Rusty Triumphs in Scotland

[SiC]

Dolomites are 4 door aren't they?

I have a Webasto.

Useful for exiting the vehicle when a wheel has fallen off and you can't open the door. Mine has the early and narrower aluminium Sprint lug nuts, which are more likely to strip or have their studs sheer off.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Leyland quality.

[captain_70s]

Given the money involved to do something like that, I'd think I would choose a different model car for a better base. Or just buy something different that is faster stock for less! How I end up with such vastly different cars...

I just fancy building something stupid before I'm old and decrepit.

Nothing wrong with a Dolly shell for a base, no floppier than an Escrot and entry cost is £0 'cause I already own it. I don't particularly want to butcher something that's in better nick either...

I could go faster by buying newer but I also can't afford to insure anything that isn't on a 'classic' policy, and I think a 150bhp Dolly will feel 100x faster than a 300bhp 2000s motor on account of it attempting to dismantle itself at speed.

[captain_70s]

Leyland quality.

Genuinely surprised that later ones are better. Typically Leyland products get worse with "improvement".

[SiC]

I just fancy building something stupid before I'm old and decrepit.

Fair but you've got a few years yet.

Nothing wrong with a Dolly shell for a base, no floppier than an Escrot and entry cost is £0 'cause I already own it. I don't particularly want to butcher something that's in better nick either...

I could go faster by buying newer but I also can't afford to insure anything that isn't on a 'classic' policy, and I think a 150bhp Dolly will feel 100x faster than a 300bhp 2000s motor on account of it attempting to dismantle itself at speed.

Iirc you've not hit your 30s yet. That made a decent difference to my insurance. But then moving out into the suburbs helped the most for me.

This is why a fresh policy on my Clio was under £220 and Boxster was £180.

[captain_70s]

I'm Glasgow taxed.

It cost £400 to insure my three cars up north. Now it's £700+ for a modern and £200-400 for a "classic"...

You'd think I'd have years left but working on cars ages you by 5 years for every year you're at it. That's why at 28 I have a combover and look like I have slept since 2017.

[SiC]

I know what you mean. A weekend working on cars leaves me aching. Major reason why I need to save my pennies and get myself a car lift of some sort.

All of 6 cars cost £1k p/a to insure. Wife's A4 is the biggest cost in that at just under £400.

Amortalised over a year for all of them on insurance, tax (3 cars but Clio Winter/Boxster summer + crossover) and 3 car storage bays in the old chicken shed comes to £266pcm all-in. About the same as a single shit new car on lease. Admittedly that doesn't cover maintenance, servicing or parts but that still a lot less (probably, maybe...) than another lease to give a 2 car household for both of us.

Costs dropped moving out of Bristol suburbs, but not massively. Moving out from nearer did the most but I was a fair bit younger then too.

Usually explain this to colleagues who think having 6 cars
with associated storage must be expensive and extravagant.

You ought to move somewhere that is cheaper for living costs (not just rent) and less salty! Can enjoy classics for longer without having to need yearly welding sessions then.

[captain_70s]

There were grand plans for moving to a house with a garage etc this year, but then 2020 happened and everything utterly shit the bed. Job market is fucked, girlfriend can't find work, my job isn't really secure post Brexit but I'm lucky to actually have work at the moment at all.

Regardless. Car stuff. Engine things:

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So, the original engine was toast. To recap:

Big end bearing for No.3 essentially missing, as thick as tinfoil.
Conrod had gotten so hot it'd blued.
Big end bearings and mains tired through whole engine.
Thrust washers worn to steel backings.
Oil pump heat seized solid.
Timing chain sprockets worn down to sharp points.
Timing chain tensioner badly scored.
Evidence of piston slap on all cylinders.

Here is some sump metal:

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Essentially nothing was reusable. I don't think we bothered checking the cam as the evidence of oil starvation and sludge build up through the rest of the thing pretty much condemned it. The valve springs had dug into the cylinder head due to oil starvation so that was scrap. The sheer heat that had gone through the crank and block were enough to pretty much discard them.

I think the bits we salvaged from the original motor were:

The sump
The rocker cover
The backplate
The flywheel + clutch
The front plate
Some head studs
Dipstick tube

A chap by the name of Jikovron on the The Beige had been building a new engine for me, sourced from a Triumph 1300fwd. This was a superior small bearing engine than the later (rationalised to share big end bearings with the 6-pot motors) unit that Dollys came with when new. It was purchased for peanuts but needed a full rebuild.

So, to get the new engine functional it had the following:

Crank regrind, +20thou mains and +30thou big ends.
New small end bushes.
Overbore and new pistons at +20thou
Thrust washers at +15thou
New front and rear crank seals
New core plugs
New timing chain and tensioner
New valve guides

I also had a Mk4 Spitfire 1300 under my bed and a Herald 12/50 lump in the basement for potential parts pilferage.

The engine was collected from Chesterfield during one of the AS Cannock meets and hauled up north by DavidFowler2000 in his Volvo 740 as the Acclaim would not have handled the extra weight well...

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It was then stored in the boot of the Dolly 'till needed.

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So the old engine was stripped off Dolly specific bits we'd need, with the help of several of the Scotoshite regulars.

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At which point a problem was found. The fwd engine has a different crank. Ah.

This had actually been mentioned before but I'd gotten it into my head it was different at the arse end and had measured everything and found them identical to the mk4 Spit motor. Alas, tis the front end that's different.
Due to the fwd application the stuck the flywheel on the front of the engine and then found they had issues with crank pulleys flying off at speed, so a taper was added to it. Secondly the small crank journal motors have a smaller diameter shaft at the end than the later ones.

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In the above picture you can see the difference between the smaller fwd pulley (with holes in it for the flywheel) and the later large journal rwd pulley.

Surely this would be no issue though, just use the fwd pulley on the fwd crank? Yes, this'd fit perfectly. However we only had the Dolly timing cover, and the opening and crank seal on that were for the large diameter crank. Fuck.

Solutions were pondered for a while, thoughts of oversize seals, and shims, and taking pulleys to machine shops to have inserts fitted and then it dawned on me. A Herald 12/50 engine is essentially just a small journal 1300 with a smaller bore. I have one in the basement!

So there was a raid on the engine in the basement...

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Right, so now we can use the 1300fwd pulley to accommodate the crank taper and the small journal timing case and appropriate seal + oil flinging washer thing from the 12/50 engine for the smaller diameter shaft. Sorted.

The engine was put together and dropped in.

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We ran it up to oil pressure with a drill and it fucking dumped it all over the floor. Cunts.

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It came back out, us expecting massive fuckery. Nope, I'd forgotten the oil gallery plugs. Clever me.

However, for reasons I forget while the engine was out we went to turn it over by hand and found it locked solid... Eh? It'd spun freely before we put it in the car?

It took a long while to work out what the fuck was wrong but eventually we saw that the crank float was excessive. Fuck.

So these engines have a fundamental weak point in that the fore/aft movement of the crank is taken up by thrust washers. These are steel half moon washers with a bronze face that sit on top of the crank either side of the rear main. If these wear away their bronze coating (which they do after about 40-50k) the steel bites into the crank and chews it away. If the washers wear too thin they can drop out entirely and cause the crank to eat into the end of the block.

With the largest commercially available washers fitted my engine still had excessive float, but why was this causing the engine to lock up? Also, how was this not noticed when we checked the end float before final assembly?

Well, the workshop that reground the crank had added fillets to the journals, when I pryed the crank for testing the end float I'd driven the fillets against the block, felt the resistance and took the measurment. On heaving the engine out we'd driven the fillets under the block to the true extent of the end float, locking the engine. The workshop had also polished the surface the washers sit against, removing vital material.

Shitting fucksticks. I went around various machine shops trying to get oversized washers made and nobody could be arsed.

Given I was £400 into this engine we figured we'd try and make it work using more daring methods before I simply had to buy a new lump. Shims.

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Oh yes, the sort of tech used to fix your Model T in 1929.

Only the bronze coated side of the washer actually takes any wear, so why not just shove a washer behind them to take up the slack? If it doesn't work we'll need a new engine anyway.

It also seems the thrust washers available aren't particularly reliably sized, as the second set I bought were thicker than the last despite still being +15thou. Handy when the tolerance is something like 6thou...

So, in it went again:

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I also had to order a custom fanbelt as my mixture of small journal and large journal pulleys meant no normal configuration would work.

Finally we filled it up with oil and tried to start it. No dice. Did a compression test 25psi per cylinder. Marvellous. Timing was one tooth out. FML.

Right, now it'd start. Break in procedure for these is to start it full of break in oil, take it straight up to 2,000rpm and hold there for 20 mins. Dump the oil, fill with 20w50 and break in under load for the next few hundred miles, then swap the oil again.

If it's going to go bang it's going to go during the first 2,000rpm run-in... I'd embed the videos but I can't get it to fucking work...

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[Hooli]

Embedderation fixed, the extension is wank & can't handle youtube.be links, needs the old style desktop link.

I'd forgotten how like my Midget these sound, but then it is the same lump.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Impressive work.

You going get some green on the body soon?