some engine progress

Mossy68 · Post by **Mossy68** » Fri Jul 03, 15 1:55 pm

Jeez Dave. Life really has put on its hob nails and give you a good kick !!
Sincerely hope it all works out for you.

You can't miss the Nats. I'm more than happy to take you if it goes that way.

Dave81 · Post by **Dave81** » Fri Jul 03, 15 2:00 pm

Sorry to hear of the pain and issue Dave. Not me, but some other people caught doing 100mph plus:

It's by no means a definite ban. Turn up to court, apologise and don't offer excuses. A letter from your employer saying it's out of character and that you losing your license will be detrimental to your staff who rely on you to bring in business etc. I've said this over and over again... it got me 6 points and a large fine.

You can't offer 'exceptional hardship' in the strictest sense but certain mitigation and appearing to be remorseful and sorry and without trying to excuse your actions (which seems you've got that one OK) and you're by no means guaranteed a ban.

You may end up taking a 2 week holiday which may end up better for you?

I used to work in the motor trade and have been banned for speeding on 4 occassions. Neither nor big, nor clever, but it is what it is.

Haven`t been nicked in 7 years now and never take the cruise above 70 on the motorway as a rule. A combination of growing up and having my daughter on board.

Only ever late at night on a deserted motorway in a vehicle comfortably capable of the speed/conditions. Also always employed a brief, wore a suit and kissed arse.

As a guide, received the following:

A1M - 126mph - 2002 - 1 week ban - £1600 fine
A1M - 138mph - 2004 - 2 week ban - £1100 fine
M1 - 133mph - 2005 - 4 week ban - £450 fine
A1M - 128mph - 2008 - 30 day ban - £850 fine

I find the whole, hold your hands up, admit your an idiot patter to work.

Personally I was always grateful for a short ban and not having silly amounts of points to worry about for years. Also I just employed someone to ferry me about, much cheaper than you`d imagine!

Good luck, and hope your mum and father in law get better!

Stu · Post by **Stu** » Fri Jul 03, 15 4:15 pm

Your court date is unlikely to land in the next 5 minutes, so I'm afraid you will have to wait it out for a while. It will come though, don't be led to believe that they will miss the deadline.

When you see me at the Nats, I'll talk you through options. Been there, done that.

Best of luck, Mate.

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Fri Jul 03, 15 5:00 pm

Righty I have had a day of sitting here doing WORK and I formulated a plan,
moved my vague depression on with thoughts of a gallon of beer and curry, on the family front can't worry about what you don't know or what might be, and on the engine front...success will be mine.

DUNC I can't get someone to do it...not now

putting it back in Maybe I hate putting it back in.

Bores were checked top bottom middle and round about side to side originally after rebore

it all looked good

haven't since.......

so I will again

when happy that each bore matches piston,
looks good and new
bore has no taper
bore has no ripples (it shouldn't 20 thou is nout on these blocks many have been taken to 4 inch, that's 90 thou so should be good and solid to 40 or 60, this is only at 20)

ding some dents and then drill some holes round the edge of the baffle, I am suspicious of the baffle just because its new

I will buy

Perfect circle ring set rather than speedpro. they have part equivalence and a change is as good as a rest

new gaskets

clean up the engine bay
do the front end while the engine is out
stick in my new axle

and return triumphant

start up will be done with pure water coolant
millers break in + 1/2 bottle of comp cams stuff.

no cam break in to worry about. no carb issues to worry about, no exhaust made of bits of junk to blow to bits.

no daft cometic expensive bloody gasket sillyness

Its all good n proper

I will drive it like I stole it and bed those Bananarama! rings in

I have built engines in the past mainly VW flat 4s 2 lambretta a go-ped and a compressor and only 1 failure. never had an issue with ring bedding....and in those days I was an idiot happy-go-lucky in my ignorance

I did instrumentation and measurement modules at uni

I am not incapable....there will be no reason for failure this time

I have to tools and the book fer godsake

I have obviously made some mistake somewhere but NOT this time......

or I might just sling the old engine back in

Dave

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Fri Jul 03, 15 5:17 pm

PS thank you for you kind words fellas

my life is alright

just my head wasn't great this morning hot-weather-lack-of-sleep, rubbish things, got me down.... and nothing usually gets me down I am blandly even 99.999% of the time
y glass is usually exactly the right size for its contents if you catch me drift.

you had a different chap this morning to what you have now

much better, I have had a day to cogitate.

Apologies...normal service will be resumed.

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Fri Jul 03, 15 5:18 pm

Stu wrote:
When you see me at the Nats, I'll talk you through options. Been there, done that.

Best of luck, Mate.

many thanks sir

I will Pump you at the Nats! (for information and advice of course)

MilesnMiles · Post by **MilesnMiles** » Fri Jul 03, 15 5:34 pm

Nice reply Dave. I hate not having my car at the Nsts, but doing the same job three times sucks.
Drop old motor in and drive it and give yourself longer to check everything on the motor.
Be at the Nats; you're an essential ingredient!

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Fri Jul 03, 15 6:16 pm

Good on you, Dave.

The Club has a great reputation for a bit of backbone and fortitude when things go a bit pear-shaped...all the best on the fix.

Pete

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Fri Jul 03, 15 9:25 pm

Oh dear Dave!

Duncs suggestion has merit, but if not, did you change the rings at the last build or did the same ones go back in?

If you can convince yourself its not valve related, if it was me and nothing looks amiss, another set of rings, bosh a ball hone down the bore and reassemble.

One thing though, did you get any mileage smoke free? The way it reads is that it was OK to start with.

Did you ever measure the piston to bore clearance?

Stu · Post by **Stu** » Fri Jul 03, 15 11:13 pm

Dave999 wrote:
Apologies...normal service will be resumed.

Dave, you wouldn't know normal service if it hit you in the face.

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Fri Jul 03, 15 11:25 pm

He meant "Normal for Dave", which is not normal for normal........

Bryan · Post by **Bryan** » Sat Jul 04, 15 7:43 am

How about buying Antons 318 he has for sale and putting that in while you get the original sorted.

Stu · Post by **Stu** » Sat Jul 04, 15 11:19 am

I think that's gone, Bryan. But it would mean a lot of work to convert the front and the Hemi 6 is a big part of the appeal of this car IMO.

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Mon Jul 06, 15 5:40 pm

Roger wrote:Oh dear Dave!

Duncs suggestion has merit, but if not, did you change the rings at the last build or did the same ones go back in?

If you can convince yourself its not valve related, if it was me and nothing looks amiss, another set of rings, bosh a ball hone down the bore and reassemble.

One thing though, did you get any mileage smoke free? The way it reads is that it was OK to start with.

Did you ever measure the piston to bore clearance?

yes piston to bore clearance was measured but not by me.

I can snap gauge the bores to look for inconsistency but I don't have anything big enough for a piston. well not in the correct place anyway

something is amiss

I got some mileage absolutely trouble free...

first 200-300 on the first set all ok

random spells on the second set all ok. really quite random, or smoke production was linked to certain temperature, conditions or RPM

on occasions where I ran it at speed and cut the plugs I got a good clean indicator that all was ok, nice band on the earth. plugs looked great

then later in the same journey if it idled for more than a few minutes I'd get a puff of smoke and it would start to falter

I'd get awful smoke on start up 60% of the time, but perfectly clean on others but on many occasions it just stayed

if I checked the plugs after stuck in traffic matt black

so given recent expenditure and care on the stem seals
initially only on inlets
then new on exhausts
then to totally replaced all

it must be rings/ring-cylinder wall

either overburdened with oil (dipstick depth consistent with 2 others)
snagging and sticking in the lands??
or I have knackered the bottom ring rails or expander some how

method on both occasions was the same. standard ring clamp
oiled
done up decently tight, but not stupidly tight
tap the piston down with wooden block. while holding ring installer level and in the slight chamfer at top of hole, making sure it didn't scroll out and jam the piston

I think on the first occasion I probably caused ring and stem seal issues while running in cam and then fighting to tune a set of carbs with too small idle jets (wrong combination of air flow and fuel flow promotes rich or lean somewhere up to 3000 rpm if you want it to idle), a whole complement of bore wash and oily varnish baking in

on the second the assumption was rings OK must be gasket and stem seal issue
but same issues with trying to get it to run. got decent ring seal second time possibly due to using proper break in oil. I had used standard mineral based 20w50 first time round

Compression tests indicated decent compression 185-195 across all 6 after 100+ miles

by 500 it had dropped to 165-175 on 3 cylinders with consistently worse plugs .

oil smoke less with break in oil sae30

awful once I moved on to standard 20w50.

I need to taking my time and not hurrying to do this

i'll dig out my build diary and check everything again.

one thing to note

2 different sets of E642k-20 rings side by side illustrated that checking the first set of rings the inner diameter was bigger. i.e the amount of ring material when viewed from above resulted in a narrower ring. top had dots middle had chamfer inner edge, bottom
expander was 2 rails and standard in-out zig zag with interlocking ends

I had ring seal problems with all rings after spanking it to 5k up the strip . was ok before I did that or appeared to be ok with 300 miles on it (see I was a silly boy)

second set

fatter rings i.e the hole in the middle was smaller, probably couple of thou ( but enough to be noticed by eye when one next to the other) when viewed from the top. all with dots on, middle ring has chamfer to bottom inner edge

now you would NOT pick that difference without 2 sets of rings side by side

expander was like none I'd seen before, up and down zig-zag with tangs to pick up on the rails, could have put them on wrong but to be honest that's hard to do.

both sets were unopened retail boxed sealed power rings.

either way my own clumsy analysis of the situation on each occasion is probably the biggest contributory factor.

oil smoke I expected to be blueish, fuel smoke I expected to be black coolant or brake fluid (I have no booster) I'd expect to be white

all smoke has been white and nasty, looked like dry ice, but horrible (bad-head sore throat nasty)

the original package of pistons and rings from summit had standard LA 318 rings. all fit except the oil scrapers they admitted their mistake and sent the appropriate Jeep/truck/ later/318 and V6 rings with a thinner scraper E642K-20

and you can not make that mistake the fatter oil scraper does not fit the piston at all, its way too fat.

didn't dig it out this weekend

I made brake pipes instead

dave

jerry · Post by **jerry** » Mon Jul 06, 15 11:31 pm

Dave,

I went through similar last year, I was pulling my hair out.... Like you I had never had an issue with motors I built before & just could not find the problem.

Engine in with new rings, oil everywhere. Engine out, new rings, engine back in & Oil every where. I was also chasing my tail for other oiling problems, causes. (turbo drains)

I eventually had to call it quits & take it to a pro, it hurt in terms of both money & pride. They were able to diagnose I had the wrong Oil ring set up for the pistons I was using. ( I ordered them separately)

After a Hone, New pistons & rings (I also raised compression) fired up yesterday, so nice to have a motor not filling the garage with smoke. I guess I may of gotten there eventually, but it soul destroying when you keep putting in the effort & not get anywhere.

A full rebuild by a pro can be expensive, but not always, getting them to build your short block is a cheaper alternative.

In terms of Quality, value for money & cheaper than you would think Roger Luty takes a lot of beating. he is a very nice & knowledgeable person to deal with.

PM Jerry & he can send you his contact details, he built Jerry's 440 & that seems to be a strong combination, judging by the seat of the pants.

Good luck, Jerry II