The Dark Wob

I can't. I buy it nonetheless.

But I have a mental blockage to take an engine apart and then do nothing.
It's probably psychological because I always find everything wrong with them.

After pulling one broken engine apart, now I'd have thrown that engine in and seen what happened. Or at the very least doing a compression test and checking the bottom + oil pump.

The Reverend Bluejeans wrote: ↑Sun Aug 18, 2019 12:41 pm I have never, ever kept them in order. Take them out, chuck them all in a vat of paraffin to clean them. Each valve in an electric drill with emery to get them perfectly clean, clean up each valve seat with a cutter, lap each valve in by hand. Never had an issue.

This but be careful with recutting the seats unless they are really bad as doing so removes the leaded memory - I burned a new valve in 6000 miles after doing this....

Anyway fit new shells, check the oil pump or/ and replace if not stupid money, hone the bores and fit new rings, never had an issue with rings hitting the ridge at the top, and I really have built some shit over the years, that's why the ridge is there because the rings don't touch that bit..

The reason for engine dismantling is to clean out sludge and spiders and replace gaskets.

In an ideal world I'd just drop the thing in "as is" but doing so is an arduous task which requires the aid of multiple people who need to be free to help, the borrowing of an engine crane, potential of attracting police attention courtesy of mad neighbour and is dependent on half decent weather.

I do not want to have to do this twice, so minimising potential problems, within my budget of whatever spare change I can find behind the sofa, is the current aim.

Heads off.

Old head:






New head:





So, the old'un has some battering to the top of cylinder no.2, valves are sitting very deep, valve springs are scored into the head quite a bit. Not sure if any of this is normal.

New head has valves sitting more proud, the coolant passages are unevenly shaped but are smooth on the inside, it looks like it's been skimmed a fair bit so could it be that the nice edges have just been taken off?
It also has a coolant pipe coming out of the top which the old one lacks, I assumed the hole would be present but just plugged on the old one but it appears to genuinely not exist. Not quite sure how the Spitty routes it's coolant differently?

Progress once again slowed to glacial as I have no time or money and am ill.

captain_70s wrote: ↑Wed Aug 28, 2019 12:34 pm valves are sitting very deep,

Pocketing. Valve seat recession.

Makes sense.

Interesting, I have never come across that before. Do you know the history of that engine?

Which one?

The car's original engine is seemingly bone stock, never had any machine work. Assumed to have done 138,000 miles, all the history from the first owner is AWOL, a shame as he had the car for over 30 years.

The new one is a mk4 Spitty engine of unknown origin and millage. The Spitty Facebook group have confirmed the additional pipe is an Indeed for the heater. I can just plug that as the Dolly has a pipe routed via the infeed manifold IIRC.