OK, a lot happened this weekend, both progress and setbacks. Sunday Morning
around 2 am, I finished painting the tub of the car. Man does it look
nice!! It is amazing the sins that Clearcoat will cover up.
Then on Sunday, the local Triumph club held a tech session at my house to
rebuild the engine. Well, we got a lot done, and then we had a problem,
the Crank would not turn, it was locked solid. Sure enough what had
happened is someone had placed a bearing in the main bearing cap backwards.
This damaged the bearing, which luckily I will be able to fix with some
emery cloth (steel side, not the bearing face) But more important while
examining this problem (which was found by me on accident) I noticed that
the bolt hole on the cap had some cracks (one not so small either) I turned
it and saw three more running parralel to each other.
Apparently when the engine died seven years ago, it dropped a valve seat,
bending a push rod, a valve, breaking a rocker arm, and wedging a piece of
valve seat in between the piston and the cylinder wall. Yesterday we found
out it apparently damaged the bottom end as well. While this severly
defeated my morale, it was also very lucky. If we had not put in the
bearing backwards, we would never had found this problem until the engine
had blown right after starting it up or pushed hard the first time.
So now a replacement cap has been found, and hopefully the engine will be
togethor this week sometime. Major morale here is that damage in one area
can and will affect other areas and to check them out for such damage.
Painful lesson almost learned the very hard way.
Patrick Bowen
'79 Spit, Coming along.
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