About five weeks later and problem engine and other issues now fixed.
We found an old ice cream van engine for spares on ebay in Eastbourne and paid £21 for an extremely oily and neglected part engine. It was worth every penny. Rocker gear although all there was just good enough for some refurbishment and that engine donated a large three belt crank pulley to the situation. It proved an invaluable source of numerous other parts such as nuts, bolts, washers and studs.
We stripped out the original engine which was in a very sad state although apparently had received new bearings, pistons and liners a couple of years ago. Then it had been slapped back together in a rush and no attention paid to the forty one year old oil gear box and engine oil coolers which were found to be leaking badly. Hence the gearbox and engine being full of sea water!
Fortunately the owner had a small burger van in which we could strip and rebuild. Clean and dirty work areas were set up but this became the subject of many arguments during the rebuild process!. Not easy keeping new, cleaned and refurbished parts away from the inevitable muck.
I fitted new valve guides pre frozen into a hot cylinder head with the bench press which was quite a long and tricky job getting the guide upstand heights correct. New valves seals and springs followed having lapped the new valves into seats which had been fitted new at the last so called overhaul.
The rocker gear came from the ice cream van engine and the best of the rockers from both engines selected and cleaned up. This time I fitted the rocker shaft so that the oil feed hole lined up with the oil feed pipe!!
Straight, not bent push rods again came from the ebay engine.
The cam and crank were removed from the block and bearings found to be unmarked. The oil pump was cleaned out, measured and relief valves cleaned and inspected. The fuel injection drive gear was to have been replaced in favour of one with a water drive pump drive dog in better condition. It was found not to fit so the old gear had to be refitted with inevitable slight loss of injection timing. Eventually we got that back again. A nasty time had with that issue. Reconditioned injectors and new copper seals were then installed.
The whole engine was then put back together again, the gearbox flushed and the engine successfully run on a trolley prior to installation in the boat. Quite a stressful time had until we had the engine running like a sewing machine. The two oil coolers have been blanked off with the owner due to replace them shortly.
So the whole unit is up and running again with about 250 man hours needed to attend to the many problems which cropped up along the way. A new 180amp double drive alternator has been fitted and the engine pump driven off the third groove on the crank pulley. This caused a few headaches as we needed a tensioner which we finally sourced from a scrap X-type Jag!
Restoration and modification is a slow, tedious, expensive and time consuming game. Sadly I cannot charge out for the true value of the job. Had we managed to source a good replacement core engine instead of recondition what we had, matters would be very different.
This job has indeed been a challenge. In addition to the above work, the boat had an issue with the steering caused by it sitting down incorrectly in the Creek here. The whole 9 ton weight of the boat leant on the rudder which bent it in three planes. Structural failure also resulted. We straightened the 1.5" stainless pintle ( vertical steering rod which extends from the hydraulic steering quadrant to the rudder and down to a location shoe and bearing at the lowest point on the keel.) using my bench press, re manufactured the bottom support shoe and ground out and re set the pintle in the glass fibre rudder structure. Four or five of us on the case last Saturday morning. We got there in the end.....
Mike
