Technical ***September 2023 Banger Meet Thread - Beginning the Ber Months***

Oh, I am sorry that this is the case....CDO and I have been into ours to correct the result of lean cylinder problems. Please keep us appraised of your findings... at least the bang didn't result in a lock up of things that rotate
I've only seen a couple, but there was a Ford cast exhaust manifold that exited out the front. I believe that it was a stationary engine exhaust. That would be a find to address the heat on the floor...
Good luck

 

Pic of the gear, wouldn't attach to the previous post

 

That would be interesting to see but packaging exhaust on a right hand drive model a is difficult, will update after more disassembly

 

What oil pump are you running?
Pressure relief valve on oil pump? What is the relief pressure?
Were you using the stock spring loaded cam button?
Did the cam gear come loose?
Are you running an oil pressure gage? If so what was the oil pressure when the engine washed out the cam gear?


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Stipe pump and relief, engine had consistent 40psi, oil pressure was still at 40psi when the engine coughed but after that had zero, turning the oil pump with a screwdriver the pump moves nice and smoothly

 

Did your block have the hole for the oil port leading to the face of the cam gear drilled. (see attached picture). The first run of blocks did not have that feature.

Also was the aluminum cam gear a cast unit or was it made from forged billet (6061 T6) aluminum?

 

Ouch @Star 351 where did that happen?

 

Between yass and Gundagai

 

A long way to go home from there.

 

Our Riley 2 port. Had it over 40 years.

 

Yes the block did have the oil hole, not sure if it's a billet or cast gear

 

We got the burtz fully dissembled and we discovered the culprit, when we built the engine we used a cast crank gear amd that failed taking out the aluminium timing gear with it, at the time it was all that was available in Australia as shipping from the USA to Australia basically stopped during covid when we were building the engine, everything else in the engine looked great

 

Thom goes into far greater detail on the Facebook forum The Burtz Ford Model A Engine. with multiple pictures.

In continuing on from my previous post Phillip McNally and myself have spent today tearing mums burtz engine apart after a cam gear failure, we weren't surprised by the condition of everything other than the timing gears everything else is in fantastic condition and shows no signs of being stressed by running down the highway at 70mph, to answer some questions, the timing gear hadn't come loose or out of adjustment, all the bolts were still fitted and tight and the the gear was still set where we left it when the cam was degreed in, the oil pump was free and had no scoring, the cam and valvetrain turns smoothly and appears to be in great shape, there was no evidence of the cam floating forward even though the engine has a stock sprung thrust button, the crank and rods as well as bearings are in fantastic shape with normal amounts of wear, there's no significant scuffing on the pistons or the bores, down to the root cause of the problem, it appears to be our fault upon inspection the crank gear is made of cast iron and was the cause of the failure, it let go and tore up the cam gear at the same time, at the time of assembly we were unaware of the potential problems a cast iron crank gear could cause, also it was all that was available to us during here in Aus during covid, after some cleaning and ordering of parts we will re assemble the engine and put it back in the sport coupe in the not too distant future

A further comment was made:
Dan MacEachern makes the finest timing gears ln the country. His heat treated steel crank gear should always be used.

It has been encouraged to forward this info to Burtz and other suppliers.

Warren

 

My 1st question would be how much backlash did you have between the cam and crank gear when you assembled the motor? Lack of backlash is the #1 reason, in my opinion for this type of failure. My 2nd question would be how was the cam/ cam gear prevented from rotating when the cam gear nut was tightened and how tight was it tightened.
Sorry to hear of your problems, as none of us want to see this happen.

 

We used the MacEachern Bronze Timing Gear and Steel Crankshaft Gear when we build our Burtz engine (#0059) in April 2021. The backlash was checked every 90 degrees of the timing gear and each measurement was .004”. At testament to the gears and the alignment of the crankshaft and cam journeys. We ran the 2021 Great Race with this engine after a ~1,000 break-in, and never had any problems. The Great Race was over 3,500 miles, a lot of hard acceleration along with stop and go maneuvers throughout the event. The engine has ran fine for over 15,000 miles since then, and still going strong.

 

The October 2023 Banger thread is open.

 

november ??

 

The November Meet was announced in the October Thread