CLANK XII: BACK IT GOES!
Greetings!
After yet another pair of 12-hour work days, the engine is back in the
clankster. Naturally, everything took longer than I thought it would. For
example, it took about four hours to time the cam. Slow, fussy work, that.
First I had to build a tool for finding top dead center. This started out as
an old sparkplug. I broke the ceramic out out of the plug, then drilled and
tapped the body for a 3/8" fine-thread bolt. Screwing the plug into the body,
I was able to find TDC within a degree or so. Then I timed the cam according
to the excellent instructions given in the TRSC tech tips book.
Essentially, cam timing consisted of setting the cam precisely at the point
of rock when the piston was at TDC. This is the point where both valves are
halfway open. To find out if that was indeed the point of rock, you turn the
crank one full rotation. You are then at the top of the compression stroke,
with both valves open. If the cam was correctly at the point of rock, then a
feeler gauge will find equal clearances on both valves. You do this OVER AND
OVER again.
At any rate, once the cam was timed, I was able to install the front timing
cover. Then I got the engine off the stand, and installed the flywheel &
clutch.
Things have been quite a mess at home, and somehow the brand-new clutch
pilot bushing got lost in the shuffle. We tore the garage inside out and
upside down, and could not find that sucker. So I wound up reusing the old
one. I did recharge it by soaking it in hot oil for an hour, and I turned it
backwards so a new wear surface would be presented.( "Oilite" is interesting
stuff. What is it, bronze foam? )
Two or three hours were spent resolving alignment problems with the fan belt.
The old belt was completely trashed after only a thousand miles or so. How
could that be? Well, I had purchased a new water pump from TRF. It turned
out that TRF's ( & MOSS's and everybody else's ) TR2-4 water pumps are actually
TR4A water pumps. If you use a TR2-3 pulley, it is out of line with the other
two pulleys. The pulley needed to be shimmed out about a quarter of an inch. A
judicious search of the miscellaneous washer can unearthed a humungous
lockwasher with an I.D. matching the water pump shaft, and a thickness of...
you guessed it... 1/4 inch! A momentary operation with the bench vise and a
pair of pliers converted the lockwasher into a shim, and the water pump pulley
was now right in line.
The other problem was that the generator, for some reason was angled in
towards the front of the engine, instead of being straight in line with the
engine plane. This was fixed by welding up the rear mounting hole in the
bracket, and drilling a new hole in a slightly different location. Yay for good
tools!
Clearly, it was time to put the engine back into the car. So I hung it from
the ceiling joist and rolled the car under it. I remember wishing I had a
cherry picker and a load leveler, but we ( wife & I ) managed to get it in
without too much difficulty. Now all that remains is such trivia as installing
the carbs, oil filter, putting in the oil, installing the coil, etc, etc. So
the clankster will probably run again this coming weekend.
- Jerry
p.s. Here are a couple of miscellaneous notes:
* The new cylinder head washers from Moss were inferior in hardness to
the old ones. The new washers tended to squash out from under the nuts.
:-(. I wound up using two or three old washers to replace the worst ones
* When the time came to install the clutch, I found I had no centering
tool. OOPS. A spare old pilot bearing slipped over a 1/2" drill bit worked
just fine.
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