Engine rebuild frame

[Keith Clements]

Whilst searching through the photos for this very busy year I realised that many have not been brought to the attention of this Jowett community. Unless you have trawled through the couple of thousand pictures I have shared on OneDrive or on the Gallery you will not have come across them. I invite you to do that trawl in the Winter months and ask some questions as there are many interesting subjects.

But here is a starter.

Perhaps Neil Moore can explain.

I have a similar one and will be using it in the near future.
For the initial build, I made yesterday a block holder by drilling holes for the head studs in a large block of wood using a head as a template.


Here it is being used to clean out all the oil ways.

[Keith Clements]

Jack ventured around last night to fit his flashy red and gold exhaust pipe to his Braddie.
I collared him, even though he complains of a bad back after skiing last week, to lift out the engine rebuild frame so that I could dismantle the cracked engine.




This engine has done many hard miles so there is probably a lot worn. The gearbox is still smooth and tight, so may not bother to take it apart.
The clutch operating shaft seems to have a problem with a loose ball pivot and it rattles on the housing and rubs on the brass cone.


You can see the rubber cushion I fitted prior to the Baltic trip to stop the rattle.
The rear oil seal also had a bit of a leak and the flywheel is worn. I will take some dimensions of this lightened flywheel and post in the other thread where I am rebuilding another engine.

All bolts are numbered on clutch and flywheel and washers were replaced on them so as to maintain dynamic balance.
The flywheel, clutch, pulley and crank were also identified by marking with the last three digits of the engine number. Just in case they get separated.





The starter engage mechanism is also worn with wear on the spiral. It still works well, but is there an impending problem?

[Forumadmin]

I have been working on the website conversionto a better framework for smart phones and single sign-on, but have been venturing down the shed on a few days. I continued dismantling the cracked block engine, checking to see what needed work as I went. The pictures for this week are in the Gallery starting TOPIC here but you can page back and forward to see the whole story.

I took off the heads, the oil filter housing, timing cover and tappet cover. Then marked the camshaft at TDC with timing chain tight in its normal clockwise direction of rotation. Then removed the camshaft with chain and sprockets attached. Then labelled each push rod and cam follower so that they hopefully go back where they came from. One day I will build a holder to keep all this stuff neat! All the tie bolts were then released.



The unit was rolled over to remove the oil pump and oil baffle before splitting the block and removing the crank. All bearings were examined and marked. All looked good and might even be reused!!!

As expected the cylinder (4) that had practically had its head detached showed some sign of gasket blow by.
But what is remarkable is how well no 2 faired considering it had almost departed as well.


No 1 and No 3 cylinders were good considering how many hard miles the engine has done.


Here is the crack around No 4.

Here you see how it goes all the way to the water inlet beside No 4.



And here it is continuing to No 2.



I clamped the block onto the mill, drilled and then milled out a 1/8inch groove where the crack had been.
A large area around the crack was ground, sanded and wire brushed to clean up the aly. I used this technique rather than soda blasting as it does not clean well enough, and not sand blasting as I think a lot of the grit embeds itself into the aly.
Then the block was washed with washing up liquid, pressure washed and blown dry with the air gun. Careful attention was paid to oil ways as we did not want any oil contamination on the weld.

I started welding by putting 5 tack welds to bridge the crack in an attempt to reduce distortion.
Then started at the no 2 end gradually increasing current from a start of 80A. I also reduced the cleaning % from 75 that I had used previously to 60 to put more heat into the block. On the thick bits (around the cylinder head bolt holes) the amps were wound up to 150 so as to get the flow needed. But you have to be VERY careful as the weld can suddenly sag. It did this a couple of times so I turned the block over and heated again to get the sag to go back. All was going well till the foot pedal decided to die. I continued tidying up with a makeshift torch switch but not very succesfully. I have just fixed the foot pedal which required dismantling the potentiometer and straightening the very small brush inside it that had been bent. This I traced to being caused by the stop on the pedal not being set correctly and straining the pot. I am also out of Argon so ordered some more.

I am quite pleased with the result so far. I am learning fast. I have added weld to take the strain down from the bolt holes to the thicker part of the block. Pictures to follow.