President's Day

Thanks to the principals at the office for giving me the day off!

I made good use of it.

I thought I would disassemble the remaining motor accessories: water pump, fuel pump, thermostat housing, etc. It turns out, however, that those components (aside from needing a good bath) are in fine shape.  So I started tearing down the motor itself.

I tested the thermostat, and it appears to be in working order.  The housing has a secondary sensor with vacuum hose connections that I couldn't quite figure out, but it seems to have two ports that are constantly open and a third that opens when hot.

The water pump is little more than a rotary pump blade on a shaft turned by a pulley.  It's made of cast steel, so no problems there.

The fuel pump has some spring loaded assemblies and some moving parts.  The diaphragm was stiff when I first opened it up, but after soaking for several hours has become pliable again.

The clutch plate assembly is in need of some TLC.  The disk has been worn down into the rivets which has cut a groove into the flywheel.  The flywheel will therefore need to be resurfaced.  The pressure plate assembly is very dirty, but has plenty of thickness yet and will restore without too much effort.

My maintenance manual states that you are to turn over the motor to align the distributor cap to the housing before removing the distributor assembly.  As the motor was seized, however, this was an impossibility.  And the distributor was solidly stuck in place.  I attempted to remove the front fan cowling to access the gears, but a breaker bar on the crankshaft only threatened to twist off the gear bolt.  So. . . with a cross of the fingers, and a good yank with a pry bar, out came the distributor - aligned or not.

I was surprised to find that not only the balance shaft gear, but the main crankshaft gear, are are fiber gears!

All of the internal engine parts still had a healthy coat of oil on them, and not a spot of rust to be seen.  The head assemblies, push rods, and tappets are all in great shape, with no visible wear.  The same is true of all three shafts, crankshaft bearing inserts, and other seats.

The same can not be said of the top half of the piston seats, rings, and valves.  There was quite a bit of scale on the head of both the valves and piston heads.  One of the valves has somehow been worn down on one side, and will likely need to be replaced.  All four of the pistons required quite a bit of persuasion to exit their bores.  It appears this was the sole reason the motor would not turn.  The bores themselves are in good shape, just a little built-up scale and goo and lack of lubrication on the rings for about - oh - 25 years.

(Arrow indicates deformed valve.)

All in all, though, I am quite pleased with the condition of the engine.  It has many years/miles left in it still.
At the end of the day, this is all that was left. . .

Now to find a machine shop to overbore the pistons, and install hardened seats.  I will have the same shop resurface the flywheel.

In the meantime I will research possible replacement of those fiber gears, and track down a clutch disk and a new valve.

Tranny Time!

A gallon of diesel, a half dozen shop rags, and several hours, and the transmission was all cleaned up and ready for reasembly.

I also rebuilt the slave cylinder.  The drain plug (far right in the first photo above) requires a special tool to remove.  So I made one (out of a 3/4" threaded galvanized drain plug - bottom left).

Here's what the cleaned-up tranny looks like assembled.  (I seem to need a little practice not spreading the blue gasket sealant everywhere).

. . . Oh, and yes, I did finish the tile in the bathroom . . .