Dave3066
Well-Known Member
2 weeks after the head came off the engine is back together and running smoothly. The good Lady also has a fresh MOT In the words of the MOT tester "you won't be surprised to hear she passed".
It's taken a bit longer than I'd planned though. I had hoped to have the head back last weekend to give me a full week to prep for the MOT. As it happened, worn valve guides delayed the head coming back from the machine shop. I got the call on the Wednesday that the guides were worn to excess, I called Wins for a new set of guides hoping they might get there early enough on the following Friday so I could have the head back. Unfortunately the guides didn't arrive until late afternoon on the Friday so I had to wait until the following Monday to get the head back. It was worth the wait though.
The valve seats were cut to the new valves. The shop vacuum checked the exhaust valves so no need to lap in. The inlets were lapped in as it's not so easy vacuum checking them with the integral inlet manifold.
No sign of valve seat recession, all valves looking like these
Everything got removed from the head so I could fit new gaskets all round. How many have looked in here?
Including removing one of the inlet manifold top cover bolts that sheared. These bolts are a No 10 UNC with the long ones 1 1/4" and the shorter ones 7/8". Took me a while to source replacements but I got there eventually. I also bought some equivalent nuts to extract the sheared bolt
Worked a treat
I spent most evenings last week rebuilding the head and fitting it back on to the block. My plan was to do the valve clearances on Friday, complete the rebuild and start her up on Saturday. The old saying "no plan survives contact with the enemy" held true as ever. It took me three attempts to sort the valve clearances. Half of them were zero, and all you can do with that is re-shim to the maximum value (0.015 exhaust and 0.010 for inlet) and check again. The first attempt at that left a couple still with zero clearance, so a further re-shim was needed. That opened up most to 0.005, which is still too tight so a third re-shim was required. I did all this with the head on the block, using some drilled out nuts as distance pieces.
Once that was sorted the remainder of the ancilliaries were refitted and the engine was hand cranked to make sure everything turned freely. That was Saturday. I'd taken Monday (today) off to take the car in for its MOT, but I also wanted to sort out the rather crusty bottom of the right hand D post. There had been water getting in that side for a while and it was a definite MOT failure point so it was time to bite the bullet and go poking around. As always the extent of corrosion is always far more than it looks. Chop-chop.....
So a couple of new bits knocked up and tacked in. That was Sunday morning (ish)....and then I ran out of welding gas.....
Up early this morning to get some more gas and the job was finished by around 10 this morning. Phew. Delivered to local garage for MOT and picked up at 5 with a nice new ticket YAY!
Dave
It's taken a bit longer than I'd planned though. I had hoped to have the head back last weekend to give me a full week to prep for the MOT. As it happened, worn valve guides delayed the head coming back from the machine shop. I got the call on the Wednesday that the guides were worn to excess, I called Wins for a new set of guides hoping they might get there early enough on the following Friday so I could have the head back. Unfortunately the guides didn't arrive until late afternoon on the Friday so I had to wait until the following Monday to get the head back. It was worth the wait though.
The valve seats were cut to the new valves. The shop vacuum checked the exhaust valves so no need to lap in. The inlets were lapped in as it's not so easy vacuum checking them with the integral inlet manifold.
No sign of valve seat recession, all valves looking like these
Everything got removed from the head so I could fit new gaskets all round. How many have looked in here?
Including removing one of the inlet manifold top cover bolts that sheared. These bolts are a No 10 UNC with the long ones 1 1/4" and the shorter ones 7/8". Took me a while to source replacements but I got there eventually. I also bought some equivalent nuts to extract the sheared bolt
Worked a treat
I spent most evenings last week rebuilding the head and fitting it back on to the block. My plan was to do the valve clearances on Friday, complete the rebuild and start her up on Saturday. The old saying "no plan survives contact with the enemy" held true as ever. It took me three attempts to sort the valve clearances. Half of them were zero, and all you can do with that is re-shim to the maximum value (0.015 exhaust and 0.010 for inlet) and check again. The first attempt at that left a couple still with zero clearance, so a further re-shim was needed. That opened up most to 0.005, which is still too tight so a third re-shim was required. I did all this with the head on the block, using some drilled out nuts as distance pieces.
Once that was sorted the remainder of the ancilliaries were refitted and the engine was hand cranked to make sure everything turned freely. That was Saturday. I'd taken Monday (today) off to take the car in for its MOT, but I also wanted to sort out the rather crusty bottom of the right hand D post. There had been water getting in that side for a while and it was a definite MOT failure point so it was time to bite the bullet and go poking around. As always the extent of corrosion is always far more than it looks. Chop-chop.....
So a couple of new bits knocked up and tacked in. That was Sunday morning (ish)....and then I ran out of welding gas.....
Up early this morning to get some more gas and the job was finished by around 10 this morning. Phew. Delivered to local garage for MOT and picked up at 5 with a nice new ticket YAY!
Dave