I threw the engine in the back of my truck and went for a ride with it. I stopped at the service station just down the road and had grandpa try a whack at it with his impact. No dice. He suggested I try a tire shop - well, tyre shop since this is the UK - because they would have better impacts than he did. We all know how well I listen to advice, so I went to the base hobby shop and tried a slightly stronger impact wrench. Yeah that still didn't work. Moving on.
Went to a tyre shop in town and they tried with multiple impacts to no avail. In the end it to took three of us with two bigass breaker bars to pop it loose - which took all of 2 minutes! Needless to say I was happy, everything was going my way, and I was on schedule to change out all the bearings today and have the bottom end re-assemble before dinner.
Here's the crank end of the block without the crapastic crank pulley and bolt on it.
And for folks who have never seen what the timing assembly of a D17 looks like, here is the same shot with the cover removed. Water pump is the upper right sprocket and the oil pump also functions as an end cap around the snout of the crank.
Heheh, he said "Snout." Same shot but with the oil and water pumps removed and the engine flipped upside down. I love my engine stand. $30 at Harbor Freight.
Once I popped the girdle off, I checked out the main bearings again and they looked all right. There was a little scoring on some of them, but nothing bad enough to be catastrophic to the motor. Have a look.
Moving on then. The crank looks pretty good too. No scoring at on any of the lobes. Those little blue things you see there are Clevite rod bolt sleeves, They help prevent scarring the crankshaft when you wrest it from the engine with your extra-large meat hooks. They also help protect the cylinder walls when you are removing and replacing the pistons. Uncle Summit sells them for like $1.50 a pair.
Mmmmmm. Symmetry,
The rod bearings look really good, so my rods definitely weren't knocking.
Here's the water pump. If it has been making the squealing noise, then it's hiding it very well. I don't care enough to take it apart and see what the problem was. I've got a new one so I'll just replace it. Same thing with the oil pump.
Time to give this greasy baby a bath. Folks out there audience land raise your hand if you have this heard statement from your spouse. Damn it's hard to type one-handed....
Scrub, scrub, scrub, wash wash wash, and ta-da!!
Whoops. That was a picture of a gay man.
Ta-da! Clean engine!!
So nice and clean. Not shiny, but at least nice and clean. Oh, here's a good pic. I pulled out the rods and pistons (obviously) and want to show you the difference between stock rods and Crower F/I rods. Now I see why they call the stockers "toothpicks".
Now is when disaster struck. I got out my handy dandy Ebay-special ring compressor to reinstall the pistons. Tap tap tap goes the hammer on the wooden block to the piston #1. Tap, tap, TAP.
Hmm. That didn't feel right. Uhoh. Piston doesn't want to come out.
Shit.
Cheap ass $5 ring compressor. Looks like the block is off to the machine shop for a hone job on Monday. I'm also going to have them install the rotating assembly and notch the cylinders to clear the Crowers.
What a perfectly crappy way to finish a beautiful day.
dont forget that if you need parts just hit me up and i'll go get them and ship them to you.
Toss that block like a midget and get a K-series!
