Didn't notice the bent drop arm ball till I took the drag link off it, I'm thinking it may be the reason for the shiny after market hub bracket, might explain the cause of the box damage too. Decided to fit an early LandRover steering box, these are a very nice recirculating ball type, the RH drive ones work on a LH drive vehicle. I had to slightly reposition the hole to get the box in, at first I thought it would poke through the rail and cut a hole for that, but that didn't work out. So I made a filler washer and welded that in. Nicely wallered out mounting holes there! Made it with minimum clearance as a fail safe feature, scribed round it. Made a mounting bracket, the bit with holes was cut out of the original LR one, some may say it looks a bit thin, but if it's ok with LR it's ok with me, I'll keep an eye on it though! Lenghtening the column tube was easy cos happily I had a '28 Chevy one in stock that is a perfect fit over the LR one.Dirt cheap steering wheel may not stay. Reason for using the LR ball joints is that they eliminate any chance of play that can come from worn out balls or miss adjusted original Ford type, which could cause death rattle. Can't test drive it till I get the Burtz engine built, but it feels ok on jack stands.
Copied here from the banger thread for continuity. Being a banger rookie, I thought my Diamond block B banger seemed to run ok, except for some ticking that I thought was a loose tappet or two. I've now got a Stromberg inlet manifold for it so I took off the old manifold and cover to check. A sense of impending doom came over me when I saw water in the port. Took the head of and my fears were confirmed. Number 3. Number 2. Number 1. Not sure about number 4. I've had the pan off to have a look and the rest of the motor seems fine and perfectly usable, so now I'm looking forward to being told that my block isn't FUBAR!
S***ched cracks and new ones went down into the bores as well, so although the bottom end appears perfect the block is s****. Say hello to my new Burtz 5 bearing block, crank, and cam engine kit! Still gathering up the rest of the correct new parts to build it, not a simple or cheap thing this side of the pond!
I could stuff almost any make of used engine in there cheaper, and I thought about that for a couple of minutes, but the Ford banger bug really got to me in the short time I had running around in it.
I have a police head that I could use that needs crack testing and probably skimming to clean it up, and rust in the chambers means the CRs probably vary a bit. It was running with the wrong gasket under it, which may have contributed to the water in the bores. For reliability and CR raise I'll most likely end up with a Burtz, which will then need a dizzy to match the CR. Other issues are that, my old engine being a B means the sump needs altering and side cover won't fit, and the oil pump is the very early type that according to Ford service sheets should never be used in a B engine!
I have many orphaned sumps and side covers... Running a Burtz head at the moment. It's really quite good. Probably try my Brierley head eventually. Stock B dizzy would be fine, or a Y/Pop one works.
How do I become an orphanage so I can offer a good home? Only have an A dizzy that was on my B engine, I have heard about Pop dizzys fitting, but finding a good one?.
I think your B block could be salvaged...but it depends on the deck thickness. Your Bertz looks better than mine, I learned a few things unless they have changed, but I suspect not. My block was porous and the rods had all kinds of shrink marks...yours look good (I'm a Jones so I have to have the first one on the block) every corner on the block is sharp, spend lots of time with a file and then file some more you want to take the rod caps off right away to clean the corrosive machining lube out of them the block is full of casting sand on both the oil side and cooling side...you can't scrub, brush and flush it enough...then pressure wash it and do it all over again seat the rear main seal ALL the way in the recess for it after placing sealant on the back side...it will leak if you don't seal and seat.....I used a large socket for a driver and Loc***e 5699 sealant seal your rear main bolts...it's a funky set up with nuts on both ends of the fasteners....again I used 5699 the oil galley is drilled all the way to the back of the block and there are plugs to install...pay attention to sealing them, especially the back one...the plugs are non tapered set screws WTF? for lube under pressure... epoxy them in and I believe the new guidance for the rear galley plug is to use a ****on head screw with a copper gasket and epoxy it in I finally did that in my block and it doesn't leak now. (this may be included with the block now) I modify a A/B oil pump using the early V8 oil pump gears...they are the same diameter but a third longer for volume. I have spacer plate blanks available that need to be hand finished. The drive gear swaps over onto the A/B pump shaft...it gets turned down like the B shaft if it is an A shaft along with p***ages getting opened up I used Snyders pistons and was told by another builder that they weigh more than the Silvolite or EGGE and that was a problem... guess what, I weighed them EGGE was heavier and Silvolite weighed exactly the same my first ***embly I used the ring gap guidance in the ***embly instructions....I scored 2&3 bores (the two that run lean) I opened the gap up to 0.024" from the 0.013" to 0.020" in the ***embly guide for the top ring I had gapped at 0.018" initially and I gapped the other rings at 0.018" Good luck and I will be following along
Thanks for that WUT, I'm aware of most of that except porosity and the ring gap issue. Did you use the narrow rings and how bad was the bore scoring? How did the porosity show up?
@winduptoy You made me take the rods out of their sealed bags and #3 has shrink marks, should I be worried? Rod weights on kitchen scales: 1- 925 grams 2- 928 3- 926 4- 925 My block had almost no sand, water jacket pretty clean, found one slight defect. Also un bagged the other bits and the supplied nuts are a very loose fit on the main bearing bolts.
I used the Hastings rings .125" for top and center .156" for the oil rings I could see where there was additional wear on the top ring where the two ends meet. I had to bore the block and it cleaned up .010 over. I think the top of the cylinders run hotter than we believe and I was on a long trip where I drove with a 45-50 mph headwind at 2:00 for over 200 miles with my foot to the floor It was all on the exterior of the block...I polished the block and filled the porosity...pretty counts until it doesn't what @hotrodfil said....mine had shrink marks too but yours still look better... Good luck
Interesting, many years ago I bought an army rebuilt 10.35 ltr straight 6 petrol engine for a Scammell Explorer wrecker I owned, it didn't run well. Those engines worked very hard, up on the governor most of the time. Turns out all the top rings were broken and the liners scored just like yours, the builder must have missed or ignored the part in the book that specifically said the top rings needed a much bigger gap. I have learned never to trust feeler gauges, now I always check them with a mic and have found some sets were way out. I also like the go-no-go method to avoid 'feel' issues wherever possible. When the first motorway was built over here an awful lot of engines didn't last long on them. I remember one theory that made sense at the time was that driving on normal UK roads involved a lot of gear changes, junctions, hills, traffic etc. which meant lifting your foot every few minutes which drew oil up past the rings to lubricate and cool them. Engines at the time were designed to take advantage of that, as foot hard down driving for miles on end wasn't possible here until the motorways came along. So everyone drove flat out all the way, I know I did in my Ford Zephyr just cos it was such great fun. P.S. just remembered I'd put much smaller tyres on the front cos I thought it looked 'g***er' they were almost dripping rubber at the end of the motorway!
Been messing around with the Burtz Oil Baffle thing, came up with this ally prototype, pretty simple but only for when building an engine as it's not springy.. 'Production' ones will be sheet steel with shorter tabs. Wadya reckon?
Quite a few rods pictured on the Burtz web page have the same marks on them..................and relax.
Got to play on my friends proper mans lathe to take the flywheel weight down from 50lbs to 35.5 lbs, similar weight to the Burtz made one. Had both it and the V8 pressure plate balanced, so I guess it's time to start thinking about putting it all together soon!
First shows the very clever Rob Firths A pickup at Pendine. He made all the ally and br*** bits on his flatty including the heads and blower, how cool is that? His banger intakes are made to fit with tube headers, not a stock exhaust manifold. It took quite a while but I managed to fix that. After making the adaptors, by trial and error, many times grinding a bit off the exhaust and then reducing the adaptor thickness, they turned out to be a nice snug fit. Which is good cos for a road car the intake needs heat. Apart from turning way too much ally to chips it all worked out well, and nicely flowing, I reckon it looks different and rather cool. Me likey muchly!
After months of indecision I finally came up with a plan, made a bracket and got the oil filter/pressure relief valve fitting mounted and plumbed into the Burts block. I've had those nice quality ex army hose clips in Cosmoline for at least 25 yrs, reckon they look the part on there! Scored a model B distributor too. I won't be using that head though.
Looks like a fine project you got - I have not read the whole thread but what kind of ****** are you going to rn with this banger?
Stock A trans for now, scored a good set of internals for it so hopefully 2nd gear should run a lot quieter than before.
The Jalopy Journal
