** 26/02/23 Heading Up ** Probably how not to restore a Herald!

[Bordfunker]

Pete, keeping Olive away from wet paint is the biggest challenge!

Being a Beagle, she is into everything, whether she should be or not!

She’s our 5th Beagle in the last 15 years, and our first, Willow, is still going strong at almost 16 now.

The weather has got worse if anything, as the temperature is now topping at a heady 0 degrees!

Karl

[Bordfunker]

Given the current temperatures, typically around zero, time in the garage has been limited over the weekend.

However, even freezing temperatures couldn't prevent me from doing something on the newly painted block, starting with core plugs.

I had cleaned up all of the core plug holes with a wire brush in a drill ahead of painting, in an attempt to ensure as clean a mating surface as possible, and everything had been masked off prior to painting to be on the safe side.

Even having done that, I took Colin's advice, and went belt and braces, applying a thin smear of RTV around the edge of each plug before insertion.

Putting the plugs themselves in, then went without incident, leaving me with a plugged block.

All of which took less than half an hour, following which I fled back into the house for a warming cup of tea.

Just the plugs on the back of the head to be done now.

Speaking of the head, this has been fully painted, I ended up bringing it into the house to brush paint as it probably would have bloomed if I had tried painting it in the garage.

I went with brush painting as it avoided the need for masking, however I forgot that the pushrod tubes needed masking, so out with the tape again, and cue half an hour of me getting stuck to masking tape as I always seem to.

It's now fully painted, but I haven't got around to taking any pics yet.

Having warmed myself up overnight I ventured into the garage again to make a start on reassembling the bottom end of the engine, starting with the new bearing shells and thrust washers.

Everything went in very smoothly, with a dab of grease on the backs of the thrust washers to hold them in place while I lowered the crank in. 

All the surfaces were given a coat of Graphogen assembly lube, and the crank checked for free movement as each bearing cap was torqued up.

I am very relieved to say that there were no issues, and the crank rotates with no tight spots. 

With that out of the way, I turned my attention to the bridge piece and associated gaskets.

Again, I applied a thin smear of RTV to either side of the gaskets before seating the bridge and tightening up the set screws.

My gasket set came with a couple bits of wood for the wooden seals either side of the bridge, but mine were too wide, with no chamfer, so came the wood chisel and file to get them into a shape that I could tap home.

Once they had been hammered fully home, I simply used the wood chisel to remove what was left proud of the block.

The next job will be to reinstall the camshaft and front plate, which I'll probably try to do one night this week if I can summon the courage.

Karl

[Bordfunker]

After a somewhat longer than anticipated hiatus in updates, time to actually share what has been going on over the last 2 and a bit months, which is not a great deal.

We left the engine with the crank in, but little else, therefore the focus before Xmas was getting the bottom end of the engine built up, a task that was really not assisted by the low temperatures in the garage, and which also had an unforeseen impact on the rebuild.

The bulk of this went as expected, taking time and care to ensure that everything was oriented correctly, and that there was no undue drag or friction as each element was added.

The pistons went in without a fight, and lashings of assembly lube.

When the temperatures rose following the extended cold weather before Xmas, the garage turned into condensation central, particularly the block, which suffered significant flash rusting.

It looks worse than it actually was, as a quick rub over with a fine Scotchbrite pad soon removed the rust.

Leaving me able add the dizzy pedestal and oil filter.

My NOS oil pump was next, having first been primed with more assembly lube.

By this point the rear oil seal and front bridge were both in, both without any issues, rapidly followed by the sump.

And then onto the other side of the engine, including the freshly cleaned up brass drain tap.

At which point it was time to assemble the timing gear on the front of the engine.

Which leads to a question around the set up of the timing gear.

I've got the older WSM, pre-GT6, and I have a strong suspicion that it doesn't reflect the correct set up on my late engine.

In the picture above, I have aligned the the dimple on the large timing wheel with the dimple on the camshaft behind, though you can't see this in the picture.

The WSM doesn't show any dimple on the camshaft, but looking at the guidance for later engines, it does show the two dimples aligned, which is what I have gone with.

Is this correct? Note I have set the locking tab.

But what about the head I hear you cry?

Well, I was attempting to lap in the new exhaust valves, but no matter how much I twiddled away, I was still left with a pitted valve seat on the exhaust valves.

I therefore decided that the best solution was to get a set of hardened valve seats fitted to go with the NOS exhaust valves.

The head has therefore been away at Knight Engine Services over the border in Northamptonshire since early January having the new seats fitted, and is due for collection tomorrow.

So what started out as a quick seal and gasket refresh, on what was expected to be a fairly sound engine, has escalated into a significant rebuild, if still someway short of a full scale rebuild.

The upside is that the engine should be good for a few more miles yet, and will now be able to run on unleaded without any concerns.

We also welcomed a new vehicle to the Bordfunker household before Xmas, our first EV, a Citroen Ami.

It's flat out at 28mph, which means it's an urban runabout only, but that is exactly what we bought it for. 

Driving wise, although it's electric, it drives like a classic, with no power steering, suicide door, just the one, the other one is normal, left hand drive, and no rear view mirror, just door mirrors, which work just fine.

That's it for this update, though the aim is to start putting the head back together next week, before re-uniting head and block.

Karl

[NonMember]

11 hours ago, Bordfunker said:

In the picture above, I have aligned the the dimple on the large timing wheel with the dimple on the camshaft behind, though you can't see this in the picture.

The WSM doesn't show any dimple on the camshaft, but looking at the guidance for later engines, it does show the two dimples aligned, which is what I have gone with.

Is this correct? Note I have set the locking tab.

I don't think the factory ever centre-punched these timing wheels but there was a note in the WSM that, to preserve the correct cam timing, it was wise to punch both of them in line to indicate the position to re-fit. If that's been done at some point then you could have reused that alignment indication, but you'd have wanted to confirm it first. Otherwise, as long as you've assembled it with the cam correctly timed, you should probably ignore them.

[chrishawley]

Apols if this is me being slow on the uptake.....

On the periphery on the camshaft sprocket at the 1 o'clock position, would that be another punched point with a scribed line? Wouldn't that usually fall at 7 o'clock in relation to the corresponding marking on the crankshaft sprocket?

I must be missing something. Can you illuminate?

[Pete Lewis]

its best done with a piston stop to get tdc exact take a reading in both stop directions and halve it  use a disc on the crank to mark up

use the dial indicator to get the cam lobes the same max   lift raise the lobe same amount and mark  a disc on the up and the down 

and halve it to ensure the lobes are exact as the lobe has some fair rotation with no lift

fit the chain and sprockets ( the 4 holes give you 1/4 tooth incremetal adjustment 

 NEVER EVER   have any center pop marks on the sprocket  and cam faces  or you will get a noise to be proud of  even with tight bolts  ( a nightmare racket )

 

Pete