Not bad for a bloke who says he isn't A MECHANIC? I can tell you that you leave about 85% of them behind. So many mechs won't clean things and their jobs end up not working well. I spent 45 years in the motor trade and I have seen things mechs have done that would leave MOST people shaking their heads. Kudos to you mate :)
Nice work. If you want to be extra vigilant a couple of tips for harmonic balancer install. One is leave them in a bucket of hot water / just boiled or carefully warm up with a heat gun. Two use longer bolt sourced from a bolt shop to draw in the balancer. This eliminates the risk of only grabbing a few threads at the start with factory bolt. Once the balancer is pulled in sufficiently back out the longer bolt and install the factory harmonic balancer bolt.
Good advice! I used to heat them up on the barras but they go on so easily i stopped bothering. Good tip on using the longer thread as well. I can feel if the pressure i am applying is about to do damage or not but for the less experienced it definitely could save the headache of stripping thread out of the end of the crank!
Great video mate. Really informative and appreciate you taking the time putting it together. Seeing this and some others has helped me make the decision to rebuild my FG F6 motor at home when it becomes necessary to upgrade the internals to safely accommodate high power (currently @ 350rwkw)...
Very nicely assembled. Liked the way you checked your clearances. I worked in a engine reconditioning shop for several years. Hope it is running well for you.
Great work Sol, thanks for posting up these videos and the tips as well. I'm looking at doing a NA to T conversion later on down the track and these videos show how simple the barra is. Cheers for the content, I've liked and subscribed.
Watched a bunch of barra stuff from 2013 and have no idea why your stuff missed the bus. Probably u t algorithms not hooking me up. Nice work ans explanations. Will sub after i post
That's why they did go for the LPG motors, the BA LPG compression was approx 10.7:1 which gave them con-rods which are a beam shape. The BA LPG motors are 20 yrs old today and more likely to have 4-600,000 km on them , which is risky without a compression test and start up check. You have done v well, an excellent result.
A trubosmart XR6T wastegate with the installed 12psi spring totally transformed my fg xr6t. Spool response is dramatically transformed. I use a turbosmart eboost street to control the boost.
I fitted a 12psi turbosmart to a mates car a while back just before a retune and it defintely helped a lot. Not only in being able to hold higher boost levels but also by not partially opening and dumping boost at low rpm so mid range torque was much better.
Nice mate you make that look easy, I’m no mechanic either and never pulled out a engine or ever rebuilt one but I’m thinking about doing a DIY build too
Thanks mate! honestly if you're mechanically minded you can figure this stuff out pretty easily. Just take your time and at the end of the day consult the service manual above anyone else and you should be fine
Great video, I find that as much as a Engine stand might be able to take the weight i like to put something at the end to help steady the engine and take some of the strain off by raising it a bit and having something balance it :)
I agree the stand doesn't love it. For the most part i had my engine crane holding a bit of tension on it to keep the weight off the front but was being a bit to relaxed and working with no support when working on the engine. Definitely a wise idea to have a block of wood or somthing
They were definitely on the cards but sadly apprentice wages at the time only go so far. Sub 300kw in an auto seems to not be much of an issue for stock gears fortunately. Thanks for watching!
@@Elguapo93 Engine went into the car June last year. Still stock power at the moment. I'm currently looking around for a xr6t diff and then once i've sorted that and a few other little things like a 12psi wastegate actuator and injectors ill take it to the dyno. I just helped a mate do the same mods to his and it made 300rwkw on 15psi. The stock cat and intercooler were starting to hold it back by that point.
@@stuff7853 it's crazy hey. I recently had an 07 BF xr6 turbo it was all stock then just went and put it on a dyno.. went from 200rwks to 230rwks really notice that little push in power.. Was unreal.. I honestly couldn't imagine having ones where you see them at 500rwks+ even 300-350rwks would be mental.
@@Elguapo93 I feel like around 350kw would probably be the sweet spot for a daily in one of these cars. My mates one at 300kw isn't as quick as i was expecting. Its definitely quick but feels like it needs a little more. I imagine 500+kw though would be a handful.
Hey mate what rod and piston combo did you go for with the rebuild? Looking to do a rebuild on my motor and don't wanna have to spend 2k on internals haha
Just the stock ba turbo pistons and skinny rods, i only did a recondition on this engine + valve springs so its nothing more then a standard ba turbo motor. They'll take around 300-350kw on a good tune fairly reliably but i'd advise not doing what i did if you want to make big power one day. If i could go back in time i would have delayed the engine build until i could afford forged rods and pistons because i already spent the money doing everything else properly and it would have left me with a much stronger engine
Hey mate, i don't remember off the top of my head sorry. They're just common metric bolts though. I bought them at Nubco which is a trade based hardware store and just took one of the bell housing bolts that bolt the transmission to the engine in with me as reference. You'd be able to get them at any old nut and bolt shop though. There's two sizes of holes drilled into the block. I used the bigger ones, they were probably either 12 or 16mm x 1.5 or 1.75 thread and were high tensile. Hope that helps.
Hey mate, sorry i can't remember what size they are any more. They're nothing hard to find though. All i did was take a bellhousing bolt with me to a local bolt shop and bought 4 high tensile bolts that were long enough. By memory they were something like a m12x 1.5. I got mine from nubco but they're Tasmania only. Any shop that specialises in fasteners will have them though. You probably wont have any luck somewhere like bunnings. They didn't stock any long enough when i looked.
Definitely do the rods if you can afford it. Just be sure to get the rotating assembly re-balanced if you do. I can't give you an exact figure off the top of my head but by memory it was around $1200. A good chunk of that was the cylinder head reco as it was in pretty bad shape.
@@stuff7853 Yes definitely looking into Spool Import or Manley rods and pistons, may as well do it once and proper since I'll be chasing bigger power and reliability. Am keen to have short motor sent away and have testing and work done, will take care of the rest myself. Keep up the great work, love watching comprehensive build videos including great little pointers that can make a big difference
If chasing big power its a must for reliability. They're a fun engine to build that's for sure. Thanks for the comments mate, good luck with your build!
When I built my turbo Barra , I had troubles with the oil control rings hanging up between the bore and piston and then scoring the bore when turned over . This was because of the Square edge of the deck on the block . Best way to make sure that doesn’t happen! Was to get a plumbers debur tool and chamfer top of the bore . This aided in piston assembly, sliding into the bore with no problems !
That's interesting. Mine has tapered edges on the mouth of each bore, had no issues knocking the pistons in. Rule number 1 is if they ever give any resistance to being knocked in stop and check your ring compressor. Never a bad idea to check the edges of the bore and the combustion area in the head for sharp lips after machine work though.
Tightening up the harmonic balancer had me stumped. Wouldn't the engine internals rotate? I had to remove mine on a Volvo 240 for a timing belt change, without the specific tool to stop the engine rotating I just used a rattle gun.... Both to undo and to do up. Done a few thousand KLM and all seems okay.
I threaded 2 bolts into the back of the crank then wedged a pry bar in there to hold it still. Usually if the engines in the car i'll find a way to wedge something in the ring gear of the fly wheel
Excuse my ignorance as I know little about the Barra Turbos, I do have a late 07 BF2 Fairmont Ghia Barra-190 (Love the ZF! best auto i've ever driven) in silhouette with 120,000km but I've done nothing to it, it's 100% factory std as I've got my late 07 BF2 XR8 (Love the T56!) in ego with 80,00km also 100% factory std but parts are accumulating for this. I've never had the Barra Turbo. Anyway back to my question.... I believe you said you installed BF NA cams? Is there some reason for this? as I said I know nothing about the Turbo Barras so I might be missing something obvious.
So the reason for installing the NA cams was because the turbo cams that came in the engine were destroyed. Finding replacement second hand turbo cams is a lot harder then finding na cams. I can't find reliable information on the differences between na and turbo cams if any but if there are differences they're so marginal that its not really an issue. Na bf cams were the first ones i found in good condition so that's what were used
Hey mate, sure am. These ones came from a series 2 bf motor by memory. I just grabbed them off ebay. I'm sure there's slight differences in cam profiles between the years but i've mixed and matched a few times now and not had any issues.
Bores and pistons were in great shape so i had the bores honed and reused the pistons. Crank was also in good shape. Bought new rings and bearings from ford. Checked clearances and everything was in spec, the rings didn't even need filing they were spot on out of the packet. Normally though your machine shop can advise you on what you need and then you double check it all on assembly to make sure they've made no errors.
I agree, in this case i had already installed them before i realised i needed to tear the engine down so i left them in when it went to the machine shop. Fortunately its only the cooling jackets so if i missed anything it wont do much.
I have a separate video up on the channel installing the fuel pump. Asides from the patch harness for the boost sensor and solenoid the ecu plugs straight in.
I don't have the manual handy at the moment sorry mate, you should be able to get it on ford mods in the tech docs section. It was something relatively low like 40nm +90 degree rotation as they're single use torque to yield like head bolts
@@aussiefellaelvin9139 I bought them at the ford dealership, they ordered them in for me. At the time i was told there was only 14 bolts left in stock nationwide and i bought 12. The parts guy said its possible ford might dig out some more stock but if not you might not be able to get them anymore unfortunately. I've seen a lot of people reuse them but i wouldn't personally. Other option is aftermarket rods so you can run arp hardware
Ive had a couple of people ask me if i would build them one. Makes me nervous though the idea of playing with other peoples money like that. Maybe something ill investigate later in the future
Not bad for a bloke who says he isn't A MECHANIC? I can tell you that you leave about 85% of them behind. So many mechs won't clean things and their jobs end up not working well. I spent 45 years in the motor trade and I have seen things mechs have done that would leave MOST people shaking their heads. Kudos to you mate :)
Thanks for the kind words mate! definitely not a mechanic but try to be as thorough as i can be
Nice work. If you want to be extra vigilant a couple of tips for harmonic balancer install. One is leave them in a bucket of hot water / just boiled or carefully warm up with a heat gun. Two use longer bolt sourced from a bolt shop to draw in the balancer. This eliminates the risk of only grabbing a few threads at the start with factory bolt. Once the balancer is pulled in sufficiently back out the longer bolt and install the factory harmonic balancer bolt.
Good advice! I used to heat them up on the barras but they go on so easily i stopped bothering. Good tip on using the longer thread as well. I can feel if the pressure i am applying is about to do damage or not but for the less experienced it definitely could save the headache of stripping thread out of the end of the crank!
For self taught you do absolutely brilliantly
Great videos mate. You do a great job explaining what needs to be done for guys like myself wanting to learn more about these engines.
Thanks mate! that was my exact aim with these videos to give people an idea about whats inside them
Great video mate. Really informative and appreciate you taking the time putting it together. Seeing this and some others has helped me make the decision to rebuild my FG F6 motor at home when it becomes necessary to upgrade the internals to safely accommodate high power (currently @ 350rwkw)...
Glad it was of some help mate. So long you take your time and don't take shortcuts these are easy engine to work on
Very nicely assembled. Liked the way you checked your clearances. I worked in a engine reconditioning shop for several years. Hope it is running well for you.
Thanks mate, so far so good with the engine. It's done 20,000ks now and is pushing 340rwkw
Great work Sol, thanks for posting up these videos and the tips as well. I'm looking at doing a NA to T conversion later on down the track and these videos show how simple the barra is. Cheers for the content, I've liked and subscribed.
The barra is a great platform to work on. Easily one of the easiest ive ever worked on. Glad the videos help!
Tidy job mate .Enjoyed watching . Cheers
Cheers for informative direct instructions.
Knowledge is power !!👍
Thanks for the feedback :)
Great video your really good at doing all the rebuilding man !
Nice and easy to follow instructional vid....cheers
Well done mate really enjoyed ya vid from nz.... spot on
Cleaned it up well 👍
Great job mate 👍👍👍
Great job mate ....awesome video.....I liked it very much ...👍
Thanks mate!
Great stuff mate
Watched a bunch of barra stuff from 2013 and have no idea why your stuff missed the bus. Probably u t algorithms not hooking me up. Nice work ans explanations. Will sub after i post
Thanks mate! i think mostly just because my videos are long so they don't really suit casual watching.
Keep it up. Them long vids reveal a lot of detail to help get the job done right. Appreciate it much....
@@xbgtfella Thanks mate, I appreciate it!
Thumbs up mate, well done
That's why they did go for the LPG motors, the BA LPG compression was approx 10.7:1 which gave them con-rods which are a beam shape. The BA LPG motors are 20 yrs old today and more likely to have 4-600,000 km on them , which is risky without a compression test and start up check. You have done v well, an excellent result.
A trubosmart XR6T wastegate with the installed 12psi spring totally transformed my fg xr6t. Spool response is dramatically transformed. I use a turbosmart eboost street to control the boost.
I fitted a 12psi turbosmart to a mates car a while back just before a retune and it defintely helped a lot. Not only in being able to hold higher boost levels but also by not partially opening and dumping boost at low rpm so mid range torque was much better.
Great stuff man!
Thanks mate!
Nice Video Mate I am jsut about to start on my stock ba system
Thanks mate, good luck with it!
Thanks again mate
Nice mate you make that look easy, I’m no mechanic either and never pulled out a engine or ever rebuilt one but I’m thinking about doing a DIY build too
Thanks mate! honestly if you're mechanically minded you can figure this stuff out pretty easily. Just take your time and at the end of the day consult the service manual above anyone else and you should be fine
@@stuff7853 cheers mate thanks
Great video thanks!
Great video, I find that as much as a Engine stand might be able to take the weight i like to put something at the end to help steady the engine and take some of the strain off by raising it a bit and having something balance it :)
I agree the stand doesn't love it. For the most part i had my engine crane holding a bit of tension on it to keep the weight off the front but was being a bit to relaxed and working with no support when working on the engine. Definitely a wise idea to have a block of wood or somthing
@@stuff7853 agree totally well done on the vid
Excellent!
Thanks mate!
oil pump gears are $600 bucks, would have been worth putting in. anyway, love the series. thank you
They were definitely on the cards but sadly apprentice wages at the time only go so far. Sub 300kw in an auto seems to not be much of an issue for stock gears fortunately. Thanks for watching!
Under $400 is more realistic and that's for good ones.
Would love to see it running mate.
I start it at the end of the video. Can be seen driving in this video though :) ua-cam.com/video/Fv1vudFwd3c/v-deo.html
@@stuff7853 how long ago was this build/videos made and what kind of powers it running now? Still stock?
@@Elguapo93 Engine went into the car June last year. Still stock power at the moment. I'm currently looking around for a xr6t diff and then once i've sorted that and a few other little things like a 12psi wastegate actuator and injectors ill take it to the dyno. I just helped a mate do the same mods to his and it made 300rwkw on 15psi. The stock cat and intercooler were starting to hold it back by that point.
@@stuff7853 it's crazy hey. I recently had an 07 BF xr6 turbo it was all stock then just went and put it on a dyno.. went from 200rwks to 230rwks really notice that little push in power.. Was unreal.. I honestly couldn't imagine having ones where you see them at 500rwks+ even 300-350rwks would be mental.
@@Elguapo93 I feel like around 350kw would probably be the sweet spot for a daily in one of these cars. My mates one at 300kw isn't as quick as i was expecting. Its definitely quick but feels like it needs a little more. I imagine 500+kw though would be a handful.
Hey mate what rod and piston combo did you go for with the rebuild? Looking to do a rebuild on my motor and don't wanna have to spend 2k on internals haha
Just the stock ba turbo pistons and skinny rods, i only did a recondition on this engine + valve springs so its nothing more then a standard ba turbo motor. They'll take around 300-350kw on a good tune fairly reliably but i'd advise not doing what i did if you want to make big power one day. If i could go back in time i would have delayed the engine build until i could afford forged rods and pistons because i already spent the money doing everything else properly and it would have left me with a much stronger engine
What's the tune playing at about the 9:50 mark?
Keep up the Good videos brother, are you using i camrods or H camrods?
It still has the factory rods but i guess you could say they're I beam by their shape.
hi mate great vid just wanted to ask wat size bolts did you use to mount the barra engine to the stand and where can they be purchased cheers
Hey mate, i don't remember off the top of my head sorry. They're just common metric bolts though. I bought them at Nubco which is a trade based hardware store and just took one of the bell housing bolts that bolt the transmission to the engine in with me as reference. You'd be able to get them at any old nut and bolt shop though. There's two sizes of holes drilled into the block. I used the bigger ones, they were probably either 12 or 16mm x 1.5 or 1.75 thread and were high tensile. Hope that helps.
@@stuff7853 cheers mate
👍🏼
Heard your in Tassie, which machine shop would you recommend in the Hobart area
Tas engine reconditioners, they did all the machine work on this engine and have done heads for me as well. Good blokes, know their stuff.
Hey mate. Love the content. Can you tell me where you got the bolts for the block to the engine stand and what size they were? Cheers mate
Hey mate, sorry i can't remember what size they are any more. They're nothing hard to find though. All i did was take a bellhousing bolt with me to a local bolt shop and bought 4 high tensile bolts that were long enough. By memory they were something like a m12x 1.5. I got mine from nubco but they're Tasmania only. Any shop that specialises in fasteners will have them though. You probably wont have any luck somewhere like bunnings. They didn't stock any long enough when i looked.
@@stuff7853 cheers mate I appreciate it heaps!
Awesome videos mate, about to do similar but going stronger rods etc. Do you mind me asking total cost to have block and head sent to shop for works?
Definitely do the rods if you can afford it. Just be sure to get the rotating assembly re-balanced if you do. I can't give you an exact figure off the top of my head but by memory it was around $1200. A good chunk of that was the cylinder head reco as it was in pretty bad shape.
@@stuff7853 Yes definitely looking into Spool Import or Manley rods and pistons, may as well do it once and proper since I'll be chasing bigger power and reliability. Am keen to have short motor sent away and have testing and work done, will take care of the rest myself. Keep up the great work, love watching comprehensive build videos including great little pointers that can make a big difference
If chasing big power its a must for reliability. They're a fun engine to build that's for sure. Thanks for the comments mate, good luck with your build!
Did you put sealant on the rear main cap. Easy one to be caught out by.
Certainly did, just missed it out in the video. You'd be in for a world of hurt if you missed that one haha
When I built my turbo Barra , I had troubles with the oil control rings hanging up between the bore and piston and then scoring the bore when turned over . This was because of the Square edge of the deck on the block . Best way to make sure that doesn’t happen! Was to get a plumbers debur tool and chamfer top of the bore . This aided in piston assembly, sliding into the bore with no problems !
That's interesting. Mine has tapered edges on the mouth of each bore, had no issues knocking the pistons in. Rule number 1 is if they ever give any resistance to being knocked in stop and check your ring compressor. Never a bad idea to check the edges of the bore and the combustion area in the head for sharp lips after machine work though.
Tightening up the harmonic balancer had me stumped. Wouldn't the engine internals rotate? I had to remove mine on a Volvo 240 for a timing belt change, without the specific tool to stop the engine rotating I just used a rattle gun.... Both to undo and to do up. Done a few thousand KLM and all seems okay.
I threaded 2 bolts into the back of the crank then wedged a pry bar in there to hold it still. Usually if the engines in the car i'll find a way to wedge something in the ring gear of the fly wheel
i found a ford barra cylinder head n billet n i wanto rebuild it so this is handy as
Glad it helps, cheers
Excuse my ignorance as I know little about the Barra Turbos, I do have a late 07 BF2 Fairmont Ghia Barra-190 (Love the ZF! best auto i've ever driven) in silhouette with 120,000km but I've done nothing to it, it's 100% factory std as I've got my late 07 BF2 XR8 (Love the T56!) in ego with 80,00km also 100% factory std but parts are accumulating for this. I've never had the Barra Turbo. Anyway back to my question....
I believe you said you installed BF NA cams? Is there some reason for this? as I said I know nothing about the Turbo Barras so I might be missing something obvious.
So the reason for installing the NA cams was because the turbo cams that came in the engine were destroyed. Finding replacement second hand turbo cams is a lot harder then finding na cams. I can't find reliable information on the differences between na and turbo cams if any but if there are differences they're so marginal that its not really an issue. Na bf cams were the first ones i found in good condition so that's what were used
Hey mate are you using n/a cams?
Hey mate, sure am. These ones came from a series 2 bf motor by memory. I just grabbed them off ebay. I'm sure there's slight differences in cam profiles between the years but i've mixed and matched a few times now and not had any issues.
How did you know what sizes bore piston to get? And bearing/rings?
Bores and pistons were in great shape so i had the bores honed and reused the pistons. Crank was also in good shape. Bought new rings and bearings from ford. Checked clearances and everything was in spec, the rings didn't even need filing they were spot on out of the packet. Normally though your machine shop can advise you on what you need and then you double check it all on assembly to make sure they've made no errors.
FG Intake pipes on a BA/BF setup?
asking if they will fit or saying that ive got them? everythings ba on this
Its best to give it a blow out without the gallery plugs in it , the atf is a good idea on the bores .
I agree, in this case i had already installed them before i realised i needed to tear the engine down so i left them in when it went to the machine shop. Fortunately its only the cooling jackets so if i missed anything it wont do much.
What about the fuel pump,computer. etc?
I have a separate video up on the channel installing the fuel pump. Asides from the patch harness for the boost sensor and solenoid the ecu plugs straight in.
Hey mate what’s the torque spec for the rod bolts?
I don't have the manual handy at the moment sorry mate, you should be able to get it on ford mods in the tech docs section. It was something relatively low like 40nm +90 degree rotation as they're single use torque to yield like head bolts
@@stuff7853 any chance you have a link to the rod bolts you used
@@aussiefellaelvin9139 I bought them at the ford dealership, they ordered them in for me. At the time i was told there was only 14 bolts left in stock nationwide and i bought 12. The parts guy said its possible ford might dig out some more stock but if not you might not be able to get them anymore unfortunately. I've seen a lot of people reuse them but i wouldn't personally. Other option is aftermarket rods so you can run arp hardware
i’ve got an engine that needs rebuilding if your keen
Ive had a couple of people ask me if i would build them one. Makes me nervous though the idea of playing with other peoples money like that. Maybe something ill investigate later in the future