Citroen XM Forum

do we think I should finish the work and polish the rocker covers, paint them both satin black, satin Red or Manderin metallic red to match the engine bay?.

The flue rails are polished alloy now and im just going with cleaned block and heads, no paint and no polishing, I think the rough cast surface will radiate heat better than polished and wont require any maintaining other than a dust over with a light oil every now and again.

In my head at the moment I favour polished intake manifold, throttle body and fuel rails with body coloured rocker covers to match the body coloured gearbox top cover I did a few years back and engine bay, all the covers are black plastic which ties in with all the other black plastic air boxes etc. and I will probably add a few red silicone breather hoses and vac lines just to tie in with the Citroen logo on the engine cover and HT leads...........decisions.

PRV front cam box by Deanxm, on Flickr

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What about satin black but the two sets of three raised lines bare metal. Would link in with the cover then.

russ92xmsed wrote:What about satin black but the two sets of three raised lines bare metal. Would link in with the cover then.

Classy suggestion.

Rob

Its something i have thought about and the raised bars have been filed back and sanded to give a square flat face, i agree it would look nice but when i had that idea i was going to have it with those bits polished to go with polished fuel rails and a polished rear rocker cover, cleaned bare alloy intake and heads with a flat black block, i would need to polish the timing chain cover though and i think it would all tie together nicely.

its a tricky engine to paint as the heads bolt to the block and then the cam chain cover bolts on to the end of the engine over the end of the block and heads, the rocker cover then sits on top of the head and timing cover. For neatness it would look good all flat black with satin black rocker covers or polished covers but im not super keen about painting the block.............

I did have the idea of all bare alloy or all flat black with body coloured rocker covers, i think it would look nice but maybe too flash for an old 90's euro, subtle details would probably be more in keeping with the vehicle and a little less chav..........

Don't paint the block and do the covers either satin black or a nice fiery red to go with a dustbin lid sized turbo. Thinking about it, there's probably space to fit a couple of smaller ones by the side of the block, front and rear.

You know you want to.

Not turbo's i dont Will, the beauty of a 90deg bank angle is there is lots of space in the valley once you bin the stupid waterpump out of the way freeing up belt space for other uses. Thats not for this engine though.

Im going off the boost idea though, i have been reading about different tuning options for the PRV, the 24v is not a favourite and looking at the top end i can see why they are delicate there. its just badly designed and the exhaust rockers are overloaded, i can see exactly the thinking behind the 24v valve gear layout now i fiddled with the 12v but it wansnt enough to do the job.

There are lots of people who have tuned the 12v PRV, the 3.0 heads dont flow great on the exhaust ports which are too small due to the required low manifold positioning, there are 12v's that have had upped compression, more agressive cams, aftermarket ecu and exhaust that are putting out around 230hp at the crank, obviously in blown form they have been up to well above 500hp but thats outside of my budget for starters and refinement requirements.

This engine will just be stock with some small alterations, the high miles lump which i would guess will be well worn will be played with a lot but i want to do a lot more reading on the subject first and look at all the other different versions of the engine, especially the 2.8 (B28E?) heads and the exhaust ports.

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That is all very exciting guys but do not forget when the plastic cover is fitted on the XM all you can really see of the engine is the front rocker cover!! Regards, Matthew T.

I dont think engine covers can cure OCD Matthew

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