Building a hot vintage engine with Jonny69

[Jonny69]

Well that could be seriously cool. And it's ok to hotlink images to it? I won't be taking the pee, maximum size will be 640x480 for stuff like this.

[Jonny69]

Didn't get round to doing much this weekend but had second thoughts about the welds in the head. Took my comically underpowered cheapo fake Dremel to the welds and cleaned them up. Got through loads of wheels, grinding stones, a miniature burr and managed to destroy both the cheap brass collets and the arbors that the grinding wheels mount on. Never mind, it made a good job of them and here's my mate Chris lending a hand:



Little did he know he'd later end up in hospital with a chunk of this in his eye. It had gone rusty so they had to dig out not only the chunk of metal but a piece of his eye where the rust had set in

So there's my safety tip for today folks, when you do this make sure you squint...

[Jonny69]

Last night I got in the ports with the cut down valve guide and boy does it make a difference. With the stock pointy ones the port is really blocked up but with the cut down jobbies you can stick your finger in the port and out the valve hole!

Meanwhile continuing my kitchen theme I took some pictures of the goodies that turned up before the weekend. Here on the microwave we have the valve springs:



The one on the left is the uprated one, it's about 3/4" longer than the original and a lot stiffer. This is good because it'll put a lot more preload on the valve when it's shut and prevent any blowby with the increased flow and compression. This was a problem even in standard form because I could turn some of the valves on their seats with the end of my thumb. This said to me they weren't very tightly closed.

They came in the most awesome dog eared box pictured here on the chopping board next to the courgette:



Finally, and apparently hovering over the dishwasher is one of the adjustable tappets next to an original solid one. They were expensive but when you see the amount of work in them you do have to wonder how they did them at that price:



They will adjust right out so can accomodate the extra lift on the cam and will make doing the clearances much easier than grinding the valve stems or seats.

These will be the last lot of pictures until I get back off holiday unfortunately but the aim is to get it back in and running ready for the Nats. Will probably use the standard intake and exhaust manifolds at first then upgrade to the Aquaplane bits when I have time to fettle the linkages and rebuild the carbs. Clock is ticking...

[Jonny69]

Valve grinding was tonights job. It's been a while since I last did this and I remember it was one of those jobs to put off because of the blisters and bruised hands that follow. Anyway enough of my complaining and on with the build...

My local spares shop had this old timey tub of valve grinding paste sitting on their shelf for what looked like about 50 years. I bought it over a decade ago and it sits on my shelf becoming history awaiting my next engine build. You use so little of it I doubt I will ever get through it!



You get coarse paste at one end and fine at the other. To apply it you need a stick with a sucker on the end which you can get for about 50p from any good spares shop or alternatively Halfords does one which comes with two little tubs of grinding paste for £2.99:



The paste is like grease with grit in it:



And you apply it with a mucky finger:



You do this with the springs off so the valves are free to move. Apply some coarse paste to the valve seat and stick the sucker to the top of the valve:



Then twizzle the stick back and forth between your palms, lift the valve out, turn it round a bit, repeat and so on until you've taken the valve and seat back to clean metal and there is no pitting:



Then repeat with the fine paste which takes the surface down to a smooth finish and clean it all off thoroughly:



Mine were particularly bad so this took me about 2 hours all in, plus the valve guides drop out so I had to put all the valve springs in to hold them in. I did a simple test to see if it had worked. I pressed down on the valve lightly with my thumb, puckered up and blew into the port as hard as I could. No leaks!

Today my hands are bruised to hell but surprisingly no blisters

[Darrin]

Dude, you ARE going old skool on this, aren't you?

[Jonny69]

Hell yeah

Funny I posted this up on the HAMB which is full of old timer hotrodders and they were like "dang I just opened my checkbook and bought the bits, you're doing it properly kid!!!"

[Jonny69]

Remembered the camera this time so on with the valve assembly. Before I put the valves in I want to scrape off the debris that forms on them. It's a kind of carbon build up but there was quite a lot on some of the valves. I used the Dremel at first but it didn't cut through it so moved onto a blunt chisel that got through the scale but didn't cut the valve:



The adjustment for the tappet is here on the top. This is shown with the cam lobe up, when it's down this is all down the hole:



Getting the new spring in is a bit awkward. They are longer than the originals and a lot stiffer so I reckon the stock springs could be forced in by hand. Not these. With the valve up I hooked the end of the spring over the bottom of the stem and over the valve guide. The spring holds that in place too:



Then I get the cup on the bottom of the spring compressor round the bottom of the spring and with all my strength yank the spring up into place. This is a sitting on the floor job with the engine clamped between your legs and your arms round it:



Then to get the spring cup on the bottom of the valve it's a matter of jam the compressor between two bottom coils and compress the spring as normal so I can slot the cup in





I tried loads of ways to try and do the valve clearances. The problem is in the valve closed position the securing nut on the adjuster is buried down the tappet bore. The other problem is the nuts are very thin and all my spanners were too thick to get in there. The only way I could see round this was to modify a couple of spanners. Got the grinder out and minimised them a bit.

Before:



After:



This was better but to tighten them up full the valve needs to be in the open position and then the hole through the tappet is out of reach so I can't stop it turning in the bore. After much head scratching the only way round this I could think of was to set all the tappets with zero gap, then take all the valves back out so I can measure the length and subtract the gap. Then it's a matter of tightening it up at the adjusted length outside of the engine then re-assembling. I did one of them but it was getting late and a valve spring pinged down onto my thumbnail so I called it a night before I got too hurt.

[Will]

Right... that's it... I'm going to have to pop round and have a look at this! You free tomorrow?!

[Jonny69]

This is the final installment of my engine build and I will take you through some final checks and how NOT to fit an engine to a car.

Late Saturday after shopping etc I found a handy dodge doing the valve clearances. I took the valve springs back out and figured that the best way would be to stop there and do the clearances by pushing down on the tops of the valves. Then I could just poke the tappets up and adjust:



Then check with a feeler gauge and adjust again if necessary:



Basically I adjusted these tight to the lowest gap I could get away with, a tight 12 thou. The reasoning behind this is there's going to be a little wear at first as the cam and tappets bed in and because this is going to be a very tricky job once the engine is in the car I hope the total wear won't exceed the maximum gap of 15 thou. With a bit of luck it'll settle somewhere in between.

I'll skip most of the assembly because it's all nuts, bolts, gaskets and rope seals but to make life easier putting the engine in you can use a clutch centering tool. I don't know how you spell centering in real English. This lines up the clutch with the bearing in the back of the crank or flywheel and when you're trying to line up the splines on the gearbox shaft if the clutch is in line with everything it will slide on a lot easier. It's basically a ground shaft with a pair of tapers and you pick the two sizes to suit the crank and clutch spline inside diameters:



I've used a 100E clutch friction plate as it has springs in it and appeared to be identical dimensionally. The Pop one is solid and is a bit rough taking up drive. This used one on my spare 100E engine has plenty of meat on it and no scoring so I scuffed it up a bit and on it went.

Sunday I had reserved as engine fitting day. First I had to run through a few last minute double-checks just in case anything was going to go wrong.

First a dry turn of the engine to check everything is clear. I put some blu-tack on the the tops of the valves:



On goes the head without the headgasket, secured by a few studs and nuts:



In with the spark plugs and turn the engine over a couple of times by hand. Then take the head off and see how thick the blu-tack is on top of the valve. Mine is just under 1mm, exactly as calculated. I could probably go closer if I wanted because the thickness of the headgasket will raise the head further but I don't know how much valve bounce this engine suffers from, even with the uprated springs, so better to be on the safe side...

Later it's time to fit the engine. Here's NOT how to do it. Don't do this by yourself if you can help it becuase it's so much easier with two people and don't attempt this without an engine crane. Engines are heavy, this one is about 85Kg, and as I found out I don't make a very good engine crane.

I put two luggage straps round the engine, deadlifted it onto the crossmember, then got up onto the chassis rails and deadlifted it onto a trolley jack:



The it's a matter of wriggling it onto the splines on the gearbox shaft and sliding it into place. A hard job with no crane. I postitioned it close and I could feel it was on on the splines so I used a couple of long bolts in the back as guides while I shoved it on and used the bolts to nip it onto the dowels:



Then it's on with the head:



And finally it's in place and nearly everything back on:



I knocked it all on the head at 11:30pm on Sunday, didn't quite get it ready to fire up unfortunately. However there's always Monday night after work...

Did I mention IT RUNS!!!

Get in.

You'll be wanting some videos:

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0806.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0807.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0810.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0811.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0814.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0818.3gp

http://www.jonny69.co.uk/uploads/pop...08-07_0832.3gp

Had it up to about 65 on the way into work this morning. It's exceeded my expectations and there's only more to come with the twin carbs and exhaust!!!

You're too late Will, it's in!!!

[Will]

Boooo! Still, looks great! I'll have to pop round and see it for myself!