Oil Filter Fiasco

Maybe "fiasco" is a bit dramatic, but the oil filter replacement ended up taking an hour, which is about 55 minutes longer than what it should have been.

To start, the oil filter was removed using an oil filter strap wrench...straightforward - no issues here.

When we went to put on the new oil filter, we noticed that it did not have a screw mount to attach to the engine.  (See below, parts don't fit.)

Then we thought, "Well, maybe we needed to remove the screw from the old filter."  So Fred tried freeing the screw using the 2-nut removal technique.

No luck here, so maybe some better access to the oil filter is needed.  To do this, Fred sawed off the oil filter with a circular saw.

Still no luck removing the screw, so a little heat action was applied to see if this would help loosen the screw.

Being an oil filter, there was some oil leftover and this caught fire. (we put out the fire in the nearby water bucket)

What finally did the trick was grinding the screw out from the inside of the oil filter and then using a hammer to tap it out.

Finally removed

While Chris and Fred were examining how to attach the newly freed screw and whether or not the threads survived the extraction process, I decided to review the parts I had bought for this trip to New York - some manifold clamps, gaskets, a fan belt...  Then I took a closer look at the fan belt to read the packaging information and then I hear "clink clink clink" (the sound of metal falling onto the floor).

Hmm...what's this that fell out of the fan belt? (I asked myself)  It turns out that I had ordered an oil filter adapter screw but that it had gotten stuck during shipping inside the fan belt packaging!  We had the part all along!

The oil filter (left) and critical part to oil filter installation (right)

With this new screw in hand, the oil filter installation took less than 1 minute to screw on...but with the time spent trying to salvage the old screw mount, we spent about an hour trying to install the oil filter.  This was not one of our finer moments of the weekend, but I do need to applaud our determination to make things work and thank Fred for his patience and hard work.

Back to New York

We went back to New York this past weekend to finish restoration of the engine.  First thing we tackled was replacing the engine head back in place and adjusting the valve spacing (rocker arm clearance), but before doing this, we marked the crankshaft pulley where pistons 2 and 3 were at top dead center (the pulley already had a marking for where pistons 1 and 4 were at top dead center; the marking for pistons 2 and 3 was opposite of 1 and 4).  (These markings will be used later).

Crankshaft pulley marking

Dropping the rocker shaft in place

After tightening everything down to the torque spec, the next step was to check the valve spacing clearance.  To do this, we rotated the flywheel to get the pistons adjusted at top dead center of the compression cycle (markings from the step above helped here).  Then the valve spacings of the top dead center cylinders were adjusted to spec.

A feeler gauge blade of  .010" (the Haynes manual spec for valve clearance) was slid into the spacing and the individual rocker arms were adjusted by tightening the ball pin. This was repeated 8 times for each rocker arm (flywheel rotation was done according to which valves we were working on).

Adjusting the valve spacing

Next up, we checked the oil pump circulation and that required installing a new oil filter first.  This turned out to be more of an ordeal than it should have been...so I will save this for a separate post.

Part 10: Re-installing the Pistons

To install pistons, a ratchet type piston ring compressor was needed.  Since the rings were brand new, the rings stuck out of the pistons a bit.  The ring compressor wraps around the piston and squeezes the rings into place.

But first we dunked the piston in engine oil, to make it was properly lubed before installing (oil was also squirted onto the cylinder walls).  Then the piston compressor was attached to the piston and the piston was positioned over the cylinder (make sure the arrow on top of the piston points to the front/fan of the engine - piston installation direction matters).  The wooden end of a hammer was used tap the piston back into the engine.

One thing to note...make sure the piston compressor bottom lines up flushed with the piston bottom.  In our first few attempts, the compressor was not perfectly aligned and the ring would slip out underneath before we could push the piston through the engine.

To install the pistons we had to turn the engine on the side to reattach the connecting rods.  The big-end bolts that held the connecting rods in place needed to be torqued to 40 lbf ft.  Cylinders 1 and 4 could be installed at the same time since they rotated on the same crank shaft cycle and cylinders 2 and 3 could be installed together on the opposite cycle of the cam shaft (turning the fly wheel rotated the cycle and raised and lowered the pistons).

The dogs are helping Chris and Fred with piston installation.

This pretty much wrapped up a weekend worth of engine rebuilding.  After the pistons were re-installed, the oil pan was attached and that's how we left for the weekend.  It took 2.5 days (1 day = 9AM - 5PM with a break forlunch) of effort amongst 3 people to get to this point.  Fred's assistance with this really sped things up with his wealth of knowledge, tools, and everything on hand and ready to go.  We'll be back to New York mid-summer to finish the rest of the engine restoration.

Part 9: The Mystery Behind the 3rd Cylinder Has Been Solved!!!

Back in August 2010, I had posted the results of our compression testing.  No matter what we did, the 3rd cylinder always reported abnormal results.  Well, I am pleased to announce that we believe we know what the cause is...the top piston ring of piston 3 was stuck.  

Removing the piston rings on the first pistons were pretty straight forward.  Dig you nails into the gap and pry off the ring.  With the 3rd piston, however, the top ring was stuck in its groove.  The ring would not spin in the groove or dislodge easily (other rings moved freely in the groove).  It took Fred a while to finally pry it loose.

The guess (not an expert opinion) was that the stuck ring caused the 3rd cylinder/piston to not have good compression.  (The stuck ring impacted the travel of the piston in the cylinder.)

After removing the rings, we snapped a few old rings in half and use these as a tool to scrape out carbon residue built up in the ring grooves.  The piston heads then went through some wire brushing to make everything nice and clean before installing new rings. 

For the bottom ring, installation order matters. The waffle ring is installed first and then the top and bottom rings are installed.  (There are slight grooves in the waffle ring that the outer rings sit in.)  This is useful to keep in mind when removing the bottom ring as well - take the outer rings off first.

Like new...

Part 8: Cylinder Honing

Smoothing the cylinder walls required two special tools that Fred had on hand.  A ridge reamer was used to smooth out the ridge that formed at the top of the cylinder (the bottom of the cylinder had worn down from the piston rings leaving a ~1/4" at the top where the rings did not rub) and a cylinder honer was used to smooth the out the slight vertical grooves left behind by the old rings on the cylinder walls.

Before we took the pistons out, we did a bit of ridge reaming to scrape off the cylinder wall that had not worn away, but after removing the pistons, we found that we had not done enough ridge reaming and had to do a bit more (sometimes we alternated with the cylinder honing until we got just the right smoothness in the interior of the cylinder).

The ridge reamer was a metal contraption that had edges that would scrape along the interior of the cylinder walls.  In the picture below, Chris is using a wrench to turn the ridge reamer inside the cylinder.  Another bolt on the ridge reamer was used to adjust the diameter of the scrapers to fit just perfectly in the cylinder.  

Cylinder honing involved attaching a 3-prong antenna like object to a drill.  With some squirts of oil in the cylinder, the drill did all the work to smooth out the cylinder walls.

Fred honing the cylinder wall.  If you look closely at the cylinder next to the one being worked on, you can see the ridge that had formed in the cylinder.  The ridge reamer was used to smooth this out.

In the original cylinder honing tool, the sanding pads were sanding stones.  In these replacement pads, strips of sandpaper were adhered to flat stones - not as good.

Honed and reamed cylinders...gorgeous.

Part 7: Piston Removal

To install the new piston rings we had purchased, we had to undo the bolts that attached the connecting rods to the crankshaft.  Nothing too difficult here... just elbow grease which Chris is providing.  I was on picture duty for any times where my help was not needed.

The picture below shows the 4 pistons and connecting rods that we had removed.  There is masking tape on the connecting rods to indicate which cylinder the pistons came from (1 = towards the front of the car and 4 = piston nearest the transmission).  It turns out we did not need to do this in the end, because if you look carefully on the connecting rods there are cylinder numbers hand-etched into the metal, using the same numbering that we had applied above (1 through 4).

Part 6: Oil Pan Removal and the Undersides

It was good thing we did some of the engine work outside and used a dolly to move the engine between the shop and outside, because here in this picture, the tilting of the engine caused fluids to spill out.  The dolly was a wooden dolly that Fred had built with spare wheels and we screwed some L-shaped pieces of wood together to snuggly hold the engine.

The bolts for the oil pan came out easily like most of the bolts on the engine.  In the picture below, Chris is prying the oil pan off by breaking the gasket seal.

It's hard to tell in this picture but there is a 1/4" layer of oil sludge at the bottom of the oil pan.

A look at the underside of the engine.

Part 5: Engine Block Cleaning

Engine restoration is a dirty job.  We all wore gloves to keep our hands clean whenever possible (sometimes it was just much easier to do it bare hands), but by the end of the long Memorial Day weekend, we were dirty.  I was finding grease spots on me for at least 2 days afterwards and our work clothes were completely covered in grease/oil/etc that covered and were still inside the engine.  We had not drained the oil completely and oil would come out through other holes other than the oil drain plug, and we forgotten to drain the antifreeze from the engine so that left a big mess when we tilted the engine on the side to get a better angle on things.  The water pump turned into a coolant fountain.  All were cleaned up with sawdust and swept away...messy messy.

Engine block cleaning itself required more of the same wire brush/kerosene/hose down/air spray cleaning technique that was used on the engine head.  Before hosing down, we covered the top with plastic and tied it down to keep any debris from getting inside the block.  We should have tied down the plastic more securely in hindsight as the pressure from the air spray blew some water underneath the plastic.

A cleaned engine block...  We plan to spray paint it later to make it really stand out after all the effort we have put into restoring it, but that will be on the next visit back to New York.

Part 4: Reseating the Valves

It took a while to get the engine out of the truck and prep for restoration.  After that effort, engine head disassembling and valve grinding took us to the end of a full day of restoration (9 AM to 5 PM with a break for lunch).

On the morning of day 2, we started by reseating the valves.  Reseating the valves was similar to removal of valves, but we found some other tools to work better for installation than the tools used for removal.  A box wrench, flat head screw driver, and 2 pairs of hands were all that were needed to replace the valves and reseat the springs.  Using the closed end of the box wrench, Chris would compress the spring while I moved the valve keepers in place with the screw driver.

Below is a picture of the finished engine head after cleaning, grinding, and reseating valves.  I thought it came out pretty well.

Up next... the engine block.