It's Engine Re-building Season at SLHS
Posted: Wed Oct 07, 2015 5:37 pm
The students started pulling apart the spare engine I picked up over the summer, so the fun begins.
From what I can piece together it was pulled due to a miss that the PO was unable to diagnose. When the miss reappeared with the replacement engine they discovered it was a plug wire! Unfortunately they must have driven with the miss for a while, they washed down the bore of #2... That's the bad news.
The head is a "high compression" model from the 57-59 passenger car and appears in good shape. The remainder of the engine is a T245 with no chassis #. I assume it was a replacement engine. We're going to do a bit of measuring tomorrow and see where we are. The motor looks to have been rebuilt before, hopefully not by some hammer mechanic. Judging from the date on the clutch it was done after '95. The oil pan sealing job impressive. I suspect at least one tube of RTV, if not more! At least the kids see the results. There's one mismatched rod so someone has been in there over the years.
One thing is for sure, the students really like to play with engines. They are just fascinated with them and seem to enjoy the autopsy as much as I do. It's nice to see them get jazzed about something other than their cell phones.
At the moment I'm pondering how far we're going to go with this. The goal is more hill climbing power. I don't need RPM, the governor is at 3000 now and that's fine with the 4:89's at the speeds I travel. The current motor doesn't make power above 3000 anyway! We will likely swap the head to the existing engine to get a "back to back" with a few points of compression. Then it's a matter of cost and time available. In my fantasy land I'd love to try a 3 ring piston with a different compression height to improve squish, some valves that promote a bit of sideways flow into the chamber, and an improved cam, blah, blah, blah. We'll see...
If you have any suggestions or fun ideas chime in! Maybe by the end of this I'll be able to climb at 55mph. Ok, that may be optimistic, 45mph
!
Andy
From what I can piece together it was pulled due to a miss that the PO was unable to diagnose. When the miss reappeared with the replacement engine they discovered it was a plug wire! Unfortunately they must have driven with the miss for a while, they washed down the bore of #2... That's the bad news.
The head is a "high compression" model from the 57-59 passenger car and appears in good shape. The remainder of the engine is a T245 with no chassis #. I assume it was a replacement engine. We're going to do a bit of measuring tomorrow and see where we are. The motor looks to have been rebuilt before, hopefully not by some hammer mechanic. Judging from the date on the clutch it was done after '95. The oil pan sealing job impressive. I suspect at least one tube of RTV, if not more! At least the kids see the results. There's one mismatched rod so someone has been in there over the years.
One thing is for sure, the students really like to play with engines. They are just fascinated with them and seem to enjoy the autopsy as much as I do. It's nice to see them get jazzed about something other than their cell phones.
At the moment I'm pondering how far we're going to go with this. The goal is more hill climbing power. I don't need RPM, the governor is at 3000 now and that's fine with the 4:89's at the speeds I travel. The current motor doesn't make power above 3000 anyway! We will likely swap the head to the existing engine to get a "back to back" with a few points of compression. Then it's a matter of cost and time available. In my fantasy land I'd love to try a 3 ring piston with a different compression height to improve squish, some valves that promote a bit of sideways flow into the chamber, and an improved cam, blah, blah, blah. We'll see...
If you have any suggestions or fun ideas chime in! Maybe by the end of this I'll be able to climb at 55mph. Ok, that may be optimistic, 45mph
!Andy
I just balanced six NOS 0.020 O/S pistons for my build, and the weights varied considerably. Had to remove a fair amount of material from a couple of them.