What a day.
Got the project Spitfire running a few days ago, fascinating. Only the
front half of the engine worked. All right. Maybe its' a mouse stuck
down in the manifold or something (hope and pray). Maybe just a blown
head gasket.
Well, work on it today, nope. It's the (can't believe I'm going to say
it...) DPO! Did the quick basic stuff (new plugs, etc) the other day,
so today I adjust the valves and check compression. Intake on #3 is
about six turns to tight. Sigh. Noticed it's a different collor push
rod as well. Uh oh. Do the compresion test. 150psi the first three
cylinders, 15 in the last. Double sigh. Got at least one burned valve
I bet.
So now I'm in the process of pulling the head off. Goodness gracious,
look at all these missing retainers and long lost nuts. Great, just
great. Well at least the things aren't too expensive to buy,
individually that is.
Well, I guess it's not all bad. As long as the heads off, I'll go ahead
and decarbon things and do some port work. I was planning on doing this
next year, but this years fine too I guess. Heck, as long as I'm going
to take the top of the engine off, I suppose I might as well take the
bottom of the engine off as well, and replace bearings and look at
rings. The way my luck went today, I probably now have a cracked ring
or two.
At least the brakes went somewhat well. Put them all back together.
They seem to work, at least sort of. But since I can't really drive the
car to play with them, I'll have to wait till later to make sure.
Did notice that the driver side wheel bearing is loose, and both
trunions are loose. Then the radiator hose blew, the bonnet jammed
itself shut, and the whole damn car fell off the jack stands.
Hell of a day. :-/
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