Engine Rebuild Time

It has been brought to my attention that some people that wander in here may not speak Studebaker or have any idea what engine they are looking at in the pictures below. I forget that there are many out there much younger than I am and they have never seen a flathead 6 cylinder engine.

There has always been a joke around here as far as how big any project is going to be. If it is going to get rather involved, my standard line for step one is "Drain the radiator." Well, that is where this one started. Step two was to remove the tie rods from the bellcrank and drop it down out of the way so I could get the pan off. (click on any thumbnail for a full size picture)

OK... the pan is off and the good news is there were no big chunks of anything in the bottom of the pan. Just 45 years of gunk that needs to be cleaned up. Even the gunk isn't as bad as I expected.

What I didn't quite expect was all of the carbon build up on the head, valves and the top of the pistons. Not a pretty site at all. The heat dams on most of the pistons were filled solid with it and there was enough built up on the valves that I'm sure some of them were leaking and not closing all of the way.

The pistons themselves all look good. I broke a couple of rings to use as ring groove cleaner and found that an old broken points file was just the right size to fit in the heat dams to clean the carbon out of them. I have a feeling that somewhere in it's life the engine lost an oil pump. I had noticed that it wasn't painted the same color as the block. After pulling the rod caps and one of the main bearing caps I see that the crank has been turned. All of the bearings are .010 oversize. They will all be replaced. Not so much as for being worn out and down to the copper but they all have some nasty grooves and scratches in them. I don't think the person that put it back together was real interested in making sure they got all of the dirt and crap out of there when going back together with it.

Odds and ends pictures of things as they were cleaned up...

Things are looking better. All the carbon is cleaned up off of the top of the block. Valve guides are out and the mess in the spring boxes is cleaned up and last but not least the cyilnders are honed out. Two valves at least will get replaced. Too much wear on the stems to put them back in the new guides. I'll check with the machine shop to make sure the other ten are good enough to grind.

Back up on the stands so I can get under it and make sure all of that honing grit is out of there.

The long and the short of it.....

Replaced all of the valves. The seats were in good shape and hand lapped the new valves in. New rings and rod bearings went in. The mains showed so little wear they were not replaced.

Something is wrong!!! It runs but it doesn't leak oil. I'm sure given time this too shall pass and things will return to normal.