Pete Ashby

Nice job Kevin shown off to good effect in the diorama regards Pete

An't that the truth !! Excellent job on the wings they have come up really well. I fully appreciate the amount of effort that's needed to save something like this and turn out a good result. Pete

Nifty piece of tooling there Richard, I've stored this idea away for future reference Pete

You won't go far wrong with the MB-C2 manual. It's very comprehensive unlike the early CMD 11 and 12 cab versions which were much more like the British manuals that expected a fitter to have carried out full trade training. Pete

Major overhaul kit for Carter W1 carburetor as fitted to US 1 1/2 ton Chevrolet Part No 608447 this item is NoS in unopened factory packaging see photo below. £50.00 plus pp @ cost by paypal please PM me for details Thanks Pete

Nice find, that is key to setting the dippers correctly. You'll have seen in that same section of the manual the simple jig for aligning the feed pipes. The problems with the Canadian 216 lube system was to some extent down to poor working practices at rebuild ie the issues you have dealt with by getting the correct gauge. There was a noted tendency for No1 big end to run hot and burn if the truck operated under load on extreme uphill gradients due to oil starvation. As you know the the Canadian 216 lubrication system is designed to pressure relief at significantly lower pressure than the sort of value expected from a US full pressure system. A further issue was bypass oil filtration was not a feature on 11 cab models and only stared to appear on some of the very late 12 cabs. This did not become a standard fitment until the advent of the 13 cab so contaminated or diluted oil would very quickly make matters a whole lot worse. Pete

Look forward to following the rebuild/restoration. From your photos it looks like a very sound base to start from. Keep the updates coming Pete

Valves, what's to be said about them then? they either work or they don't right ? If the piston acts like a pump to suck the fuel air charge in that provides the power to make everything work then the valve train ( that's everything associated with the valves and operation) lets that charge in in the first place, keeps it there under high pressure then lets it out at the appropriate time, all this needs to be done at the right time and without leaks. As with most things in life it's not that simple. Poor starting, rough running, high oil consumption, smokey exhaust, popping back in the exhaust or spitting back up the carb are conditions that can be laid at the door in part or fully with problems associated with valves, seats, guides or springs or a pick n mix combination of any of those. This is when a the vacuum gauge I mentioned in the previous post can save hours of frustration, that was not an option here as this engine was a non runner. So first off all the valves are removed as previous posts in this blog Quick visual recap here keep the valves in order as they are removed a piece of stout card or a block of wood are required for this Do the same with the springs these will be cleaned up and inspected for broken or compressed coils and the free length (uncompressed) measured and compared across all twelve springs they all should be the same. There is a way of measuring the compressed length as well using a block of wood a vice and a nail but it's all a bit scary. If you want to try it go and search it out for yourselves. Alternately take the springs to your machine shop and let him measure them with his spring compression gauge. Each valve needs to be cleaned. I use a brass wire brush to clean the carbon off of the head of the valve. If you don't have a lathe use the drill held in the vice, wrap a small section of gaffer tape round the portion of the stem held in the chuck to prevent damaging the stem. Use a piece of medium grade Scottbright (like a synthetic pan scourer) against the underside of valve to remove carbon and tarnish, try not to let it stray onto the seating surface of the valve then a couple of quick passes along the stem. I finish off the stem with Auto solve chrome polish and a rag then wash everything off with solvent. And they look like this you can see someone has been here before and punch marked the head of inlet valve with four dots. Inspect the valve head for damage, splits or burning if found its scrap and you need go no further other than splash the cash and get a replacement. Measure the stem diameter in three places and compare with the manufactures spec then measure the valve guide using the smallest pipe gauge in the set ( in the same way I measured bores in a previous post ) . Inspect the corresponding seat in in either the block or head depending on your engine configuration again your looking for damage or excessive pitting, use a magnifying glass. If all of the above checks out the next stage is grinding (lapping) the valve into the corresponding seat to make a gas tight seal that's what I'm getting ready to do here. I'm not going to cover the process in detail there's plenty of info out there to cover it. You can use a drill to do this operation and it's a lot quicker, but be warned it's very easy to over cook the lapping and make yourself a heap of trouble so here I'm using the old and tried swizzle stick in the photo below You don't want to pile on too much grinding paste to the head of the valve, to much won't make the job any faster. The pot of paste in the photo I have used on various engine rebuilds for last 45 years and it's still half full. Put a little oil on the stem but at all times keep grinding paste away from the stem. I use a very light compression spring under the head of the valve (arrowed in the photo below) and put a chalk mark on the edge of the top face, apply light pressure to seat the valve in the seat do a few swizzles ease off, the spring pops the valve up I turn it a quarter turn indexed by the chalk mark and carry on. This all takes time put your brain in neutral and listen to radio 2 or dream of your next restoration project or what ever floats your boat but it is well worth the time it takes. So when do you know that the valve and seat are properly lapped in ? By doing this (photo below) After some time with the grinding paste the valve seat and the valve head seating face should be pit free and dull grey . Clean the seat and valve to remove all traces of paste. Put a series of vertical lines on the valve head seating face as above, this used to be done with a soft lead pencil I now use a Sharpie felt tip. Put the valve back in the guide and give it a couple a couple of swizzles not more that a quarter turn each way then take it out, it should look like this now (below) The lines have been uniformly cut through all around the seat if they are not then it's back to the lapping in process. You can also use the distance between the cut lines to measure with vernier calipers (arrowed red above) this measurement will indicate the width of the seating and can be compered to the manufactures specs. Do not keep lapping until the valve head seating face is up to the top of the valve head this is particularly important with exhaust valves that need to be thicker at this point. If too much head material is removed both inlet and exhaust valve heads will suffer from distortion over time called 'tuliping' due to the force of the return springs. Exhaust vales will also be prone to burning at the reduced edge thicknesses. If the valve heads are worn to this extent then new valves and re-cut or new seats are in the offing I'm afraid. The seat contact can also be checked using once again a felt pen, ( it used to be done with engineers marking out fluid) this time I'm looking for pits or scratches that have not bee ground out. Put the merest bit of fine grinding paste on the valve head replace then another couple of quarter turn swizzles as before and remove. Seat marked up Same seat after a couple of swizzles So that's about it, there's a whole lot of stuff about seat and valve head angles, re-cutting of seats and re facing valves but that is a level of work that is best left to your machine shop and requires proper tooling. Suffice to say the key measurement for this level of refurbishment is valve stem to guide clearance and condition of the valve and block/head seat. Pete

So after all this faffing about with gauges and some simple maths whats the conclusions ??. Bores are standard, showing some operational ware but still comfortably inside what would be required for re bore at plus 10 thou. They will clean with a three legged hone followed by a spherical hone to cross hatch the surface of the bore. There is a perfectly valid school of thought that says do it once, do it right, but I'm applying a degree of pragmatism here this is not an engine that is going to do 100K plus miles a year in truth it will not do a 1K a year. If there was excessive ware or damage it would be a forgone conclusion to machine, fortunately that is not the case here. If the block went for re-bore then oversize pistons and rings would be required. Dodge Chrysler spec is Std to 9 thou use Std pistons and rings, 10 to 19 thou use plus 10 thou pistons and rings and so at 10 thou intervals to 60 thou max. Crank mains are standard and the journal faces are good, Big end journals at minus 10 thou clean without burning or scoring Wrist pins (piston pins) standard, good to go again without undue ware measured at 3 points along their length Little end bushes slightly over spec partly due I suspect to the lack of oil quality at some point Pistons in spec and good condition. Cam shaft and bearings in spec in good condition The upshot of all that is a new set of piston rings, new big end bearings at plus 10 thou, new main bearings at standard, new set of little end bushes and a full gasket set. Which brings me to valves and seats, poor running and starting issues can be the result of worn or damaged valves, seats and guides. On a running engine a vacuum gauge is your best friend in determining a problem, there are hours of stuff on the web about how to use this very useful cheap bit of kit. My old mechanical engineering books have some excellent fault finding charts on the use of a vacuum gauge where all manner of engine and ignition ills can be diagnosed. This engine didn't run so it was down to measurement and visual inspection so I'll cover that in the next post. Pete

That looks 'PDG' to me, I reckon that the key to a successful repair on this type of wing is to have a fairly intact outer rolled edge. As long as that is nearly all there to work away from the rest is down to a bit of skill and a lot of patience Good job !! Pete

I just knocked the tops off the weld on the underside then left them a little proud but ground and then a flap wheeled the upper surfaces flush, doing it this way you maintain some strength in joint and it will help to prevent stress cracking when fitted. I then used my standard undercoat on the under side then gave it a good coat of semi flexible smooth under seal. This will hide the uneven welds, if you leave it to go off for several weeks it can be sprayed finished the same colour as the rest of the truck. Pete

Next up was to inspect the bores, no scores or chunks out of the walls so that was a positive start and not too much of a ridge at the top of the cylinder. Before I started to measure anything I ran the three legged hone up and down each bore a couple of times adjusted just to clean them up the idea was not to remove any metal just to remove the tarnish and a small amount of flash rust. That's what's going on here, some people use WD40 as a stone lubricant, I prefer to use clean automatic transmission fluid applied to the cylinder walls with a brush. If you are going to have a go at this but not used a hone before go on the web or read a book it's a useful tool but you can over cook it and end causing more harm than good. Now this next bit will cause some eyebrows to lift in some quarters but I prefer to use spring bore gauges rather than a dial bore gauge. In another 'Universe far far away' I spent many hundreds of hours using these little gizmos, they take some practice to get good reproducible results with, if used correctly will give reproducible results to within a thou which is fine for what I'm trying to determine here namely current bore size, out of round and taper conditions compared to factory standard specs which on these old style engines are by modern standards generous. If you want to spend a fair bit of cash buy yourself a dial bore gauge but unless you are going to be building engines day in day out it's a piece of kit you will not get much use out of. Leave that to your machine shop is my advise. What I'm trying to decide here is two fold. One, does this block need to go to the machine shop ? Two, if the answer to one is yes then what are my options in terms availability for oversize pistons and rings. This will enable an informed conversation with the machinist regarding oversize boring options. The alternative is just give the whole lump to him and tell him to get on with it, which he will do, but be prepared for a pain in the chest and wallet when the bill arrives. I'm not going into how use the gauges there's plenty of info on the web if anyone is interested. Suffice to say I'm measuring each bore diameter at four points AA BB CC DD (chalk these on the door or wall to ensure you measure the same location each time for each level on the cylinder) and three heights relative to travel of the top ring, top dead center (TDC) , mid stroke and bottom dead center (BDC). You can work this out by measuring the ring gap/ top land relationship and knowing the stroke length for the engine. Here's the kit need for the task, micrometer, spring (telescopic) bore gauge and a results table drawn up to record the results so comparisons can be made and conclusions drawn. Glasses and a magnifying glass are optional for old gits if required. Here I'm measuring one diameter at top ring TDC. I have marked the three depths in the bore that measurements are to be taken onto the handle of the bore gauge so the brass rule acts a datum point for this (top ring plus the depth of the top land as on this engine the crown is flush with the block deck at TDC) this ensure as I move around the four points in the bore the measurement is taken at the same depth. The gauge is locked off withdrawn careful and the measurement taken using the micrometer then recorded on the table in the correct location. The variance from standard can now be calculated for each position. I use a small block of wood to place the gauge on while I use the micrometer. Quicker with a dial bore gauge ??....... definitely yes ....... More accurate???.... yes if used correctly. However I rather like doing it this way and time is not an issue for me. I'm not looking for definitive answers here. Rather I'm just trying to get picture for whats been going on in the engine during it's operational life and what the options may be during rebuild. Pete

I think you may surprise yourself, with a bit of time spent with the grinder and flap disk along with the dolly and panel hammer will work wonders. I thought after I'd spent weeks welding fresh air together on the Retriever wings that a fair bit of filler would be needed to make a decent finish but the reality was quite different. A word to the wise, as well as filler use a high build filler spray primer on top of your undercoat, as with all things of this nature the key to success is in the prep work . Pete

No horrors found on the block face or valve ports so the next job was to examine the outside of the block for cracks in the wall of the water jacket. If present these show up as faint linear rust stains, nothing visible using a magnifying glass so on to next step. This involves removing the expansion plugs variously referred to as welch plugs or core plugs in the water jacket. First a hole is drilled in the center of the plug large enough to take a parallel drift or fairly stout Philips screwdriver That's whats going on here, one of the bottom plugs has already been removed and a pilot hole drilled in the top one ready for the appropriate drill to be used for the punch or screw driver Using the drift or screwdriver lever the plug out don’t use too much force as you may damage the block surround or the lip that the plug seats against. There was a fair amount of sludge in the bottom of the jacket and that will be flushed out in due course using a pressure hose. Pete

With the festivities over, family departed and the head beginning to clear after a rather good batch of home brew thoughts have returned to what’s been going on in the workshop. The last post looked at how the pistons rings and rods were disassembled the pistons, wrist pins and rods have been put to one side awaiting cleaning, inspection and measuring, the rings will not be reused and have been bagged up and kept for reference purposes only. It was now time to look critically at the block; first off the block face was cleaned up so that a quick visual inspection could be made for cracks or damage on the face and around the valve ports also a preliminary inspection of the bores. You will find U tube videos of scoring pads fitted to a grinder being used for this. It’s your call but it’s too aggressive for my liking so I do it this way….. slower…. but I don’t run the risk of dishing the block face by over eager use of the abrasive pad, as I was once told, a ‘head gasket don’t give a dam how shiny the block or head surface is but they have to be flat’. The basic tools I used for this part of the job are self-explanatory with possibly the exception item C in the photo below but for sake of completeness, I’ve listed them below. A = Flat broad blade paint scrapper for removing gasket gunge and baked on oil. I have slightly rounded off the corners of the blade so that it won’t dig in and scratch the surface B= Craft knife blade used like another fine scrapper for finishing off this is held in the hand and used at 45 degrees to the face again with the points just nipped off on the bench grinder. C= Spring loaded bore gauge being used as a quick check to see how much of a ridge there is at the top of the bore, more about this in another post to follow. D= tap stock and 3/8 UNC 2nd tap to clear all the head bolt threads out E= Steel rod for poking out the water jacket holes After working across the whole block face and good wash down with gun wash it looks like this Pete

This is a pure guess Hanno but at the stage in the conflict that the contract would have been delivered could they have shipped directly to N Africa ?? Pete

Good evening Richard trust all is well with you ? just goes to show how many variations on a standard theme there can be, and that's before we get into piston crown design and material ie flat top, dome top, concave, scalloped, Aluminium, cast iron, plated, non plated etc, etc Pete

Bit of an editorial cock up in the last post with the photos sorry about that chaps. Anyway back on track now, so this post is all about Rings and Pins. I prefer to take piston rings off while the rod is still connected as I find it easier to hold, some prefer to take the rod off first..... it's your call. Look at the rings and record which one goes where and what they look like, the top ring here for example has a ledge in it that faces towards the top of the piston This is my way of removing piston rings without damaging either the ring or the piston there are other ways and tools that can be used. This method requires the rings to be free to rotate in the grooves. First off gently ease the edge of the top ring out of the groove I use a very small screwdriver that I have ground down with a rounded edge to start things off. If you hold the piston from the back and squeeze the rings it will help to open up the gap a little. Use the MK1 finger to ease the ring up just a fraction out of the groove do not be tempted to leaver against the ring belt at any time during this operation or more tears and money could be the result after a ring belt breaks away. Here it is just started Now I slide a short piece of 15thou brass shim that I keep for this job between the piston and the ring. I have rounded off the corners and sanded the edges smooth so that it will not mark the piston surface. Now carefully twist the ring round in the groove in the direction of the shim while keeping a gently upwards pressure on the free end the ring that is out the groove. Move the shim each time to keep the free end of the ring moving upwards until it sits on top of the crown Like this Repeat the above actions as the the free end of the ring moves around the top of the crown don't be tempted to pull or twist the free end rings are very brittle and will snap if subjected to torsional force. Like this Success !! Here's the top compression ring in this case it's marked "TOP" you can just see it on the right hand end some are marked and some aren't you need to read your manual and if new rings are fitted on rebuild take note of the blurb included in the packaging it's not always obvious. Follow the same procedure for the other rings on the piston the oil control ring is easier as its a lot more flexible but take note of any supporting springs fitted above and below or behind the front ring the first four rings from the bottom in the photo below all go together in a pack and make up the bottom scrapper ring. Different manufactures can have different designs that do the same job so it pays to know what you started with to begin with. Now I free the con rod from the piston. first take out the snap rings that control the side movement of the wrist pin (gudgen pin) don't be tempted to pry them out with a screw drive you may damage the piston use a pair of circlip pliers they'r cheap as chips (much cheaper and easier to find than a new piston) on the usual web site. In this photo I've already removed the wrist pin and rod Now to remove the pin different manufactures have different tolerances on the pin to piston wall clearance you need to see how the pin comes out from your the manual. Dodge for example are a hand push fit at room temperature some have to be pressed out and yet more have to be removed fitted at specified elevated temperatures. It all depends on the manufacturer, the material the piston is made off and the way it's constructed........ all this adds up to don't just get a hammer and pound away at it. Here's the pin free of the rod bush and ready to be pushed clear of the piston And it ends up looking like this no tears, no snot and as yet no pain in the wallet Next job bag and mark everything up a separate set for each piston and rod and start measuring and recording against the factory spec I'll cover that another time That's all for now the wood burner is glowing and perhaps there's a pint in the offing who knows?. Pete

With the crank lifted clear the main bearing half shells could be removed from the block and stored away for reference when ordering replacements. Next up was removal of the pistons and con rods. Before I attempted that I checked the very top of the cylinder bores to see if there was a ware ridge present in any of them there wasn't which was good news on several fronts. If there had been a ridge trying to remove pistons out of the top of the block will be a problem as the rings will catch the ridge on the way out this can cause terminal damage to the piston ring belts if force is applied. Two options here the lesser of the evils is to take the piston out bottom if that's possible and it depends on the design of the block as to whether the rods will clear the main bearing castings. The other more drastic option is to remove the ridge carefully by grinding and or honing, probably a job left for the machine shop if you don't have the kit to do this as the bores will need need machining over size any way if that much ware is present. Before removing the rods and pistons check the orientation of the rod relative to the cam shaft and write it down somewhere it's vital you know which way round they go. Use the factory stamp number or punch marks ( mentioned when I was looking at big end bearings and caps in a previous post) look at the marks on the rod half of the big end as your reference to the location of the cam shaft more about this in a minute. Next check if your piston crowns are marked up with the number of the cylinder they are in. They may have either F or an arrow stamped on the edge facing towards the front of the engine and the corresponding bore number . If not ( on this engine they were not marked) do it now with a sharp scriber. Pistons must go back on the same rod in the same orientation and the same bore facing in the same direction that they came out of during rebuild, if not it will be tears at bed time and a hole in the bank balance. Here's No 5 piston crown marked up I'll show the next bit in detail, there are a number of things to check and mistakes can be costly in both time and for the wallet. First up find some polythene tubing that is a push fit onto the big end studs/bolts, cut the tubing to length Push onto the studs to protect the threads and this will also protect your nice shinny smooth con rod journals when installing the rods and pistons back into the refurbished block during rebuild. If your particular engine has bolts rather than studs it also serves to keep everything paired up and helps when reassembling. Check that the oil squirt hole in the rod is clear this is fed from the oil way in the big end under full engine oil pressure. The idea on most if not all side valves is it squirts oil at the cam shaft and the lower portion of the bore. Jeep guys have endless issues with this as the TM was printed with the wrong information and nearly 80 years later it cause all sorts of confusion just go on any jeep forum and you'll see what I mean. Anyway here it is, I've marked it with chalk for the photo and stuck a wire through he hole to check it's clear More to follow Pete

The big end bearing caps are removed, the main bearings have been removed replaced, checked with plastigauge as described in the previous post and now they are ready to be removed and stored away. This photo shows the big end crank journals 1 to 6 in red and the main bearings, front, two intermediates and rear ( or 1 to 4 ) in green, the the front of the engine is shown by the white arrow Here the main caps have been removed and the crank is ready for lifting , (the block has been turned around since the previous photo). Pistons, rods, cam shaft and lifters are still in place at this stage. The crank is a heavy piece of kit so the crane and a soft strop are used to lift it clear. The rods and pistons are still in place and the main bearing shells in the block are now visible along with the cam shaft. For now the crank was stored to one side awaiting detailed inspection and measurement. Note it's stood vertically on the flywheel boss. It's good practice to store cranks and cam shafts like this to prevent the weight causing possible distortion. The journals have been greased to prevent corrosion and wrapped in rag to keep grit and dust at bay. It's secured to the heater with a ratchet strap (don't worry it's not used it's just convenient as it's attached to the wall so it can't fall over) Pete

Time for another installment. In the last post I was looking at the big end bearing and cap on number 5 rod and checking the crank clearance with Plastigauge I continued for the other 5 bearings which all gave the same result +- a thou and no horrors found on the crank pins either so that was a reassuring start. The next thing to check while everything was in place was the main bearings and caps, again I used the plastigauge to get an idea of the condition with regards to ware. Nothing too concerning here again all four were within a thou or so of each other. When I was looking at big end bearing caps I mentioned they must go back in the same orientation and on same rod that they were removed from, this is even more important with main bearing caps. During factory assembly the main caps are fitted to a bare block without bearing shells and then line bored. The crank now will sit dead true to that particular block in that given orientation of the caps at the time of machining. If for any reason different main caps were to be fitted to a block then the line boring process has to be repeated to ensure correct aliment and clearance. In short check to see and make a note of any identifying marks on the main caps and corresponding block face before you take anything apart. . Mine didn't have any marks so out with the punch, the photo shows main bearing cap No 2 I've rubbed chalk into the punch marks so they show up clearly for the photo, two dots on the cap and 2 dots on the corresponding block face for the No2 position so you end up with caps and block faces punched 1 (always from the front of the engine) to 4 in this case as it's a 4 bearing main crank. The story was very much the same as the big ends, the main journals were in pretty good clean condition, the bearing shells showed the same problems as the big ends in terms of a poor lubrication schedule and or filtration The photo below is close up is of N0 2 main bearing cap and shell. The red circles highlight some of the more obvious embedded steel particles in the softer bearing Babbit material. The blue highlighted areas show surface deterioration of the bearing face. The steel particles are a result of normal ware from other engine components and should have been filtered out by the oil filter which either was not working or had become clogged as a result of infrequent oil change. Some particle contamination is to be expected on high mileage engines but this looks like the sky at night under a magnifying glass The net result of this is as the softer bearing surface wares down the hard steel embedded in it projects more and more cutting through the oil film and acting like teeth on a file on the crank journal so this is what causes the scoring often seen, in this case it's been caught just in time. Now the it was a case of removing all the big end caps once again and all the main bearing caps and getting ready to lift out the crankshaft. Last photo for this section is the the four main caps complete with half shell bearings still in place

Nice work guys, that's where the time the time goes on the sort of work that you'r carrying out on the springs and axle case but it produces a quality restoration. Keep at it Pete

It is very simple, not expensive and particularly useful when rebuilding to check correct clearance.

Attention now turns to the big ends. When starting out on a rebuild I like to get an idea of the general mechanical condition of an engine before it's completely stripped down, information gained at this stage will impact on decisions made later regarding the degree of machining and the amount of replacement parts required during the rebuild. So here I'm looking at each big end bearing in turn at this stage I can only see half the bearing surface of both the crank and the bearing but it gives a good indication of the overall condition. First up check to see if the the big end caps have been marked either with factory stamps or punched dots to represent which cylinder they come from (No1 is at the front of the engine). If there are no marks use a sharp center punch and make your own on the side face of the rod and cap while it is still in place and torqued up, don't overdo the punching, on smaller engines you can damage the cap and or rod but paint will not do it will come off during cleaning or machining. On reassembly the right cap must go back on the right rod and the numbers or punch marks must coincide to ensure the cap is the correct way round. You can see here these are factory stamps for No5 big end. Just crack the each cap nut in turn then go back and forth until they are free do not fully undo one side then the other or distortion of the cap may result. Take note of any shims that may have been fitted between the cap faces and rod this is a standard feature on Chevrolet 216 cu in engines for example. OK so here's No5 cap just sitting on top of the vice for the photo it's not in it. Overall there's nothing too terrible here the stripe just above the oil hole is where the crank pin oil passage runs Next some close inspection is called for, I'm looking for scoring, flaking, burning or surface cracking of the shell bearing here. All of which will indicate various forms of ware or failure and can tell you a lot about the operational history of the engine and what ills that may await you elsewhere. That's what's going on here, on close inspection I found tiny steel particles embedded in the white metal shell surface this may indicate poor oil filtration and or maintenance issues in terms of oil change frequency. With the cap off one half of the crank pin can be examined for scoring, burning (which will show up as a blue discoloration) caused by oil film failure. Nothing untoward here, just a slight mark where the crank has sat for a number of years that I rubbed off with my finger nail. Now to get a feel for the ware between the shell bearing and the crank pin and I'm using Plastigauge to measure the clearance. This is not a definitive measurement but it gives a pretty good indication of whats been going on. Final measurements will be taken using micrometer, dial gauge and vernier when all the components have been fully dissembled. If you have not come across Pastigauge before google it, also a very useful aid during reassembly to ensure correct clearance between bearing and crank both for big ends and main bearings (more about those another time). A piece of Plastigauge (that's the thing like a piece of wire in the photo above, it's actually a sort of plastic) is cut to lay across the width of the bearing surface and placed on the crank pin, the cap is replaced and the nuts tightened in sequence back and forth in turn finishing with a torque wrench to set the specified (see your manual) torque on the cap. Now the cap is removed again following the same undoing procedure the Plastigauge will have been squashed out like this (arrow) Using the gauge supplied the gap between the white metal shell bearing and the crank pin can be determined You can see here that this is 0.002". As a rough guide acceptable clearance on shell bearings is given as follows: 0.00075" to 0.0010" per inch of shaft diameter So for a 2" diameter shaft the range would be 0.0015" to 0.0020" so for this particular engine it looks hopeful but the crank pin will be measured accurately when it's removed to confirm that no under size machining has taken place. Last job was to remove the Plastigauge squish with my thumb nail (never use steel tools on machined bearing surfaces) apply a squirt of clean engine oil to the crank pin and shell bearing, put the cap back on repeat the tightening sequence as before and mark the cap with chalk so I know which one I've done and move onto the next rod. In the next update in a couple of weeks time I'll be able to give an update on all the big ends and the main bearing caps and journals too that will enable an assessment of what will be required in terms of work and expenditure on the bottom end of the engine. Pete

So after a slight diversion with some chit chat about vintage vehicle restoration in general it's back to the engine strip down, the last photo I posted showed the flywheel being removed. I don't like having a lot of bits lying around the workshop floor, two reasons really, first I will invariably trip over them, second and arguably the more important, small things will get lost and machined surfaces will attract dirt and corrosion and present problems down the line. So I started off by looking at the flywheel: Here I'm using a fine cut triangular file of the correct size to fit the pitch of the teeth to just remove any burs on starter ring gear teeth, I'm not filing the teeth, just any burs on the leading edges caused by the starter pinion (dog) trying to engage while the engine was still turning. The flywheel is just lightly pinched in the vice just enough to prevent it slipping out, to tight and there is a possible risk of distortion, note the wood packing front and back to prevent the jaws damaging the machined surface a pair of jaw protectors would be better. This work will reduce the chance of the starter motor pinion getting jammed in ring gear. It also provides an opportunity to clean and check the condition of each tooth on the ring gear. Very often an engine will favor to stop in one quadrant of flywheel due to fictional forces in the rest of the components of the engine and this can lead to increased ware on that section of ring gear here there was a little more ware in one section but not enough to worry about. I have on occasion removed and turned a ring gear where a replacement couldn't be sourced but it requires more space to explain than I want to take up here. Next step was to clean the flywheel up I use spray-gun cleaner for this as it cuts through the baked on crud nicely but petrol or commercially available de-greaser will do the job just as well. Once cleaned the machined clutch plate face is checked over for scoring, burning, flaking or cracking then the rear of the fly wheel is examined for cracks around the crank flange mounting holes. All good so the clutch pressure plate threaded holes were cleaned out with an appropriate tap. Various tools used to carry out the above work. To finish off the ring gear and clutch plate face had some clean engine oil wiped over them to keep the rust at bay and wrapped up and stored away. more to follow Pete