Peddle Box Blues

Two posts in one day again. This post is by way of an antidote to the previous one and has a much happier ending.

Whilst the engine has been away, on and off, there has been precious little progress on the rest of the car, so I decided to get to work on some of the ancillaries. The peddle box looked like a good place to start. This is what it looked like when I got the car:

 

 

 

Pretty grim as you can see. One of the peddles was damaged when someone tried to remove the pivot, (which fortunately was in one of the boxes of odds and sods) and the remains of the spindle is seized into the shaft. The spindle had been cut in half to get the peddles out of the box.

 

 

Anyhow, it all cleaned up fine in Deox-C and the peddle was rewelded and straightened easily.

 



 

 

 

Off to the powder coaters who gave it a light blast, zinced it and then coated it

 

Then re assembly with new spindles

Needs a little fettling to get the accelerator spindle right and, on reflection, I will probably get a new lubrication plate, as the old one is not readable and kind of spoils the effect, but on the whole I am rather pleased with it.





A quick update to the peddle box:

I did, in the end, get a new lube plate, from David Gerald's.

 

Senility, new glasses and a bit of luck

This is a bit embarrassing so I am going to put it down to senility and poor eyesight.

So, I got the block back from the engineers. They managed to get the broken bolt out, but had to Helicoil the threads. So far, so good.

I have never really been happy with the state of the deck; there was some rust pitting around the waterways, probably either where the engine had been stored with water remaining in the block or where it had been run for a prolonged period with no rust inhibitor in the water. Also, with back and forth to the engineers in the boot, I had managed to  put a healthy scratch in the top. So I decided ot get the deck skimmed before the final assembly.

6 thou off and it looked reasonable, not perfect but OK. So I ordered a load of new bits from Burton Power, new bolts gaskets, locking washers etc. and I was ready to go. I had to wait a whole week before I could get on with the rebuild, the last thing to do was to give the whole thing one final clean up.

I started on the bores, which had gathered a bit of dirt over the last few months. They all cleaned up beautifully, except No. 1 which had something dried onto it. I wiped at it with an oily rag, but it stayed on. I wiped it with carb cleaner and still it stayed on. Engine cleaner, nope. I scraped it with a finger nail and no luck. I tentatively poked it with a screwdriver ...hmmm.

I went and got my new reading glasses and peered at it. I shone my new, super-dooper, retina burning LED torch at it......and it turns out it was not a mark at all, but a bloody great gouge out the wall of the bore, about 5mm across, that I had completely mistaken for a bit of dirt. Worse still, there was another imperfection, a long scrape, parallel to the piston rings, about an inch down the bore, and deep enough to possibly catch the edge of the top ring.

I went in and had a cup of tea; when I came out and looked at it again it was still there.

So there we are. The block has been bored out to +90thou, which is as far as one can go. It has a dirty great gouge in the No. 1 bore, which I, being clearly senile and partially blind, had missed for the last 9 months and was now, probably useless.  In despair I headed for the drinks cupboard, grabbed a G and T and logged on to E bay to see how much a second hand Crossflow was going to be. And there, freshly listed, was a barely used, +90 thou over bored, 711M block, 35 minutes drive away.

That was definitely going to be MINE!

Saw it, bought it, cleaned it and am now in the middle of a dry build using all the new bits from my engine. I am not going to prejudice the outcome by even mentioning anything else about it till its finished and ready to install.

Except,

It might be black now.

My eye has developed a twitch.

In which we make a bit of progress with the block and then have a bit of a bad day

Well, its now almost the end of March and, although I have almost nothing to add, I feel the urge to post something.

So, at Christmas I was ready to re strip the engine and start again. Before I did that however, I stripped and painted the head, using the grinder-mounted wire brush. I took the last few bits off with a small drill brush, then cleaned with "Marine Clean", the POR 15 cleaning agent, then with carb cleaner and then with Deox C gel to get any remaining rust, rinsed, dried and then a final clean with cellulose thinners. This is what the end result looks like

After 1 coat of POR 15 grey and 2 of Light Admiralty Grey engine paint from "Stationary Engine Parts" it looked like this.

I rather liked the effect, but having already made a start stripping the block again, I stuck with it and stripped the engine, right back to the bare block. I started to clean off the previous coats of POR15 and engine enamal, but it was a very difficult job, even with the grinder-mounted wire brush, so, in the end I sent it off to a local engineering shop to get the block stripped. The end result wasnt very good ultimately, so I finished it off with the brush.  I took out all the oilway plugs and cleaned the oil ways through with a brush. Then I cleaned it with "Marine Clean", petrol, and with carb cleaner and then repainted it the same as the head:

I then set about verifying that the engine was in spec.

I measured up the crank and found that it was 10thou under. This tied in with the markings on the main bearings which were 10thou over sized. Good start.

But, re assembling the crank in the block to check the bearing clearences, I found that the crank did not turn completely freely in the journals; there was a very slight resistance at one point on the rotation. Closer examination of the shells showed a very slight, and uneven shine on the surface.

Checking on the Marhle Damage Brochure (a very useful resource here), it looked suspiciously like either the crank was ground off-centre, or was bent, or the block was warped due to over heating.

With more than a little trepidation, I took the block and crank back to the engineers to get them checked. It turned out the crank was "out" and needed regrinding an additional 10thou over to rectify it. And thats where we are to date, waiting for the phone call from the engineers to say come and pick it up.

Amazing how fast three months gets away from you.

Right...a little update.

I got the block back this week and all is now well, however, I have had a BAD day

The plan was to soak the water ways with Deox-C to get rid of the corrosion and improve cooling, before re assembly. Pretty simple Huh? This is a great illustration of how a job can go rapidly down hill!

Cunningly (I thought) I was going to re-attach the old water pump to seal the front port, unfortunately, I couldn't find the bolts for the pump. I had put them somewhere safe, in a Zip-Lock bag all labled up, but couldnt find the bag. No problem, plan "B" make up a plate to seal the front, out of 3-ply instead. Brilliant.

Bolted it on with a squeeze of Blue Hylomar, just to stop the leaks. Tighened up the last bolt ...................and the head snapped off.

Deep breath.

OK I have some extractors.

2.5mm drill to take the extractor, annnnnd....it snapped

(Ha! I have a spare!)

It snapped too!

Fine, plenty of room in the stud, Ill go for a 3.5 and use the next size up extractor

It also snapped

I have spare of that too, but by now I am a little cross, so I have a cup of tea.

Using the last drill bit, I manage to drill a reasonably central hole in the bolt. The extractor even fits.....and then ........it snapped off in the hole.

So now I have a siezed in broken off bolt, in one of the bolt holes for the water pump and embeded in the bolt a high carbon steel extractor. Which of course I cant drill out because its HCS. And now the block has to go back to the engineers to get the bolt out

Words fail me