Engine back in - again

On Saturday evening I lifted out the old block from the car, I ended up doing by hand myself, damn it is a heavy old lump.
With that out I was able to remove the front engine plate, in cleaning up the gasket surfaces I realised how warped and damaged the plate was. It came with a mass of spares from my last Spitfire, however I have decided not to use it again, so although it is bolted onto the engine it will be replaced as soon as I can get a new one. Hopefully it should be faily easy to change it in situ.

Today after bleeding the fuel system again my Nuffield tractor was brought back into life and was used again to fit the engine and gearbox into the car. I have found it easier to lift the engine, move the car underneath and then getly lower it in.
This seems to be a better way as I have not managed to get the hang of gentle enough movement of the tractor, any slightly sharp movement sends the engine rocking back and forth, not so good for the paintwork :)

After the engine was securly in place the bonnet was also fitted, much perfer to have the bonnet on the car. I worry too much that it might get scratched or dented whilst proped up against the wall.
The propshaft was also fitted, this is a pig of a job, as it has to be done from underneath the car. On less modified cars it can be done from inside the car, but in a attempt to keep as much of the propshaft tunnel in place as possible I have made myself another undesirable task.

Engine coming together

The pistons were picked up from the machine shop earlier this week, so the pistons were soon fitted to the con rods and rings fitted soon after.

Before the pistons and rods went in, the block was given a final clean to remove any last reminants of paint or chemicals after the repaint, then it was time to build it up, again.

One of the problems I noticed when I last stripped the engine down was that two of the fixings for the sump had stripped their threads, obviously it could not go back in like this. Luckily I had a replacement part, as it also incorporates the rear crankshaft oil seal, from my spare engine.
The problem with this part is that it is alloy and hence the threads are not so strong in it, following a suggestion from the Club Triumph Forum, I have chosen to replace the bolts with studs loctited into the alloy and when I came to fit the sump it did not strip the threads.

Friday night saw the bottom end being sealed up, having had the gasket set delivered that morning. I will need to remove the old cylinder block from the car before I can build it up much more, as the front engine plate is currently in use on it, but its all quite straight forward.

Ordered from Chris Witor earlier this week was a replacement sump plug, not your normal type but a alloy one with a magnetic centre. I hope not to have any metallic matter floating about in the oil, but this ought to pick up anything that does get in or break free, alerting me to any problems.

The futures bright...

Having had all of this work done on my engine, I thought it was about time I tried again to remove the stains from the exterior of the block. I have no idea what has been spilt on it, but despite three goes with Jizer followed by a pressure washer, it still has not come off. So it was time for the Nitromors paint stripped to come out.
This has removed the stains on the paintwork, along with the paint.
The block was eventually stripped of all remaining paint, I never thought that the blue looked very good against of the green of the car.
Anyway, the new colour of the engine is to be this delightfull primrose yellow.

In the image it looks quite bright, but its not that bad in person really.

This colour ought to go well with the green in the engine bay and should enable easy identification of any leaks.


The pistons went off to the machine shop earlier this week, so hopefully I should be able to built up the engine again next week, once I have a new bottom end gasket set and oil seals.

Build up to take down.

I picked up the cylinder block from my local machine and engine shop yesterday; they have removed about 1/32nd from the top of the block to remove the recesses from around the cylinders. This has had to be done since I am using a late cylinder block with earlier pistons and head, I could have found another earlier cylinder block, which would have probably needed to have been re-bored, but I decided it could be quicker and easier to use my existing block.
The only problem with skimming that much from the top of the block is that the pistons now fit proud of the block. So last night the bottom end of the engine was built up to enable me to determine how much each piston protrudes above the top of the block, this was done quite easily using a magnetically mounted dial gauge. There was a bit of variation between pistons, from 8 to 17 thou needing to be removed, this is probably due to any minimal variations in gudgeon pin position, piston height, rod length etc.

Tonight’s job will be to strip the pistons out again to have them machined down to suit each cylinder, just got to make sure I don’t get them mixed up though.

A bit of time last weekend was spent cleaning the set of domed pistons, which were originally fitted in my engine, these are now surplus to requirements so will probably end up on ebay soon. They are proper AE Hepalite pistons and are barely marked, so they ought to sell well, but it always comes down to who is looking at the right time.

Trial fits

The pistons turned up eventually, a week later than they should have. A day earlier the new bearings were delivered, fortunately these only took one day to arrive.

Soon after receiving the pistons, the ring gaps were checked and fitted and then the pistons mated-up with the con rods.
Later that evening the pistons were fitted in their bores and torqued up onto the crankshaft - all looking good, for now at least.

The next job will be to get the block, as built with pistons, rods and crankshaft, down to my local engineering shop to have a bit of machining done.
As I am using the later Triumph cylinder block, it has a recess around the top of the bores, which I do not need or want with the modified cylinder head. Having this recess removed will mean that the pistons are now proud of the top of the block, so these will also need to be skimmed off, hence the need for the crankshaft and pistons to go down with the block.

You might of noticed that there has been a bit of snow recently, so here is a picture of a look across the valley a few day ago.

Engine woes

The pistons I ordered earlier this week have been delivered, unfortunately to the wrong address, over 200 miles away.
I shall call the supplier again in the morning to see what they are going to do about it. If they use their usual couriers it could take 3-5 days to get to me, in that time I could have waited for another supplier have got it cheaper - not happy.

The strip down of the GT6 engine has finished and some of the bearings look in a appauling state considering it had only run for 15-20minutes.
I have been advised that it is most likely due to oil starvation. Anyway new big end bearings are to be ordered in the morning following a second through cleaning of the block.

When doing the rebuild I will have to make sure that a copious ammounts of oil is forced into the oilways to prevent this happening again.

The engine came as a spare to the MkI engine in my GT6. Seeing as the MkI need rebuilding and this MkIII has already been rebuilt I decided to use this one instead. It was all pulled appart again so I could satisfy myself it was all fitted together correctly, just as well seeing as the bearing caps and conrod had been mixed up and since then I have not been happy about the quality of the workmanship on this engine and it is probably my fault for not throughly going through all of the previous work

After the disappointment of that engine I started looking at my next engine to clean it up and to judge its general condition. All of the congieled oil and dirt was soon washed from the outside of the engine and some of the external parts removed.
Quite worringly there appears to be a crack running a third of the way along the block by the waterspace, hopefully it is just a casting mark otherwise ot could be a major failure due to frost. When I consider work on this engine again the first job should be to check this crack from the inside after removing the core plugs.

Engine tinkering

In preparation for the re-worked cylinder head and manifolds, I have managed to find a set of pistons, a bit more expensive than I had hoped, but at least I should have them early next week if not this week.

A bit of time has been spent servicing up parts ready for the next build up, this includes parts such as the push rods and the rocker shaft. Looks like a new rocker shaft will be in order as it appears to have suffered oil starvation at some point in the past, resulting in the shaft picking up.


A quick trial fit of the duplex cam and camshaft sprocket wa made just to check, all looks good there and fortunately the chain wich came with it is in a good servicable condition.
After buying the chain and sprocket I found that a chain of that quality would cost a few times more than I paid for the pair, a genuine eBay bargin there.

The shopping list seems to grow each day, with parts such as the crankshaft sprocket and a new rocker shaft required, fortunetely these are common parts so they should be off the shelf and with me next day. Nevermind with any hope I should have the freshly rebuilt engine running by the end of the month