british-cars
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Re: TR4 gasket compound

To: fold@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us
Subject: Re: TR4 gasket compound
From: jerry@tr2.com (Jerome Kaidor)
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 1995 11:40:42 -0800 (PST)
Chip Old wrote:
>  
> Sanded them down???  Ouch!  Well, whatever works, I guess, but how did you
> manage to take an even cut all the way around each sleeve?  (Visions of
> massive leaks).  The preferred way is to have the machine shop chuck them
> in a lathe and remove the required amount from the step near the bottom of
> the sleeve (where it rests on the figure eight gasket). 

*** I had the same doubts, but that's what the machine shop owner told me
to do.  I had a sheet of plate glass with 220-grit wet-or-dry taped to it,
and I wet-sanded the sleeves by rubbing them over the plate.  I took off
about 3 thou, which is what he'd taken off the top of the block. It was
a royal pain.

  I rubbed and chanted:

   ``I wish I had a lathe,
     I wish I had a lathe,
     I wish I had a lathe.....''

   I checked my progress by putting them in the block and measuring
protrusion.  I also checked it in three or four places around the
circumferance of the sleeve.

   There didn't seem to be anything special about the finish at the
top of the sleeves;  I finished off the job by rotating them on the
plate over a piece of 320 grit.  I figured that a concentric sanding
pattern was less likely to leak than a radial one.

  That's not the only home-made engineering job I did with that car;
I have a friend who's a old-time british car mechanic.  Now he teaches
truck maintenance at a community college.  Several years ago, I went
and visited him there with the Clankster's head.  He gave me a big file,
a machinist's straightedge, and a feeler gauge.  Using these three tools,
I was able to take out the warp in the head surface.

                              - Jerry

p.s.  Since then, that head has been redone at a real live professional
machine shop, had hardened seats installed, and all new exhaust valves....
....Vroom!


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