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BMC 1.8 Servicing


Peter Thornton

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Our share boat (ex ownerships Sunseeker) has a BMC 1.8. We’ve recently (about 3000 hours ago) had a new head and had the injectors and pump serviced about 1500 hours ago.

She is currently running well and we do about 800 hours a year. We have a full engine service over the Winter and a couple of oil and filter changes in between (200 - 300 hours)

Is there anything we should be doing proactively, or do we just wait until problems occur and/or it starts smoking more? Difficult to judge of course.

I’m particularly wondering about the injectors. We did leave them too long last time and I wonder if there is a recommended interval between servicing of these and the pump?

Any other thoughts would be welcome ..........

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With regular oil changes these sort of hours are no problem.

The cylinder head should be torqued down, I do mine every 1000 hours and the tappets reset.

The routine service for these engines was more severe but in my experience unnecessarily severe.

The one item that I check regularly is to listen to the timing chain carefully as the throttle is cracked open. It is a long chain and prone to wearing out the adjuster and slack take up slipper. 

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5 hours ago, Peter Thornton said:

......................and a couple of oil and filter changes in between (200 - 300 hours)

 

If you go as much as 300 hours between oil and filter changes, then that is double twice what the original BMC manual specified for the engine, (150 hours).

 

Probably not disastrous, but also not 100% ideal.

 

I think you should probably do more oil changes to stick closer to the BMC specified interval, if you want maximum continued life with no issues..

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It is usually a worn camshaft that determines the end for a BMC 1.8.

 

We had the Turkish sourced Calcutt BMC 1.8 in my old shareboat reach over 13,000 hours before it became was replaced with a Beta 43.

 

The Beta is a much better engine, quieter, more torque, better fuel consumption and examples with over 20,000 hours on thrm can be observed in plant equipment.

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2 minutes ago, cuthound said:

It is usually a worn camshaft that determines the end for a BMC 1.8.

 

We had the Turkish sourced Calcutt BMC 1.8 in my old shareboat reach over 13,000 hours before it became was replaced with a Beta 43.

 

The Beta is a much better engine, quieter, more torque, better fuel consumption and examples with over 20,000 hours on thrm can be observed in plant equipment.

We’ve been through that one! We had a new camshaft etc about 5,000 hours ago.

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24 minutes ago, Boater Sam said:

Premature cam and follower wear is a sign of lack of clean engine oil.

Earlier Ford OHC engines, Pinto, suffered badly from cam wear, my oppo had one in which he changed the oil regularly, it did over 260,000 miles before he sold it.

Yes, that’s what I thought. That was the point at which the syndicate was just setting down after the Ownerships collapse and from then on we have changed oil at regular intervals. 

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1 hour ago, Boater Sam said:

Premature cam and follower wear is a sign of lack of clean engine oil.

Earlier Ford OHC engines, Pinto, suffered badly from cam wear, my oppo had one in which he changed the oil regularly, it did over 260,000 miles before he sold it.

 

Assuming a car travels at an averge of 30mph over its life, that equates to 8667 hours,  or about 1 years continuous running.

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I always work on the 30miles in one hour average too.

So a boat engine that has done 10,000 hours has run the equivalent of 300.000  miles. A fair usage factor. Of course its hard to stress a canal boat engine, but easy to neglect it.

The proof of the good oil changing regime was brought home to me many years ago.

Our small Citroen vans in our fleet all did over 400,000 miles in their lives before we scrapped them, My personal van did over 600,000 miles.

None of them had a new engine fitted, ever. Oil is still cheap compared to engine rebuilds.

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The main problem with the Pinto was a blockage in the camshaft spray bar caused by lax oil changes,bloody good engines if treated well,I bought a kit car that had been standing for a couple of years and after a recommended service and oil change plus a new spray bar,it fired up third time on the starter.???

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1 hour ago, Ian F B said:

The main problem with the Pinto was a blockage in the camshaft spray bar caused by lax oil changes,bloody good engines if treated well,I bought a kit car that had been standing for a couple of years and after a recommended service and oil change plus a new spray bar,it fired up third time on the starter.???

It was recommended to renew the oil spray bar at major services, cheap enough. They were a good strong engine.

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  • 2 months later...

A friend of mine had an early Ford OHC and he was advised to change the oil at 3K intervals. It went for years without issue. I followed the same principle with my Volvo 740 and when I took the camshaft cover off at 167K there wasn't a trace of gunk on the valve gear, head or the cover.

 

Oh, on my BMC 1..8 I do an oil/filter change at 150 hours   

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