Hello again to my many TR advisors!
I beg your pardon again for a rather long posting, but I am "up a stump" so
to speak.
With all accessory items removed from my engine and the timing chain
removed, my engine is still stuck tight. (New cam and new valve train are
working fine.)
I have dropped the sump pan and removed the oil pump screen. I looked and
looked and everything seemed ok. Then I spotted what looked like a small
(3/4") crack on the edge of the center main bearing cap. The crack is in the
"lip" that holds the thrust washer in place. It extends from near the surface
where the cap contacts the block downward in an arc about 3/4 of an inch. On
removing the center main cap bolts, the cap came free easily. It was
definitely cracked. At the widest point of the crack a thumb nail will fit in
the crack.
The bearing appears to be worn excessively for only 300 miles on the engine.
I can see and feel groves in the bearing shell. The thrust washers (bottom
only) appear to be ok. BUT THE ENGINE IS STILL STUCK TIGHT. The crack and the
roughed bearing still shouldn't be enough to have seized the crankshaft.
I showed the cracked main bearing and the roughed up half shell of the
bearing to my local machinist. He says I will have to pull the engine and tear
it down completely so that he can machine and "true" the bearing caps to the
block. (Wish he had said that the first time.) He says the engine will have to
be completely disassembled so that it can be tanked in solvent to wash out the
dust and the filings after the machining to "true" the main bearing molding in
the block and the bearing caps. As much as I can understand of what he has
described of the procedure he intends to do, it sounds much like what he did to
the rod end caps during my recent rebuild. ARE ANY OF YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE
PROCEDURE HE IS SUGGESTING BE DONE? He really is a knowlegable fellow and he
is trusted and respected for his work in the machine shop.
On the first assembly of the crankshaft during this rebuild I ruined a set of
thrust washers and the center main bearing. Before I continued I bought and
installed a second set of new bearings and thrust washers. My original
crankshaft was too far gone to regrind so I got a "donor" crankshaft from an
engine I was given. The crank from that engine had never been ground so I had
that one machined (.010" on the mains and .020" on the rods). It may be
possible that I have used the center main cap from the donor engine instead of
the original one from my engine. I cannot see any difference in the center
main bearing caps. My engine # was 15848 (early TR3 run - maybe 1957) and the
donor engine was a true TR2 engine # 7257 (my car is #7690). CAN THE MAIN
BEARING CAPS BE DIFFERENT ON THESE ENGINES? COULD THIS BE THE SOURCE OF MY
"STUCK" ENGINE? (It did run well for about 300 miles from the finished
rebuild. It seized whild cranking to try to find an ignition fault.)
This whole episode is turning into a big lesson and when it is finished I
think I will be a veteran of the Triumph School of Headaches. My old and tired
TR2 was a marginal, "rough" candidate for investing in a rebuild to begin with.
NOW I KNOW that there IS ecomomy and value in the certainity of a factory
rebuild from TRF or one of the other vendors who would provide this service. I
thought I could save money by doing most of the work myself. I badly
overestimated my skills and I underestimated how much the separate parts costs
and machine shop services woul be.
SHOULD I CUT MY LOSSES AND RUN? I am not sure now when I am done if I
will really be confident in the reliability of the car. (I know, we are never
DONE when it comes to owning and maintaining an old car.)
I will trudge on and I WILL get this thing working, but it sure hurts to
be paying insurance and working around the car to get the mowers out to ow the
yard now that some nice weather has arrived.
I SHOULD BE OUT DRIVING IN MY TRIUMPH!!
Frustrated,
Rob Blubaugh
Rensselaer, IN
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