Engine Assembly: Installing The Pistons

Next task on the assembly list was installing the pistons. First they needed to be ringed though. The ring gaps had been inspected so I got on with it. Oil ring assembly was first. They were made from spring steel so installation tools were not needed. I just spread the expansion ring and pushed it in the bottom groove. The side rails followed. I was not worried about the gap positions for now. I'll set them right before installing the pistons.

The compression rings are a bit harder so I bought pliers for them. They were only a few euros and made installing the rings really easy. I just had to make sure the moly faced ring was installed to the top groove and that they were installed the correct side up. This was indicated by a dot on both rings.

Then it was time to insert the pistons to their cylinders. Before the final install, I wanted to check the bearing clearance though. I did that only for the first piston as testing all of them would have been somewhat pointless. First the bearings.

Then pieces of rubber tubing over the bolts to protect the bores.

And installation. I had a cheap ring compressor that I screwed around the piston. I sprayed WD-40 on everything and then tapped the piston in. The compressor unfortunately got stuck a bit and broke as I pulled it out. So much for cheap tools. At least I got the clearance measured with Plastigage again.

As with the main bearings, the result was about 0.002 inches. Acceptable range should be 0.002 - 0.003 inches so I was fine.

I did some reading and apparently the best tool for installing pistons is a tapered aluminium ring that is precision tooled for a single bore size. So I went an bought one by Moroso.

You can only use it for 4.030 inch bore size but I don't think I'll be building another engine any time soon. After pulling the first piston out again, I prepared it and the crankshaft for final install. This meant spreading some assembly lube on the journals and bearings...

...then turning the correct journal to bottom dead center (BDC), oiling the bore, locating the ring gaps and using the tool to tap the piston in. For ring gap positions I used the ones instructed in Millers book.

I have to say that the installation ring was an excellent tool! I did not have a single problem with any of the pistons. They just smoothly slipped in the cylinders. I pushed the piston in until the bearing contacted the journal.

Final step before placing the cap on the rod was checking that the locating tab on all the bearing faced towards the center of the block.

This meant that the rod had been installed correctly on the piston. Everything was OK in that front so I torqued the cap nuts to 24 ft-lbs. And after a few hours of work, all the pistons were in!

Turning the crank was naturally much harder now but everything still moved smoothly so this job was done!

Engine Assembly: Main Bearing Clearance

My crank was just machined but I still wanted to check all the bearing clearances just in case. I do not own micrometers or bore gauges so I had to settle for Plastigage. I've read that it is not that accurate but should be enough in my case as the machinist should have measured everything.

Before installing the bearings, I cleaned them and their bores. Then I cleaned the crank journals and finally pushed the bearings in place. After carefully setting the crankshaft to the block, I installed and torqued all but number one cap. For some reason Tom Monroes book says that before doing the measurements, all other caps must be installed. They should not touch the crank and so should not make any difference but I followed the instructions anyway.

I had a strip of green Plastigage that measures clearances from 0.001 to 0.003 inches. I cut a piece of it and carefully set in on the first journal.

Then I installed the main cap, tapped it in its groove and torqued the lubricated bolts to 65 ft-lbs. After removing the cap again, I checked how much the Plastigage had deformed with the supplied scale.

Bearing 1 clearance

Result was about 0.002 inches. Finally I cleaned the bearing surfaces and installed the cap again. Then it was time to repeat all the steps four more times.

Bearing 2 clearance

Bearing 3 clearance

Bearing 4 clearance

Bearing 5 clearance

Every bearing had maybe a bit under 0.002 inches of clearance. The acceptable range is 0.0005 to 0.0024 inches so I should be fine.

Disassembling The Engine Part 2

Finally it was time to drop the crankshaft. Everything around it had been removed so I could get it out of the engine. First I had to remove all the connecting rod caps. They are attached with just two nuts so I removed them and pulled the caps. I stored them in order so I can put them back in the same positions.

Next I loosened the main caps and made sure the crank came down with them. Finally, very carefully, I removed caps and took the crank down.

It was time to check the damage. The crank journals seemed pretty good and only two had some small scratched that I could feel with my finger. Hopefully I can just have it polished and put it back.

The bearings had taken most of the damage. Here's a photo of the mains.

All of then have worn down to the copper. No wonder the oil pressure dropped a bit when idling. The rod bearings were not much better.

So now everything necessary has hopefully been taken off the engine so I can service the parts and start putting everything back together. We'll see how that goes. I'm especially nervous how I can get the crank back in and attach all the connecting rods...

Plans For The Engine

I've been going through some options for my engine. Option one would be a full rebuild. That would mean pulling the engine out, completely tearing it apart, machining the block and heads, probably buying a lot of new parts and putting the engine back together. Of course this gives the best results but to do that in Finland, you could buy a completely new engine with the same money.

Option two is to just replace the worn parts with the engine in the car and driving to the sunset without breaking the bank. Well, driving in about six months when the snows melt again...

As I'm not a major owner of Supercell (a small game company that was partially sold to the Japanese for 1,1 billion euros (1.5 billion dollars) last week), I think I will have to go with option two. I will buy new main bearings, rod bearings, oil pump and timing chain. And perhaps a new water pump. By replacing those, I should be able to use the engine just fine without a complete rebuild as it was not burning oil and ran well.

First I needed to know the bearing size. My old bearings had these markings:
C50E-6A338-A-B
CLEV
FoMoCo
T-77(r)
65

What I could find, it is the original size Ford small block bearing made in 1965. The original bearing that my engine left the factory with. Pretty amazing that it's not worn more that what it is...

Project Blows Up

I've been preparing the car for the new transmission for the past days. I cleaned the underbody by scraping and brushing as much dirt out as possible. It seemed that some rust proofing had been added there at some point and it had worked really well. All floors seemed to be original and in really good condition from underneath. I just hope that the floors would have been rustproofed better from the inside too.

I sprayed some new rustproofing to the floors and turned my attention to the engine. Clearly some oil had been leaking from the rear seal or through the flywheel bolt holes.

I decided to drop the oil pan and replace the rear main seal and also investigate the bearings now that it was easy. I had to remove the crossmember under the engine and loosen the sway bar to get the pan out. It was a tight fit but I didn't have to remove the steering linkage. Everything looked pretty original inside the engine too.

Pretty much everything was covered in brown old oil. I have a feeling the engine has never been rebuilt. It was time to remove the end cap and replace the seal under it. It seemed to be the really old rope seal so I would have to loosen all the main bearing caps to drop the crank a bit to get the top half out. Unfortunately I did not get that far when I checked the bearing.

Yeah, it does not look too good. So now I will need to replace the main bearings. And while at it, rebuild the whole engine most likely. This project has officially now blown up...