Coffee 12-19-15

I hear that WH---I'm a fearin they might boot me outa the good old boys clan!!

Yep, that garage door trick & pullin forward is a good deal--thanx.

Hi everyone,

No baby yet. Bummer I had to work the whole week. DK and I came to Williamsburg anyway. It's our annual Christmas visit; we've been coming here at Christmas long before our daughter's family moved here. Tomorrow we are going to Busch Garden's Christmas Town. We've never been to it so we don't know what to expect. I'll let you know what we find there. After that we'll go for a twilight stroll through Colonial Williamsburg and see what is there to see. They will have bon fires on the street corners and hot ale available for all at the Inns. It's a lot of fun.

I'm still looking for a few gifts for a couple of the kids; maybe I'll find something tomorrow along the Mall. I hope so as time is definitely running out.

I wish everyone here at NEPACrossroads a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Lisa

No baby yet??? Damn small people

Hi Everyone. I've been busy for a few weeks.
I returned home on Saturday night from the far Left Coast. I was in San Leandro Commiefornia. Working on a car I'm part owner of. It's a fairly rare 1932 Pierce Arrow Convertible Coupe. It's a true barn-find. There were only approximately 50-60 of this body style made, and this one is one of six known to survive. It is the inline 8 cylinder version. There were 5 V12 versions of it made, and only one or two survived.. one sold a year or so at the RM Auction at Hershey for some significant 'change'.
The car I worked on, and will continue to have to work on is an example of how virtually ALL of the cars made, regardless of how expensive they were when new, or how valuable they are now.. ALL were at one time 'just an old car'. and were not treated very well.
'My' car had been run without an air cleaner, and had had the oil filter system removed and bypassed. And of course, it seems that oil was way too expensive to change to get rid of the dirt and grit in the engine.. So this poor engine was 'lubricated' with grinding compound instead of oil. For how many miles or years, there is no way of telling.
The engine had very low oil pressure, and once the engine and [freshly changed by myself] oil warmed up, it had some serious noises and on very loud connecting rod knocking.
The engine also had very low compression on several cylinders, it had gummy old oil/varnish on several valve stems which kept the valves from closing. I was able to squirt the valve stems with a penetrating oil through the large spark plug holes.
So, when it was determined that the engine had to have some significant work done, I removed the cylinder head, and the oil pan, and removed the pistons and rods. While the engine was showing signs of the abuse it had endured, it looked and measured like it might be salvagable. I decided to perform an 'in frame' partial overhaul of the engine.
I'll not bore everyone with all the 'gory details', but I did replace all 16 valves, cut new valve seats in the block, used 'Lock'NStitch to repair some cracks in the block and valve seats.
I had a spare set of connecting rods re-babbited [new bearing material poured into the rod, then machined round], and then spent hours carefully polishing the crankshaft rod journals to get them to be closer to being 'round' instead of oval. I then had scraped and fit each connecting rod bearing to it's bearing journal on the crankshaft.
A set of oversize rings were purchased to fit the old style pistons. This was to help make up for the worn oversize and tapered cylinder bores. The ring's end-gaps were checked and ground correct at the bottom of the bore, where the cylinder was still close to standard diameter.. all the cylinders had about .010" taper, worn more at the top due to the dirt the engine had inhaled without an air cleaner.
I put the pistons in a lathe and 'knurled' them to increase their outer diameter. This is an obsolete technique, but it worked well here, I could not afford to bore the block and buy new pistons for the beat-up engine and car.
The engine was just filthy inside, a young neighbor to the car's current location wanted to earn some money, so I set him up with scrapers, brushes and solvents. He tied rags and towels around his arm, to keep the solvent from running down to his armpit, and he scraped and scrubbed the parts of the engine and undercarriage he could get to. He definitely earned his money !!
I started the reassembly process and fitting of rods, rings, etc on December 8th, and the car ran again on the 17th.
I am both VERY pleased and surprised at how well the job turned out. I really expected it to have cold-engine piston slap due to the excessive piston to cylinder clearance. I guess the 'knurling' did the trick.
I replaced the very worn oil pump with a spare one I had, and combined with the fresh rod bearings, and a tight set of hydraulic valve lifters, the engine has good oil pressure again.

On Friday the 18th, I took the car on it's maiden drive, which also had to be it's engine break-in run. The worst thing to do to an engine with new piston rings is to 'baby' it, rings need to have high combustion chamber pressures to force them against the cylinder walls to seat into the worn, slightly irregular surfaces. The engine when first started, had a LOT of blowby smoke coming out the breather pipe. It had plenty of excuses: tapered cylinders, loose pistons, out of round bores, etc.
The drive I took included about 2 miles of city driving, with stop signs and stop lights. and of course traffic. But once away from the traffic getting onto the freeways, I took a very steep, twisty road that was cut into the side of a valley that has Chabot Lake and resevoir in the valley. This road is nearly perfect to put a good load on an engine. The old '32 coupe performed very well, I pulled the entire 3-4 mile uphill run in top gear, and used full throttle for much of the run. I'd have to slow down for the sharp turns, to about 15-20mph, but leaving the car in top gear, pulled out of the turns and accelerated to maybe 30-35mph before having to slow for the next turn. I did not have any traffic in my way, and the engine got a near perfect break-in run.
When I returned to the shop, the engine idled several hundred rpm higher due to the reduced ring friction, and the blow by was GONE !! The oil pressure was still very good, and since I had a light-weight 5w-30 oil in it for break-in, I'm very happy with the results.
When I first started the engine, I only ran it for about 4 or 5 runs, in the garage, then dropped the oil pan and cleaned it out again. it had caught about a quart of loose chunks of sludge, bits of gasket and sealers, and of course some metal from all the honing and valve cutting. No matter how carefully I clean an engine, the first batch of oil is drained and the pan cleaned. The second batch of oil was for the break-in runs, and then I'll put in some 15w-40 for longer tours.

When I got home, my dog LOKI went just about berserk, he was just SO HAPPY to have 'dad' back home.. He stuck to me like Velcro all day today.

Monday morning, in just a few hours, [bad case of insomnia tonight] I'm getting a 'tune-up' on the surgery on my right eye. My intra-occular eye pressures started to climb again on that eye, my eye-doc said that scar tissue was causing this, so part of the original surgery, done in October of 2012 has to be repeated to remove the scar tissue.
I'm sure glad that modern medicine has these procedures available, or I'd be blind by now.

Ok, time to try to get to sleep again.

Merry Christmas !!

Greg L

That's a pretty car, Greg. Glad to hear you were able to salvage the engine. Merry Christmas to you and yours.

That thing is sweet!! Looks every bit show quality from here! My '72 El Camino never shined like that one.

If you have a minute, I'd like to know more about that knurling process - sounds like something I could do on some worn out motorcycle engines.

Never heard of LockNStitch either - got some internet reading to do.

Thanks for the post Greg! Love seeing those ol' timers hit the road again.