OM617 Soft Build - Timing chain and engine reseal

The wagon motor was sold and to set it right for the car it was going in, a soft rebuild and resealing was in order with buyer supplied parts.

Mileage of motor when pulled for reseal/build.

I hadn't taken a lot of pictures this go around, as I was a bit preoccupied getting this motor together and doing the chain is a bit of a pain. Even with proper tooling.

Here's the old tensioner rail - I will make a note here, none of the rails had any brittleness whatsoever. This rail looks much worse than it really was, I dropped it a few times to check for brittleness and this is all that happened, tons of life left.

I made a couple marks of the old chain and sprocket and rotated the motor a few times to see alignment. I then ziptie the chain to the sprocket for the next step. 

Which is 1) stuffing towels everywhere so pieces don't fall into the motor and then 2) griding off the peened ends of the chain.

I then install my temporary link and attach my new chain to the old.

No pictures of the process, because I keep both the new and old chain continuously running along the cam sprocket so I'm not losing chain tension or dropping the chain into depths that it shouldn't be in. Here's a pic of the crank at TDC.

Check out that perfect top/bottom alignment with the new chain.

Ample use of zipties is appropriate in not screwing your chain running.

Here's the chain crimper doing it's work.

Nicely peened chain.

I have a pic or two of the old chain rail that came out of this motor, it was definitely worn in. I also forgot to take pictures of the injection pump being pulled out and retimed at 15* ATDC (with lock pin).

Lower oil pan was resealed. New valve cover gasket, new fuel/oil filters, water pump resealed, front oil seal, the thermostat housing is not installed as of yet as I'm needing to find the hose I use to make a bypass hose. That will be renewed and the motor ready for pick up.

Edit: 2/9/16 - found my bypass hose and finished assembly of the motor.