Engine Work

The first job in this installment was to remove the pulley from the crankshaft. This was reluctant to budge with man power alone. Luckily I had a puller that fitted perfectly so five minutes and the pulley was off. This allowed me to remove the final two screws from the tinware, take it off and place it carefully on the "to be cleaned" pile. I then unbolted the oiler cooler, lifted it off and threw it onto the "to be discarded" pile.

The third job was to remove the cylinder heads. Before I did this I had another go at removing the spark plugs as I think the chance of damaging the actual head is less when everything is bolted together. After applying a frightening about of torque two of the spark plugs yielded but the other two are still stuck fast. I decided to press on regardless. This is one of the rocker covers...

As you can see they are slightly the worse for wear. These parts are astoundingly cheap so I have decided just to add the old ones to the "to be discarded" pile too. Though before adding them to the pile I may have to put a bio-hazard sticker on them first - this is how they look on the inside. More joilly!

And here is what the rocker shaft, etc looked like.

Only two nuts hold the rocker shaft in place. These need to be removed gradually as some of the valve springs are under compression - about a quarter of a turn at a time is fine.

Once the rocker shaft is off the pushrods just lift straight out. Apparently they are all the same and so there is no reason to remember their order (but I did anyway). It's important that they are straight though - I'll check this by rolling them on a suitably flat surface after I've cleaned them.

I then cleaned the bulk of the joilly out of the cylinder heads so I can see the cylinder head bolts (eight for each head). Here's what I was left with - dare I say, "I did a joilly good job".

In the next installment I'll be removing the cylinder heads and perhaps the cylinders/pistons.

If You Can't Stand the Heat...

The final four exhaust manifold nuts yielded to the might of the blow torch. Each nut took about 2 minutes of heating - until it glowed a dull red - then they moved with almost no effort at all. So all nuts removed without a single mangled or broken stud. One less thing to do.

The next task was to remove the heat exchangers and the exhaust. The former items being compression fitted to the latter. Despite spending a couple of hours with a hammer I couldn't split them apart. So last night I decided to sacrifice the the exhaust (as it was the cheapest) and cut through its pipes. Thus freeing the engine from its final ancillaries.

I then set about the engine casing with my tin of gunk. Engine cleaning is a hideously messy business but the first pass was somewhat successful (see below). Getting into the various nooks and crannies is going to be quite hard, but I think it will be worth the effort as it will make finding case damage easier and also reduce the risk of contamination during the strip down.