Kit form engine

[alexblack13]

Hi Guys,,

A pal of mine who lives just up the road from me recently bought a ser' 4 Elan which is very much in kit form,, Its in many boxes and has been for nearly thirty years!! ,, There are lots of missing parts and some extra parts suggesting there might have been two engines at one time, He visited today and brought me another pile of head parts (Stromberg hd) none of which are for his motor,, Now we find all eight cam followers are missing. the valve spring retainers are all missing. Not sure the collets are correct but I can check these soon. The cam drive sprockets are a bit corroded and impossible to identify In or Exh.

Now this little engine will not be getting a hard life when its finished and as ? is important he is asking if I can find some decent parts for him,, So anyone with said missing bits please contact me asap. He is a trier if nothing else.

I have already ordered quite a few new parts to replace some of the items missing (or I am not prepared to re fit), Cam drive chain with new guide. Valves, guides and hard seats and other missing bits. The pistons have no rings or small end pins, The Conrods are going for checking/ balancing and any repairs / + new small end bushes, Etc etc...

My big worry is the cam caps as I can't tell if they are from the head he has, and there are a few extra ones too... but with care I think we should be able to identify the parts from his head.. There will be a lot of trial and error 'fitting' before final ass'y.. And its going to take me days to clean everything properly as he had the parts all cleaned by glass bead blasting and it is everywhere!!!

What fun! But it is keeping me from thinking about other things,,

Has anybody got good clean and usable (not worn etc) followers? Collets and their retainers?? My spares have long since been snaffled up..

I'll keep you posted as to progress..

PS he has no gearbox/ flywheel/ clutch assy etc either ....

[billwill]

I have some valves in good condition if yours are poorly, but alas none of the other bits.

[alexblack13]

Thanks bill. new parts going in are valves / guides /seats...

Anybody know if i need to fit hard seats to the full set of valves.. In an Exh?

[rgh0]

HI Alex

If cost is important and the engine is not going to get a hard life and if the seats are in good condition you don't really need to replace them as the original seats were hard enough to give a good service life on unleaded fuel.

cheers
Rohan

[alexblack13]

HI Rohan,

Thanks very much for that info'. Trouble is the seats are well recessed too. so I thought changing them and getting them back to std shim sizes would be a good idea and obviously unleaded safe at the same time?

Thinking to take this advice though.. I have no idea what the shim thicknesses are as I can't find any

Been out this morning in the workshop and was surprised to find on cleaning up a few bits that the head has Sprint cams but st'd sized valves. And the block is bored to 85mm! ... Happy days.. The pistons have no rings to be seen anywhere and the cams took about 30 mins each to clean using my rotory ( gentle) wire brush equipped grinder.

Are both cams the same? They have exact same numbers and now polished up are rotating nicely in their bores.

Long way to go methinks..

[billwill]

I have just found one cam follower displayed as a decorative piece on a shelf in my lounge, so faintly possible that the other 7 are down in my garage.

I will take a look soon.

[alexblack13]

Brill ... TKS Bill.

[alexblack13]

Rohan.../ Guys..

I did a few tests and found with a light grind in on each valve ( I gave him 4 as new exhaust and I used 4 out of eight of his 'selection' they too are in pretty good nick). that they will easily go again & testing for the shim thicknesses needed revealed approx .085" - .095" shims required Happy enough with that so the head now has 4 new silicone bronze exhaust guides fitted & It will have the others done tomorrow. Then it's going off for it's 1st .005" skim.

Machined off the not required part of the jackshaft and ground / turned down the front lobes then turned the rear bearing to block off the oil delivery hole. The block has now gone off to be cleaned. It's going in the dishwasher tomorrow night I'm told. His wife will be out then apparently...

He had the entire (stripped) motor blasted with a very fine glass bead medium. Mostly came up like new but there is now blast medium everywhere and the engine will need very careful and thorough cleaning before building.. I am giving him this responsibility, He would have it blasted!!

[billwill]

You will need to blow compressed air through all the oil galleries, methinx, to get the glass dust out.

[rgh0]

Hi Alex
Do you know if the engine has run with this 85mm bore for any period? Not many blocks can take that bore safely and they all need to have the boring done to centre it in the castings. The casting for the cylinder is between 89mm and 91 mm OD based on all the blocks I have measured. If your at the 91mm end and have centred the bores then you have 3mm wall thickness and it is OK but less than 1 in 10 blocks I have measured have cylinder castings over 90.5mm OD (the ODs fall into a typical bell curve normal distribution). If you have a 89mm casting OD and the bore has just been enlarged based on the original location then the cylinder bore could be offset versus the casting OD by easily 1 to 2mm as the core placements can vary by that much and you may have close to zero wall thickness at some point ! You really want around 2.5 mm wall thickness as a general minimum with perhaps 2 mm over a small area an absolute minimum.

Before using an 85mm bore I would always do an ultrasonic wall thickness survey as well as a die penetrant crack check on the bores. Its a lot of work to do a second rebuild because you just cracked a bore when you started it up.

You also want to make sure your friend is absolutely paranoid about removing all the glass beads and residue from every nook and cranny and oil passage. Also look for glass beads embedded in the soft aluminium in the head

cheers
Rohan

[alexblack13]

I am having difficulty removing the oil gallery plugs and not happy at all about this aspect. I will be very insistant about cleanliness. The stuff is everywhere, The galleries are cleaned out with the airline but there will be lots still to go. I have two of the galley plugs out but the two on the engine rear end are solid and the key is trying to round off the plugs, Thinking of drilling a bit of 40 x 5 mm to the same size as the plugs and then welding down through ..Plug welding if you pardon the pun. That's the only way I can see to remove them now other than drilling them through etc...

The block I am not at all sure about. and have expressed my concern to Wullie (the owner), And we think the best way forward is to have it checked professionally by AGRA engineering in Dundee. They know the twinc very well and the head is going up there for skimming and checking over. I think the block will def go up at the same time.. I am suggesting this is done and if poss' ask them to also wash the block out too, Good idea methinks..

Thanks Rohan. I do share your fears regarding the bore diameter...

Worried!!

On the upside the head is responding well and just a valve grind will be ok . Keeping the seats. Shims are fine as I said.

How do you identify the cams inlet against exhaust? Sprint cams too!! Wullie dropped the small bomb by telling me he has another two cams. I've asked him to bring them down asap.. Bloody hell. I spent about an hour on each polishing the buggers etc.. I have the plugs out of the oilways in the cams and given them a good clean but they will also go in the washer too.

It gets better by the day... lol ..... I'm going to weld some leverage to those plugs this afternoon hopefully.....Imperitive to get those out....

[alexblack13]

Hi guys... Sorry I just posted my Draft!! i didn't spell check so forgive the couple of clangers... i will try n edit thm out.

ab

[rgh0]

The cams are identical. The cam sprockets have a slightly different dowel hole location. If the holes are identical in location and the sprockets are not marked then you probably have 2 inlet sprockets as normally only the exhaust was marked with "Ex"

An Oxy torch on the block around the plug and then some freeze spay on the plug and it should come loose.

cheers
Rohan

[billwill]

Well I have had a thorough search in my garage of all the places I would have been likely to store any cam followers but alas none found. So I only have this one here and I know not how I came by only one.

I had thought they would be with my oldest set of removed valves and I found those with some old steel valve guides but no other bits.

[oldchieft]

The cams are identical

I wonder why this is the case, it seems like all twin cam's have identical cam timing for inlet and exhaust.

Most modern engines have asymmetric cam profiles, and different cams for inlet and exhaust.

Jon the Chief