The 200TDi engine has an oil cooler which sits next to the radiator and is connected to the oil filter housing by a couple of flexible pipes.  The oil cooler is needed because the turbo allows a large amount of heat from the exhaust manifold to be transferred into the oil which needs to be lost somehow (the heat, I mean, not the oil!).  Since I’m fitting the TDi engine in non-turbo form I won’t need the oil cooler (or even a fan for that matter!) so the thermostat in the oil filter housing needs to be removed and the pipe connections blanked off.

Taking the thermostat out of the housing - so the oil will pass in the same direction regardless of temperature. Blanking off the pipe fittings is not so easy.  The holes on my newer engine are threaded M20x1.5 and finding an off-the-shelf plug isn’t easy.  Also, as well as the thread, the pipe connections protrude past the threads into a smaller hole with a rubber O-ring.  I imagine this is quite important to make a proper seal. Turning the plug While contemplating the problem I noticed a small offcut of 1" brass round bar on the shelf… so I decided to have a go a making a plug on the lathe.  This involved some serious setting up:  Most important job was to replace the shear pin that I managed to break by driving the carriage into the headstock (because I’m an idiot!).  It took a good hour to get the lead screw gears changed to the right ratios, after which I took ages setting up the tools and so on…

The two plugs - different sizes because of how I parted them off  …anyway, it took a few hours but I did it in the end!  Have ordered some hexagonal brass bar in case I need to do this sort of thing again.  There wasn’t much of anything to grip in the mill so I couldn’t do much about the spanner-unfriendliness issues.  In the end I just gripped the plugs in the vice and screwed them in. It’s not like they need to come out again!

 In place in the filter housing Here’s an extreme close-up from the inside of the filter.  Hopefully shows how it engages into the seal. So, unless it all leaks, that’s one more task complete on the New Engine Project.  Good news.  Bad news is that I tried turning the engine over with the 24v starter (using The Duke’s batteries and my new jump leads) this weekend.  The starter just doesn’t seem to be up to the job.  It struggled to turn the engine over, probably due to the higher compression ratio of the diesel.  Another reason to move away from the 24v dream to 12v mediocrity…