Its All in the Timing

Round Four – Final Prep and Timing Gear Partial Refit.

This part of the proceedings is a few hours of finishing off dismantling of timing chains and the re-mating of heads and manifolds etc.

Here are the chains removed with the internal parts of the tensioners also removed.

As if we needed any more proof that the gaskets were blown here is the number 7 piston crown showing clearly a very clean part, which has been steam cleaned by the leaking water into the bore.

I made a spacer tube to fit on the end of the crank using the pulley bolt so we could turn the engine by hand, well at least with a ratchet!

Chains off. I had to release the chain guides a little it the get enough room to get the chains out. You can just make out on the jackshaft that the alignment marks are pointed straight up and down at TDC….this is actually wrong. The mark should be slightly inclined down to the right. We reset this to be correct upon re-assembly.

Good practice is to glaze bust the bores for re-assembly. The bores get highly polished over time. Glaze busting simply roughs-up the surface a little so that the piston rings bed themselves in again.

Two of the four new guides in place.

Other guides being fitted.

Fitting the tensioners. After examining the new ones and old ones we decided to use the new internal components but keep the old bodies. The reason for this was that the old bodies have locating dowels and the new ones do not. Also the old ones have a plate that would stop the tensioners coming right out, so we kept them as well. If you ever got to that stage mind you, you wouldn’t half have some stretched chains…..

Bottom tensioner in place.   Note the plastic spacer.    This is there to stop the tensioner releasing until you’re ready for final gap setting etc.

You can’t finally set tension on the chains until the heads are on so we left this at this point and went and finished the prep work on the heads etc. Here we are fitting the manifolds.

Nice shiny hot air intake goes onto the manifold.

And finally, the nice (well I think they look nice anyway) cam covers resting on the heads.

MORE TO FOLLOW……

 

PLEASE NOTE – these are NOT instructions on how to undertake this job just some pics and words of our experiences, always consult professionals when undertaking any repairs or restorations. (please refer to the disclaimer on our about page)