With the Daimler reassembled and back on the road, life was good. My
week in Australia was a wonderful interlude; sun and surf, parrots and
palm trees, seafood, beer and babes^H^H^H^H^Hsightseeing. I had lunch
with Jag-net's John Barlow while I was up in Canberra porting some
modeling code to their fast Fujitsu VP unit and generally had a nice
relaxing visit.
Things went to hell in a handbasket very quickly when I got back. We
didn't even make it home from the airport when the fuel pump on Anne's
Volvo died. In a fog of jetlag, we got it to Scotty's house to start
debugging it. Anne needed to get down to work in Denver on Monday. I
really wanted to reset the valves on the Daimler before driving it
anymore, but she had an important meeting to get to, so, in spite of my
misgivings, I told her to take it.
At 4PM I got the call: "The Daimler made a horrible noise and quit."
Great, so now I've got both cars down, I couldn't putz around anymore.
I had the Volvo shop pick up the wagon and get it fixed, right now.
Anne had the Daimler towed back to the safety of her work where I could
assess the damage. It was getting gas, spark and air but wouldn't
start. The timing appeared right. I began pulling spark plugs and
things started looking very ugly. One plug had taken some light valve
hits on the electrode and another was completely trashed. It appeared
that I had at least one dropped valve since the #2 intake valve had a
clearance of 2mm and wasn't following the cam.
I had the Daimler towed to Bob's shop and pulled the head last night.
The engine is toast. The #2 intake valve head had broken off from the
stem and bounced around in the cylinder for a bit. The top of the #2
piston is completely hammered, with a walnut-sized hole in the top. The
aluminum headspace for the #2 cylinder is badly sliced up from the
sharp, hardened valve slamming into it. The cylinder wall also has some
light gouges in it. A complete postmortem will be done after Christmas
to try to determine exactly why the valve broke and the total extent of
the damage.
Bob's theory is that the #2 intake valve got slightly bent _before_
installation of the head. The valve eventually stuck open, then got
struck by the exhaust valve and broke, causing further demolition. He
said that valves can be bent when the head is set down on a flat surface
with the cams installed, bending whichever valve happens to be open at
the time. I don't remember this happening, but it's not inconceivable.
In talking it over with Scotty, he remember that we were seeing very
little change in engine speed when the lead wire to fuel injector #2 was
disconnected. We had diagnosed this as a bad #2 injector and added some
FI cleaner to try to fix it. What Scotty figures is that the injector
probably was firing OK, what we were seeing was a symptom of the
sticking #2 intake valve. Damn that kid's smart.
To Bob's race-trained eye, this disaster isn't nearly as bad as I felt
it was when I looked down the #2 cylinder and could see the wrist-pin
and connecting rod thru the jagged hole in the top of the piston. I was
thinking "Game Over. I've got to pull the engine and get it on a stand,
push the Daimler out into the lot, disassemble the engine completely,
resleeve the cylinder, find a new head..... It's going to be August
before it's running again." But Bob was much more relaxed about it. On
the phone the next day he said, "Yup, that's just what it looks like
when you eat a valve. Don't worry. I`ve got a line on another piston
and a set of valves for you. Once we get your headwork done and the
cylinder checked out, we'll have you going again soon." That was music
to my ears.
Anyway, it looks like it's back to square one, but with a slightly
different spin this time. One thing this experience has proven to me is
that, in spite of it all, I _really_ like this car and I'm willing to do
alot of work to get it going again.
/\ Lawrence "I'd much rather be back at the beach." Buja
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
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