Presenting...the Restored Engine

Before we get to the big reveal, this is what the engine looked like before:

...and from the other side.

....drum roll please...

The engine before we attached the intake and exhaust manifolds...

...with the intake and exhaust manifolds (we painted the water pump after we came back from NY).

The repainted bell housing of the transmission:

And last but not least, the engine ready to go back to Massachusetts.

A huge thank you to Fred for hosting us and helping us through the engine restoration.  Without his help, we would probably still be working on the engine for at least a year (or more given my latest track record).

Also, a thank you to Chris for the free manual labor (he did all the heavy lifting) and allowing me to use his truck to haul an engine and transmission across New York.

Cleaning and Painting

There was a lot of cleaning and painting to be done on this trip - valve cover, transmission bell housing, the engine block, ...

Below is a picture of some of the parts needing an exterior refresher...

Below is what the bell housing looked like before.  There was a lot of debris and grease that needed to be wire brushed and kerosene cleaned off.

..and what it looked like after...

After a good scrub done of the engine, I masked off parts that should not be painted and used a brush to paint on black, high heat resistant paint.

Prior to this trip, I had always assumed that you needed to use engine-specific spray paint for the engine block, but after talking to Fred, he had always used generic high heat resistant paint for all his engines and did not have issues.  So if it worked for Fred, I figured it will work for me.


Being able to paint on the paint with a paintbrush meant I did not have to mask off everything, just the edges that were not to be painted (so much easier to prep).  The paintbrush can leave slight brush marks, but with the rough, casted surface of the engine block, you cannot see a difference.  The only place where this is slightly noticeable is the oil pan and you have to get really close to notice this.

I think it came out really well, but you'll have to wait until the next post to see for yourself.  :-)

Carburetor Cleaning

Forward: Learning the following information proved useful a few weeks later as Chris and I found ourselves helping a friend fix up his boat engine during a week long stay at Lake George.  Long story short, the engine to his boat was running roughly and stalling at low RPMs.  Cleaning up the carburetor fixed this and we saved the vacation (not really, but people were really happy to use the boat during the vacation).


Since the gaskets on the carburetor looked new and thing looked mostly in good condition, we only did a basic cleaning on the carburetor.

Step 1 - Removing the idle trim screw.  Before removing the screw, count how many turns it takes to tighten the screw down to where you just start to feel resistance.  In our case, it was 1.5 turns.  (This information is used later when installing the screw.)  After you get this information, unscrew the screw.

Step 2 - Clean the screw and carburetor.  Take some carburetor cleaner and spray the end of the screw clean (notice how black it is in the picture above) and spray the the hole where the screw once was (give it a good spraying).

Step 3 - Spray clean.  To help clear out the carburetor cleaner that was just applied, spray compressed air through the carburetor screw hole.

Step 4 - Screw in the screw.  Screw in the screw all the way back in (until you feel resistance) and then loosen it back out based on the number of turns from step 1.

A New clutch

Although the clutch appeared to be in good condition, we had purchased a 3-in-1 clutch kit (release bearing, clutch cover, and clutch disc) a while back and figured we would replace these parts while we had easy access to them.  Installing a new clutch was pretty straight forward and replacing the release bearing was also straight forward after Fred realized he had a few pullers stowed away in a box in the garage. 

To replace the release bearing in the bell housing, the release bearing mounting hub was removed from the clutch lever and a puller was used to separate the release bearing from the release bearing mounting hub.  The trick to using the puller was putting the unit in the vice and placing a socket inside the bearing (socket diameter was smaller than the bearing but larger than the mounting hub diameter).  The socket provided something for the puller shaft to press against. (Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of this.)

To remove the clutch cover and clutch disc, 6 bolts were unscrewed from the clutch cover and the whole unit came off.

Replacing was the opposite of removing, but before tightening the bolts down, we had to make sure the clutch was aligned.  To do this, Victoria British sells an alignment tool that is a shortened model of the transmission input shaft.  You put the tool through the center of the clutch and make sure everything aligns accordingly before tightening down the bolts to spec....

...but since I did not get the alignment tool (I thought I purchased one, but actually did not), we used the old fashioned method.  We removed the bell housing from the transmission and Chris put the transmission shaft through the clutch and held up the transmission while I tightened down the bolts. Removing the bell housing was a necessary step so that we could get access to the clutch cover bolts while the transmission shaft was put in place for alignment.

...nice, shiny new clutch cover and disc.

Checking the Oil Pump and Valve Train

With the oil filter in place, we could now add some oil and give the engine a few spins.  The main reason for doing this was to make sure the oil pump was circulating the oil properly.

After filling the engine up with oil so that the oil level read at least "min" on the dipstick, we jumped the starter to Chris' truck battery and let the engine spin a bit.  Soon we realized that the oil pressure switch was not present and oil would spurt out this hole while the engine was running. (I wish I had gotten a video of this.)  As a quick fix to this problem, Fred plugged up the hole with a #2 pink pencil.

Oops...need to plug up this hole.

In the picture below, you can just see oil start to spurt through the rocker assembly.

The engine in action...