Sometimes I guess, you have to take what life gives you and make something
of it. Right now it looks like I'm making a mess of my garage.
Last year the engine in my 65 MGB race car started to inhale water like it
was supposed to have gills. Upon disassembly the head gasket looked horrid
and what were supposed to be nice round water ports in the head looked like
mutant bananas. Digging a little deeper revealed that the camshaft did not
enjoy spinning in slush and had a couple of bad lobes and the neato Isky
lifters looked like someone had attacked them with a chipping hammer.
Checked the bearings, ok. Checked the bores, they looked fine too. Quicky
rebuild and detune time. Tossed in a new cam, lifters, different head,
nifty disturbitator and away I went to drivers school in February. The car
went like stink. It was really enjoyable lighting up 15" tires with a 3.90
rear end in the braking test area. The car ran well throughout the weekend,
except that it started to get thirsty again. Nasty memories of Lawrie's
cyber-voice went through my head about re-using old head studs (which is
exactly what I had done). Taking a peek in the rocker box showed what
appeared to be quantities of either frog spawn or green tapioca crawling
towards the light. Immediately being the ace wanna be mechanic I am, I
jumped to action, and crammed the oil filler cap down on top of the stuff
before it could crawl out and conquer the world. I then tried to forget
about the mess, whilst lining up for the next batch of track time. What I
could ignore, couldn't really hurt me?
So, after running out of fuel on the last lap (that's what I get for
putting in a fuel cell with sending unit!) I towed the car home and parked
it until I had forgotten how much fun it was rebuilding the engine the
previous month.
Anyways, last Thursday I pulled the head off. No Lawrie, the head gasket
looked fine. Which got me really worried. Saturday, the engine came out
and Sunday morning it came apart. Funny, I don't remember little rusty pits
in the #2 cylinder wall before. No wonder the engine went well. It had
on-demand water injection into #2 cylinder. That's what the DPO got for
cramming mucky great Ford Falcon pistons into the poor little mota'.
It is true, cams do not like working in tapioca. The new cam is history
with some metal loss at the edges of the lobes, although the stock tappets
survived in good shape (I guess that answers some earlier questions on the
list).
Unfortunately one of the pin bushes spun in the rod, (probably historical
damage) so it's off to the belt grinder before I can put another race motor
together. Meanwhile, I guess I'm going to throw together a street
powertrain that I was pulling together for my 73 GT. Toss it into the race
car so that I can go on the Lake Havasu run in Arizona at the end of the
month. Also gotta have some motive power to get my licence at the
Buttonwillow Vintage Races in May.
Gonna be fun putting it all together during the few evenings between now and
the end of the month. Especially since I need to put the windows, wipers,
and seats into the car, and convert it to bolt on wheels. Not to mention
plumbing the fire system and checking out the brakes.
Actually it's not a fire system. It is a one time use air-conditioning and
anti run-on device. Punch the big red knob on the dash where the heater
controls normally fit, and the driver gets frostbitten toes and the engine
tends to stop.
Wish me luck.
Kelvin.
///
/// mgs@autox.team.net mailing list
/// (If they are dupes, this trailer may also catch them.)
|