It's been a couple weeks since the last tale about the Daimler repair.
I wrote this two weeks ago on the flight to Sydney:
Sitting in the dark comfort of a half-empty 747, 8 miles up somewhere
over the western Pacific, it all now seems like a blur...
The race was on. It was Monday afternoon, I was leaving for Australia
on Thursday evening and I wanted to have the Daimler out of Bob's shop
and back home by the time I left.
Assembly proved not to be the reverse of disassembly. The basic steps
were 1. Find the part, 2. find the bolts, 3. clean the part, 4. clean
the bolts, 5. bolt the part on. Despite boxing and labeling most of
the fastener systems, there were numerous instances where we were
reduced to scrounging thru the bottom of the tool box, then thru Bob's
supplies for the right bolt.
I was given the "You're only allowed one screwup per day and you just
made it" award when I fit the main seal in the seat on the front engine
cover, then slid the front cover on, only to discover an hour later,
when we were finishing bolting the engine pan on, that the lip of the
main seal had folded when I slid it on the crankshaft. That cost us
two hours to disassemble, fix and reassemble back to the same point.
During this stage, the parts washer was of great help. It's _so_ nice
to work with clean parts. Johannes was the master valve installer,
patiently seating the little keepers under the springs. Once the head
was complete, Bob took over measuring the valve clearances and setting
the shims. I couldn't believe it when the catalog, which Bob had set
his 50-drawer box of valve shims on, shifted and fell, scattering his
whole collection of carefully measured and collated shims all over the
floor. We all watched it happend in a wierd slow motion, yet too fast
for any of us to do anything about. We measured and measured and got a
reasonable collection of shims together and finally had a complete
head.
The next night, we put the head on, torqued it down and Bob gave us a
seminar in the delicate art of getting the overhead cam timing aligned
with the rest of the engine. After that, Bob left us to bolt on the
intake and exhaust manifolds. Finally, at midnight, we got it all back
together. Scotty grounded the coil and I cranked it and cranked it
until we got some oil pressure.
We put in the spark plugs and I carefully hooked up the spark plug
wires in the chanting Scotty's 6-Cylinder Mantra: "15 is too young, 36
is too old, 24 is just right". Scotty connected the coil and now came
the magic moment. Crank..Crank...KABAM!!!! Standing right next to the
intake, Johannes just about jumped out of his shoes. Crank...Crank...
KABOOM!!! The top of the AMM got blown across the shop ("Anything that
flys that far should have a stewaress aboard"). We were getting some
very impressive backfires thru the intake manifold but no start. I
rechecked the wires "15 is too young, 36 is too old, 24 is just right",
Yup, they were hooked up OK. Let's try it one more time. Crank...
Crank..KABLAM!!! OK, something's really wrong. Scotty immediately
deduced that the wires were hooked up backward and we must be firing
the plugs when the intake valves were open. We pulled the distributor
cap and, sure enough, while the engine turns clockwise, the distributor
turns counterclockwise. I had assumed they both rotated the same
direction. A few more cranks and it started. But, it was making
enough valve noise that we though it best to consult with our mentor,
Bob, before attempting to drive it the 20 miles back home at 1AM
When we came down Wednesday afternoon, the Daimler was running, and Bob
was just getting done tinkering with the mixture setting. One of the
injectors wasn`t firing well and it was still making some excessive
valve noise. I added some injector cleaner and Bob said to put a 100
miles on it to let everything seat, then we'll do a final valve reset
and decide whether to replace the injector. We cleaned up the mess,
pushed the MkII racer back in it's place. Victory was ours. I drove
it home and the next day drove the family to Scott and Peg's new house
where we were all shared a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast. At 3, I said
my goodbyes and left for the airport, looking forward to the coming
weekend of surfing and lounging on Sydney's wonderful beaches, where
the most taxing question would be what kind of beer to order for the
next round.
/\ Lawrence "Unfortunately, it`s not even close to being over" Buja
\_][ southern@ncar.ucar.edu National Center for Atmospheric Research
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