Part 3: Valve grinding

Chris and I had visited Fred many times before and he always had this contraption in the basement next to his dryer that had all these levers and knobs.  Turns out this tool was to grind engine valves and he had picked it up decades ago for $50 at a garage sale.  

Fred refinishing the valves with the valve grinder.

The valve on left had recently been cleaned ground smooth.  The valve on the right had only been wire brushed clean.

After all the valves were ground smooth the next step was to make sure the valves sealed properly in the engine head.  To do this, we applied a bit of valve grinding compound onto the valve, seated the valve in the engine and attached a drill to the end of the valve and drilled/smoothed the valve in place.  Fred did the first valve below and then let us do the remaining seven.

Part 2: Engine Head Restoration

Before restoring the engine head, we had to remove the valves and springs.  We found that the best way to do this was with a giant fork to press down on the springs.  A socket was placed underneath the engine head (under the valve), to keep the valve up when the spring was pressed down. 

The engine head with the push rods, valves, and springs removed.  If you look towards the back of the picture, you can see the push rods and valves placed in a box that indicates which exact hole the rod/valve came from.

Chris and Fred cleaning the valves with a spinning wire wheel that had Fred rigged up to an old motor (the Ford Model T is in the foreground).

Cleaning the engine head...  Fred's preferred method of cleaning was: step 1) wire brush as much gunk off as possible; step 2) brush on kerosene to clean off any remaining grease; step 3) spray off the kerosene and any remnants with water from a pressured hose; and step 4) use compressed air to dry and spray off remaining water and gunk.

The final product - one cleaned engine head...

Part 1: Engine dismantling

First...the before picture:

Now on to dismantling...  While dismantling, we found a few unexpected discrepancies.  For example, when taking off the exhaust manifold (step 1 of dismantling) we found one manifold clamp to be larger than the others and then a manifold clamp missing.  We suspect that a clamp was lost along the way and that one of the bottom row clamps was swapped into the top row.

The engine with the valve cover removed:

If you haven't noticed yet, Chris did all the heavy lifting.  In this picture, Chris is removing the engine head which is what we worked on next.

Engine Restoration Underway

I've been terrible about working on the Triumph these past few months.  Work had been crazy and any free time that I had was spent catching up on errands.  Memorial Day weekend could not come soon enough and Chris and I spent the entire weekend in New York rebuilding the engine (not complete, but we got a lot done).  These next few posts will all be about the engine.  Hopefully, I'll make up for my delinquency in Triumph restoration and posts with lots of of pictures.

Why New York for restoration?  Chris' great uncle Fred lives in New York.  Fred is a machinist by trade and self-taught mechanic.  Over the years, he has restored 3 1960s Ford Mustangs and a 1929? Ford Model T, maintained various daily drivers that he has owned, fixed motorcycles/mopeds/bicycles...the list goes on...

Now how to get to New York without the transmission and engine moving around in the truck bed?  We built a wooden frame to fit in the truck with various wooden pieces to keep the engine and transmission snuggly in place.  Although the engine is not super heavy (still heavy), we used the engine hoist to load the engine into the back of the truck and hauled the engine hoist all the way to New York with us to offload it in when we got there.

Next up the engine restoration...