- Joined
- 3 May 2004
- Posts
- 17,705
- Location
- Kapitalist Republik of Surrey
Last night I took the engine up to Bury St. Edmonds to Nervous Bob. A bit of background on the guy - he's worked on small Ford engines (sidevalves) most of his life with Belcher Engineering and Small Ford Spares. He's been hoarding parts for the last decade or so and he's brought in container loads of flathead V8s and vintage ford tin from the US so he can go into business full time building engines and dealing parts. His place looks like an American scrapyard, literally loaded with stuff everywhere and he's got everything. Anyway, if you want any early Ford stuff or a flattie, Model A, B or T engine - he's your man!
Onto more greasy things!
We stripped the bottom end off the engine to have a quick look. First I'll point out that I Blue Hylomar'd the sump gasket and it's always leaked like hell. When we came to try and get the sump off it was stuck solid and took a lot of chipping and levering to get it off so Blue Hylomar gets my thumbs down of disapproval. It's crap. I've used it on the waterworks in the past and it was fine but oil gets past it.
The first comment Bob made was the bores were in good condition and visually they are. The step at the top of the bore where the ring wears up to was really minimal as I'd observed before. We took the big end off and the cap side of it was in ok condition but was worn. The rod side of it was knacked completely. My daily abuse has done it no good and smashed up all the white metal. Check out this for a bit of damage:
No wonder the oil pressure was dropping off
;D
Apparently that's quite normal and these engines are so bulletproof they will run like that with near zero oil pressure for thousands of miles until eventually the damage cracks out to the edge and the oil stops going round the engine! There's no oil filter in this engine so all the metallic sludge from that sits in the bottom of the sump! I could see damage up the sides of the white metal surface on one of the other rods and they all had loads of end float so it's a new bottom end time. The rods can be re-metalled and the crank will be ground.
Up at the top end Bob also mentioned the pistons were in very good condition and was surprised they weren't new when I put them in. Normally the rings wear away the piston and become loose. Mine showed no signs of that, again, what I had observed before when I did the build. What I didn't know was this, here's the top piston ring:
Looked fine to me, no scorching, gaps were a bit wide when in the bores but I assumed that was because it's an old timey engine.
Close up:
On a new ring the word 'Top' sits right in the middle of the ring. Here you can see it's worn right down to the top of the T!!! I think we found the oil problems! It's about 1mm of wear on the thickness of the ring.
So the decision was made not to rebore it. I've got him to give it a good long hone and fit a new set of rings. New oversize pistons are expensive at £120 plus VAT and would only take it out to 1220cc from 1172cc so it's not as if it would be a massive gain in size. Because it's not being bored the valves don't need to come out so I also decided not to get the block skimmed down.
It's all good. It keeps the original flavour of the project which was budget power the old way. The rods are going to be expensive but it'll be peace of mind and it'll hold good oil pressure. I was worrying about the cost of the petrol getting up to him but it was a worthwhile trip and it's saved me a packet in not doing un-necessary work.
Onto more greasy things!
We stripped the bottom end off the engine to have a quick look. First I'll point out that I Blue Hylomar'd the sump gasket and it's always leaked like hell. When we came to try and get the sump off it was stuck solid and took a lot of chipping and levering to get it off so Blue Hylomar gets my thumbs down of disapproval. It's crap. I've used it on the waterworks in the past and it was fine but oil gets past it.
The first comment Bob made was the bores were in good condition and visually they are. The step at the top of the bore where the ring wears up to was really minimal as I'd observed before. We took the big end off and the cap side of it was in ok condition but was worn. The rod side of it was knacked completely. My daily abuse has done it no good and smashed up all the white metal. Check out this for a bit of damage:
No wonder the oil pressure was dropping off
;DApparently that's quite normal and these engines are so bulletproof they will run like that with near zero oil pressure for thousands of miles until eventually the damage cracks out to the edge and the oil stops going round the engine! There's no oil filter in this engine so all the metallic sludge from that sits in the bottom of the sump! I could see damage up the sides of the white metal surface on one of the other rods and they all had loads of end float so it's a new bottom end time. The rods can be re-metalled and the crank will be ground.
Up at the top end Bob also mentioned the pistons were in very good condition and was surprised they weren't new when I put them in. Normally the rings wear away the piston and become loose. Mine showed no signs of that, again, what I had observed before when I did the build. What I didn't know was this, here's the top piston ring:
Looked fine to me, no scorching, gaps were a bit wide when in the bores but I assumed that was because it's an old timey engine.
Close up:
On a new ring the word 'Top' sits right in the middle of the ring. Here you can see it's worn right down to the top of the T!!! I think we found the oil problems! It's about 1mm of wear on the thickness of the ring.
So the decision was made not to rebore it. I've got him to give it a good long hone and fit a new set of rings. New oversize pistons are expensive at £120 plus VAT and would only take it out to 1220cc from 1172cc so it's not as if it would be a massive gain in size. Because it's not being bored the valves don't need to come out so I also decided not to get the block skimmed down.
It's all good. It keeps the original flavour of the project which was budget power the old way. The rods are going to be expensive but it'll be peace of mind and it'll hold good oil pressure. I was worrying about the cost of the petrol getting up to him but it was a worthwhile trip and it's saved me a packet in not doing un-necessary work.
