Mopar Muscle Association UK

experience pays off..mate indeed

research.....well, some, but depends on definition if having to do it twice is reserach well.... yep.... done a good bit of that as well..

dave

Bit more progress last week
sump off...nothing nasty found
mains and big end caps off bearings look good, crank looks good
old rope main seal out, looks alright but obvioulsy not sealing no evidence of oil getting through the cap/houing block junction.

The knurl on the seal surface of the crank is no almost none existant which is probably adding to the incontinence issue

So mid week i orderd a 1 piece main seal, ordred on monday arrived on wednesday, amazing what happens when you pay more for postage than the cost of the item...

this seal was for a pontiac with a 3 inch seal surface, my car has a 2.75 inch seal surface, but having failed twice with modern rope and having little confidence in the 2 part seal purchased a while back from hemi performance, (its too narrow for the retainer and needs to be shimmed and installed on top of a wedge of silicone).

This pontiac piece looked better and was $20 cheaper than the similar Big block Mopar one from FATFish

standard install on the pontiac involves cutting the seal at a specific place with a stanley knife, putting the seal on the crank and lowering the crank in with the seal gap to the top of the block.
I had the added complication of having to cut down my seal, tried measuring but that is not as easy as you think as you don't know how much it will compress once in the housing....
moved to a "cut a bit off and check" process
cut rubber with knife. cut z profile spring steel with new hacksaw blade

i oiled up the seal and the housing bore to assist with seating it

first cut resulted in a seal that could be bent to fit the bore but left the housing sitting approx 1/2 high when the seal ends first butted up
second cut another 3 mm resulted in a more appropriate 1/4 inch, so i carefully from that point snugged the cap down while pressing the seal into its channel
this is quite a fat seal.
once the cap was completely torqued i ended up with what i felt was a satisfactory situation.
seal cleaned
housing bore cleaned
housing lightly filled with anerobic sealer
seal on crank, and i put it all back in.

torqued up and with a bit of messing cam gear back where it started. i'll check cam timing later

have learned in the past, a couple of sucesses in 1 session of engine work and its time to pack up for the day as the temptation to try to hurry something more results in mistakes.

went did some rust removal instead...

dave

Love it keep the updates coming

After seeing Blue and Dave's crank scrapers, and while the motor was in bits out of the car, i thought I'll have a bit of that, 5 to 10 HP at higher rpms for little outlay sounded good. a 2hp Briggs n stratton is £80

fruitless search on the Hemi 265 front meant making my own
long bits of styrene board and some 1.5 mm steel sheet was purchased

roughed it in on the first attempt in plastic
what a PITA that was
started on the precise template, but by this stage i was damaged and fed up, blisters, run out of small cutting disks bust a pair of scissors
just fed up.
there is a reason these things are made by just one company. its a right faff unless you have an empty case with a crank resting in it
and of course, mine needs great big hole cut for the oil pump as well.....

so in time honoured tradition, I gave up and found an alternative

retail therapy enused

This is a windage tray that runs close....
sides are angled to cut a big swedge out of the windage
anything left in the tray is hurled unceremoniously at the cam...

bloke who makes em seems to use them on everything...he would mind..... I know, but worth a try for approx £60

also have a baffle in the sump

2.5mm thick z brackets off the main studs
2mm thick pressed and laser cut tray
3 grade 12 bolts
prevailing-torque nuts like the ones on planes

its robust and an absolute pig to fit.
open ended spanners only, long bolts so you can get the nuts on but nuts too low to reach with spanner so tray must be lifted.. you need 3 hands
especially once the oil pump brace is in place and it needs to be in there first

but its on, and the whole lot is now sealed up again
i should now clean it and daub it with paint

Dave

I swear by crank scrapers. Even a made one takes hours of fettling to get the clearances just right, they are in no way bolt in. Thin plastic sheet that can be cut with scissors or a scalpel would be easier for pattern making IMO. It also needs to be a tight fit on the bolts so that every time you take it off to trim it goes back in exactly the same position or else you are wasting your time. The windage tray you have there doesn’t look like it will cause the oil control issues I believe larger trays do.

yes decent slots
doesn't totally encase the crank but seems to sit where it will at least take out a section of the windage cloud so it falls back into the sump.

if the engine was apart and pre rebuild, time and effort spent nibbling little chunks off, would be fine, the block would go off for cleaning afterwards

the sheet was thin enough for scissors, but i must have cut half a mile in tiny incremental slivers.... wore through my scissor fingers and thumb.

in an ideal world you set something as the master coordinate plot all the distances from it, and dump it all into a CAD driven plasma cutter.

i had a Dave driven scissor cutter and plans to get somone to cut the steel...naaa next time maybe

this is all part of a make it spin up that little bit faster plan

bit of carb and manifold work
stick this tray in
try out a Blair-Bishop harmonic damper, lighter and softer compound from my sixpack spec monster which is probably overkill as i don't use the heavy section sixpack rods. don't run the stanard flywheel don't have the twin plate clutch
so I don't think i need half a tonne of rubber and steel on the front

Dave

Yes much better done on an engine before it comes apart. It’s one of those jobs that’s long and laborious but once it’s done it’s done for good. Unless you blow up the bottom end in which case it’s the least of your problems…

Dave driven scissor cutter.

I’ll confess, I was skimming threads earlier and looked at the pictures before I read it. Wondered for a second how you’d managed to turn out that piece from the mock ups.

cold hard cash and a chat with an Australian who stuck it in the post
gave me a discount becasue he remebers me from 20 years ago on the Aussie messageboards

2 weeks and plop landed on the doormat without a peep from HMRC.... Nice

he also sent me a tinny cooler and loads of stickers....he is a nice but swearmungerouse chap





Dave

Nice sunny day. Good for wrinkle paint.

No I didn't spray it on the garden furniture

Daft yes... but not that daft

Dave

Might actually fit

But not yet. Needs clean out and gaskets

Dave

Well that's looking a bit better

Bit cloddy but uniform in colour

Dave

Fresh!

Looking good Dave.
Like how the valve cover has turned out.

VHT wrinkle paint
a job for a sunny day

whack it on in 3 "every 5 minutes" coats lefty righty up n downy and diagonaly

when it starts to dry stick it in the sun and goes kinda suede ish.

its quite hard to really mess it up which suits me.

getting there

its back in
well its on the mounts, 4 bolts done up and chocked up with a block of wood on the steering cross link...

couldn't face the gravel in sweaty hair exercise involved in bell box and prop on sunday.. too hot...

Might have a crack at it tonight

Dave