I have Longflo air cleaners on my TR 4A., which are held on to the SU with
two nuts and bolts, the bolt head being inside the air cleaner. The nut shook
off one of the bolts and the intake sucked up the bolt.
Take it form me, a 5/16" x 1" bolt, is not a good thing to be rattling around
in the combustion chamber.
Bent valve stem, chunk out the head and shattered piston.
When I say shattered, the piston came out in two pieces, the part above the
wrist pin and the part below. A lot of other pieces being held together by
the rings.
Luckily no scores on the cylinder.
There was a fourth ring below the wrist pin which I guess kept the lower end
of the piston aligned.
So for now I am replacing the pistons rings and wrist pins, using the old
rods, had the head repaired and magnafluxed, and replacing the rod bearings,
just for the heck of it. I didn't plastigague for clearance, and I suspect
that this would OK, since the car ran at 40 to 50 PSI. Still I think at this
point not much sense to put in old bearings.
This was a TRF rebuilt short block, put in about 10 years ago. Car ran great
until now, but the funny thing that I noticed when I removed all of the
pistons, was that the rod in #1 cylinder was stamped #2 and #2 was stamped
#1. The back two were OK.
I guess it doesn't make much difference on a complete rebuilt, but kind of
sloppy, don't you think?
I think I am going to put the rods back in the way they came out of the
engine.
I haven't pulled the main bearing caps (yet), but if needed is it possible to
replace the main bearings without dropping the crankcase? I know you can do
this on a spridget.
Thanks
David Oliner
60 Bugeye
67 TR 4A
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