I havent forgotten honest, its just the car keeps on going. The engine is absolutely toast. The oil pressure light is always on at hot idle and the start up knock from the big ends grows ever louder. None the less ive put about 1000 miles on the car this year, days out, lunches and a recent weekend at skegvegas. I drive with caution. Whats rather frustrating is the engine actually runs quite well, idles well, no hisitation on throttle and cruses between 60 and 70 with out issues.
None the less the engine is dying and I had to act before it was too late. But before we get to that, heres a few shots someone captured one day when we were heading out for a lunch.
You may or may not remember, not long after I bought the car. in 2009. Year 14 years ago I had plans for a lightly breathed on engine. Well I started to make it way back then. It started out with a roughly 2L capacity and over 100hp target.
It was 76mm throw, 90.5 BnPs, engle 110 with twin weber 34s. I did have it assembled and running about 10 years ago. But then life stuff happened and I couldnt afford to complete it and tidy up some issues that arrose. Its been moth balled since then. Earlier this year I dug it out and stripped it down, fortunately id preserved it well enough and inside was looking fine and dandy.
I will admit to have collecting some parts over the years, so the spec has now grown, it has 044 super mag hads, a pair of Dell 40s with the short manifolds, a lightened fly wheel and a kenedy stage 1 clutch.
My friend
jim came over, the same
jim you can see in my first post who took me to Cornwall to collect the car. We mounted the engine on the stand and stripped it down.
My first error of youth, I had fitted lock washers to the cam gear, I then failed to fold the tabs over, and you may also notice they're flanged bolts, so the wouldnt have locked anything anyway.
But as you can see, all the bits that matter are still there and shiney.
With the guts removed you can see some light fuzz in places on the case, but this cleaned off very easily.
So this being a Type 1 case, if I hadnt had the machine work done, id have binned it off and gone with a good type 3 case. But as the money is spent and its my first go with this one, ill use the type 1 block. This means I needed to close off the dipstick tube and black off the oil pressure sender port.
The dipstick was easy, I cut a stick down and bonded it in with epoxy.
I also cut down the tube in the case, to prevent any tinware interferance.
And cut the handle off
M10 Extra fine thread bolt inserted and sealed for the old port.
Off to an easy start, or so I thought. Wanting to make sure we are 100% to build up I deicded to take the OPRVs out. The plugs came out, with the usual fight. But the pistons didnt want to move. Now this took me back about 10 years to a test run. I struck the engine up, it has a high capacity oil pump. I forgot what size, on the test run it blew an oil cooler seal out. My next task was to solve that, but thats were the work stopped. Having now found the stuck OPRVs, my suspicion is that they were stuck all them years ago, rather than they stuck while the engine was in storage.
Anyway, I tried the classics, soaked in WD40, diesel, thumped some oversize wooden dowel in and pulled. No luck, I gentley warmed the block around the area and tried again. Still stuck fast, so another 24 hours of soaking. This still failed, so it was time to make an extractor. I bought some sleeve anchor bolts.
I fastened them to a length of threaded bar and wound them in. Eventually I found the right size, it gripped the piston, using a lump of metal I made the tool into a slide hammer and got them out!
This was followed up with a good clean of the bores until the pistons slid in an out using only gravity and some light oil.
The next issue to solve was the difference between a type 1 and type 3 oil cooler studs. M8 on type 1, M6 on type 3. So I made some inserts, yes I wasted a lot of stock there, but it was all I had to hand at the time.
Trimmed down and bonded in.
End of the crank needed a polish up as it had surface rust, luckily this isnt a bearing face, just the surface the fan sits on.
I then pressed on with the long block rebuild. The cam gear was removed, and then refitted with out the tab washers. I used loctite and the correct torque.
Id forgotten how close the rods get to the cam!
I also reminded myself of roughly where I was heading. Nearly a 9:1 CR should improve the power output.
Everything had a visit to the parts washer for thorough clean.
Oil cooler installed with long bolts bonded in, before I fitted the barrels and then remembered there isnt room to do this after.
Now we get into the world of new. I knew I needed bolt up rocker arms, but I hadnt bought any in the earlier build. And to be honest Id forgotten I had them, Swivel feet too!
So I went a read about how to set them up, got hold of some extra shims and set about adjusting them. The first issue I had was that pedistals needed spacers so that the valves would actually close, owed to the new feet. So I made some test pieces on the lathe, based on some rough measurments id taken.
My parting off needs work.
Mocked up with the shims, its fairly close, I need to back the studs out a touch to give me more thread. And then I need to measure the geometry.
Running in parallel to this, I assesed, repaired, adjusted the tinware and sent it into the powder coaters. As always I dressed the casting marks off the fan housing.
Everything came back well, other than the belt housing.
This is as far as Ive got to since I started in late April. Ive then had many summer reasons not to touch it again. But they're starting to run out and ill get back on it shortly.
