those who don't know)Seeing as though it wasn't a rebore, standard works fine.

[White Elephant]

And this is the new head (casting) with all my old valves, springs, lifters etc installed. I had a head specialist do this for me just to make sure everything was done properly and all tolerances etc were correct. It cost me $2k flat, which included a multi layer metal Monotorque gasket(around $300 on it's own) The head specialist seemed to think that the old gasket wasn't the correct one for a Turbo motor either, so if you do a rebuild make sure you get the right gasket and pay attention to the number of holes(edge of gasket firewall end)because that indicates the grade of gasket that you will need to put it back together(unless you are intstalling your old head casting shaved, and/or block machined) otherwise you need to check tolerances and may need a heavier gasket.

[Bigrig]

Don't worry about photos mate, some video of the pride and joy breathing to life will suffice!! lol

Bloody good job mate - not something everyone can do (me included), so you should be proud of your efforts!!