This last weekend was spent working on the Engine and the Gearbox.
Friday I collected the cylinder head, on which some of the bosses had been milled off to accommodate the Raceline water rail. I also collected some clutch cover bolts and a couple of the little valve retainer thing-a-me-bobs.
Friday evening I align the clutch cover with the input shaft and tighten up the clutch evenly with the bolts. Job done!
I fit the last valve, spring, spring retainer and two of the thing-a-me-bobs. Job done!
I clean the top of the block, clean the mating face of the cylinder head, fit the dowels, spray the gasket with Spanjaard copper sealer and fit that and put on the cylinder head. In go the bolts, tighten down to 45Nm in the proper order and take out the breaker bar. 90 degrees clockwise, then 90 degrees again. I am waiting for something to break or strip but thankfully nothing does. Job done!
Saturday morning I visit my oil seal shop and they have received my selector shaft oil seal which was on special order - it's an odd size. Then I go find myself an imperial feeler gauge at Autozone.
Now I am ready to dig in to the second most difficult job of the re-build, fitting the cam buckets, and the cams. To get this right you need:
Two Prozac, washed down with a stiff brandy
An Imperial feeler gauge - I can't work in mm
10mm spanner, and a 13mm spanner for turning the cam gear bolt
Your wits about you (difficult if you chew the Prozac instead of swallowing it)
Note pad and pencil
Laptop, loaded with the ACQ spreadsheet available from
www.biggles.net/download/ACQBucketSizerV20.xls
I had wisely kept a little sheet of the original cam bucket set-up when I stripped the engine so I re-assembled the cam buckets in their original slots and tightened my new Kent 210HP racing cams in their place - Green for Inlet, Yellow for exhaust. Liberal amounts of oil as well. I start measuring the clearances, I am looking for 8-11 thou clearance on the inlet, 10-13 thou on the exhaust.
The clearances on the intake side are OK, there are some anomalies, no doubt due to the new cam.
I find that on the exhaust side the clearances are very low - 8 to 9 thou, no doubt due to my aggressive valve lapping, or the new cam. This is no good because you can burn valves - 12 thou is better.
I write down the clearances I get, enter them in the little spreadsheet along with the bucket layout and HEY PRESTO! it tells me what to swop out, what to order yada yada yada.
Ford cam buckets come in a 3 number designation for example a 3.182mm bucket is just called a "182" and they go up in 0.02mm increments, which is 0.0008 thou. You find the number printed inside the cam bucket.
Of the cam buckets required on the inlet side luckily enough 4 of them sit on the exhaust side, so I can make up a full set on the inlet side.
I swop out the buckets to their advised postions, tighten down the cam and re-measure. I am pleased when I find the clearance for the whole inlet side is 9 or 10 thou, so I do not need any further messing about on that cam. I tighten the inlet cam down and make sure the cam bolts are threadlocked. Nasty moment when I get the one bolt crossed up and bugger the thread a bit but I catch it in time.
On the exhaust side I find I need 4 new buckets - 2 off 142's, a 162, and a 182. I phone Zerilda at EL Auto and give her the specs of the cam buckets I need - unfortunately the 142's and 182's don't exist in the spares directory, but the 162's do - huh? So I figger Ford must be getting a little looser on the specs so I redo my numbers and it turns out that going from a 142 to a 162 is going to give me 11 thou instead of 12 thou clearance and replacing the 182 with a 162 means 13 thou instead of 12. So I order 4 off 162's. Close enough, but watch this space.
The buckets will arrive on Tuesday. I finish off by temporarily fitting my zooty cam cover and water rail, just to see what it looks like.
I can't go any further here so that's it for the day. Tomorrow it is gearbox time. Sit back and watch the Bulls thump the Lions.
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