Kia repair

I have a ‘To-Do’ list that stretches from here to the middle of next year at the moment and I’m trying to keep a lot of balls in the air. One of the priorities is still, of course, my Kia which has been a non-runner since June and has been standing with a broken down engine for a couple of months or so.

I got hold of a replacement engine from near San Sebastian in Spain that I’m trusting will be OK as the supplier, a highly reputable breaker’s yard that has been going since 1994 and has an incredibly impressive operation, said that when removed from the donor vehicle, another automatic Sportage like mine, it was running just fine.

My mechanic has had it at his premises for a couple of weeks and it’s now time to think about getting things moving. The engine had some light external corrosion – the result of salt on the roads my mechanic said which he has often seen in the past – and I went over there on Thursday to clean it up ready for installation.

The light corrosion on the front and rear of the cast iron block was quite easy to deal with. It was just a matter of going over it with a rotating wire brush in an electric drill, blowing off the dust and giving it a coat of satin finish black special metal paint that doesn’t require any undercoat. The corrosion on the aluminium parts such as the inlet manifold and valve and thermostat covers is too bad to bother about and we’ll just swap those and a few other parts with the ones from the existing engine.

Then it was time to think about what else should be replaced. The timing belt that comes as a complete kit with a new water pump was top of the list as we have no information on whether this has been done recently on the replacement engine or not. And although we fitted a replacement accessory driving belt when Victor and I replaced the steering pump when I first acquired my Kia, that was over four years ago and it would be a false economy to re-use it, so I also ordered one of those.

Then, as he’ll be moving over the inlet manifold and valve and thermostat covers from the existing engine, I ordered new gaskets for those, plus new air, oil and fuel filters. My mechanic said that as they’re inaccessible when the engine is mounted and we have no knowledge of their history, the four glow plugs should also be replaced even if the supplier said that the engine was running OK, so I went ahead and ordered them too.

So that was it – for now. He also said that we should replace the thermostat but I can’t see the point of that if it’s working OK – in any case, the existing one was so we can always use that and it’s easy enough to get to when the engine’s in place.

I’m now waiting for the order to arrive which it should do next week. Work on swapping the engines over won’t start straight away as I’m in no immediate hurry and my mechanic has other work which he can fit it in with.

Then when it’s done it’ll be nice to think that the Kia will be at least back to how it was before it went pear-shaped, if not better, which will leave me with the decision as to which of the two vehicles I’ll choose to keep. I’ve already had thoughts about that but I’ll leave sharing them to a later date.