Good compression but burning water? 60 Lincoln 430 - update: All ripped apart

A couple of items to remember here. I have raced MEL engines since 1958 so I know a little about them.
1) The heads torques at 100 to 110 lbs, not 75. Use felpro gaskets and torque 45, 65, 90 and then 100. These are massive head bolts and will require a good lube before torquing to prevent gaul.
2) The water divertors are absolutely "ESSENTIAL" and must be installed correctly or else it will overheat. You do not need the block t-stats, but you do need a good main t-stat.
3) I have never seen a MEL with a cracked head or block and believe me I have had many red hot.
4) The intake gaskets can in-fact seep. Make sure you seal them well around the water holes with some sort of good gasket sealer.
5) The exhaust bolts do not go into the water jackets. They are blind as are the head bolts
6) A question for you. Does this model have the wierd oil pump that is also a vacuum pump for the PS. If so,,,,,ditch it. They suck and cause many problems.

If I can answer any of your question, feel free to ask. [email protected].
See my avatar: it is a 508 CI blown nitro burning MEL

 

58lincoln,

Thanks for the hose heads-up! None of the head bolts go through water jackets... Thankfully!

Arkie,

I have 2... Both PA Veloxes, pics in my albums. Both need work

 

Beep,

Thanks! Wow! That's some hell of an engine you have!

1) Head bolt torque, gotcha. I have Fel-Pro gaskets. The ones that cAme off the car look like Fel-Pro gaskets too. I was planning on using engine oil on the bolts, a light oiling.. That oughta work?

2) my diverters are good. My block t-stats are missing, my fan clutch looks shot. I'm running a 180 stant main t-stat.

3) that's a relief!

4) I was planning on using gascacinch on the intake gaskets. I'm also thinking of copper spraying the head gaskets, or should I copper spray both?

5) yup, that's what I thought. I did get some nasty looking oil on them though, gray and muddy looking.

6) I don't think so plan is to yank the pan and change out pump anyhow.

I really appreciate your advice. It's 100 out but its shady where the car is. I'm measuring the cylinders right now. So far I'm getting readings of 4.310-4.312 on them, looks like re ringing this engine without a bore and oversized pistons is a bad idea? The most oval any cylinder is is .002 but if I recall that's still a bit too much?

Ill post readings once I'm done. Waiting for my cousin to show up, I have a bad back and these heads are a bit much for me to schlep into my car by myself.

Bill

 

Never mind...

I was a decimal place off. The engine is .0090-.015 worn, it needs a rebore and new pistons.

It's 100 degrees out, my brain is fried. Here I am thinking I'm .0015 off... Sheesh.

I'm still getting heads checked but this is going to turn into a complete engine rebuild.

Fuck.

Can't say I didn't see it coming........

 

Well you either had good compression or you didn't.
You either had lots of blow by or you didn't !

 

Sucks up front but once you have the rebuilt motor back in the car you'll be glad you did it. The bad thing about our affliction with these older cars is that it can get expensive real quick. Kinda like a fart in an elevator, we just deal with it...oh wait, bad analogy...

 

Well,

Not much of an update.. Heads and intake are at a local machine shop. When we went to drop the parts off the guy had a Flathead Powered Belly Tanker that he built parked next to his 36 Chevy Pickup with a Vette 283 with dual quads.

I'd say they're in good hands

I am picking up a proper bore gauge on Monday, Looks like my method isn't that accurate as I can't seem to duplicate my results so I am not about to condemn anything yet..

There is, to be fair, very little of a lip at the cylinder tops and the cylinders are holding oil quite well, most of them for well over a week. Also, I spoke to someone who did the comp test and he mentioned hardly any difference when he squirted some oil in the cylinders.

Who knows... we'll see. If it needs to be bored it needs to be bored but I'd rather not spend $1500++ on parts plus machine work right now.

 

When you had the pics of the pistons up the carbon seamed to go all the way to the edge of the piston if the rings are bad thay will wash the carbon off the edges of the pistons I think you will be ok.
What are your plans for the car another 100,000 miles?

 

Once you get your bore gauge check the bore taper from top to bottom. As a general rule, if its within .002 inch just cut the ridge and hit the bore with a dingleberry bush. If the taper is larger check with the mfr to find out what is acceptable.

 

Ok,

Here's an update and a bit of a change of plans.

There's some taper in the bores and finally getting my hands on a proper bore gauge showed the following...

They're not that bad, but to do this right will involve new pistons and rebooting the engine. Time and budget won't allow for that right now, mainly time. Basically the pistons are worn past spec an average of .008 and taper is around .002-.003, not bad but enough that I'd rather bore this thing out and get new pistons made and yank the engine and etc....

Meanwhile, it doesn't seem that, being worn at the outer tolerances, it would run THAT badly. It's basically barely within wear tolerances or perhaps, at worst, .003 past them on the cylinder walls.

Also, the car needs to be at a show in 10 days. It's going to be there if it short dicks every cannibal on the Congo.

So here's what I have done instead... I've cleaned the heads up, wire wheeled the carbon and crap off of the valves. Valve guides and springs are good. Valve seals were not sealing well. Now comes the amusement...

These cars use, stock, umbrella type seals. My heads have been machined to take .625 seals. That's good and bad. Bad because they're not the easiest things to find (3/8 valve seals aren't the most common anyhow). After a week and a half of nonsense and getting the wrong seals sent, Bill Ceralli of Ceralli Competiton Engines in Paterson got me what I needed. Heck of a nice guy too and extremely patient.

The intake valves were really badly car ones up. Badly.

Tomorrow the heads go back together. Valves, guides, springs, etc are all in good shape. I've Re-lapped the valves in but this is all a bit temporary anyhow as ill get to.

Car goes back together this weekend assuming I can get some help physically placing the heads in the car.

I have located a very low mileage 1960 430 (the 1960 Lincoln 430 is actually a unique block) that I am planning to build up. It's a low mileage factory rebuilt motor that's going to go on a stand, get ripped apart, and I am going to build it. This way I can drive the car while building a bit of a hotter engine for it.

This works out perfectly because my 60 Continental convertible has a rebuilt engine that's standard bore in it. However the clown that rebuilt it used replacement flat-top pistons. I figure I can salvage the correct pistons out of my 45k motor if the rest of them (I pulled 2) are as good as the ones I checked. This should save me $12-1300 at Wiseco.

Worst case, it blows up, ill park it in a garage until I get the new motor built and swap it in.

We shall see.......

 

Oh,

Plans for the car....

I've wanted one of these forever. Took me a long time to find THIS car (I had nearly given up).

I wanted a 60 Premiere coupe with factory air in Silver or Maple Leaf. And as I am an option whore I REALLY wanted factory speed control. I am never selling this car.

Ever.

Never ever.

Plans are to eventually install properly rebuilt engine, do some chrome, replace some seals and rebuild the entire HVAC system.

Once that's done then I think I am going to very mildly customize it... Thinking a slight drop, maybe some lancer caps, not sure on paint yet. Mild stuff, nothing too wild.

 

I would have a machine shop cut the top ring groove for a GI spacer and reuse the old pistons (don't get to tight with the ring end gap).
That sucker will last way past the time to build the wright engine.

 

Saltflats,

Thanks. Problem is I'm out of time. Worst case ill yank the heads again over the winter. By then I should be in the new garage and won't be under the gun (fuck you hurricane Sandy for wrecking my shop).

Here's some progress from the past hour... Seals in, valves going in...




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Its good to see you are making some progress.
I have never worked on one of the 430 that head looks like a diesel head.

 

Yeah MELs are weird. The combustion chamber is in the cylinder, much like a Chevy W engine.

One head done, working on the other... Having the right damn valve seals makes me damn happy


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+1, I had this happen to me on my 5.7 Suburban engine, cracked both heads. Derp.

 

Nothing like messing with old cars guess that what keeps us from becomeing rapest and murderers.

 

If you're going to reuse the original pistons but you're finding that they're too loose in the bore, you might see if your machine shop can knurl the skirts for you. This could buy you a little time and maybe help it run quieter, especially on a cold start-up.

 

Saltflats,

Ya got that right!

Clay,

I've thought about it.. but it's gonna be so damn expensive to do this to bein with that I'm just gonna bit the bullet. That being said I may have found a source for pistons for around $500 a set vs $1200 from Wiseco.

Heads are back together

 

Those repro engine mounts? Yeah... Not so great.


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Guess that little chines guys cardboard templet was wore out that day he mad that mount.

 

Yup!

I had extras tho so I got em replaced. Ended up being a really easy job with the heads off, with the heads and exhaust in place it looks like a pain to do.


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Heads going back on....

Lucked out and found REAL autolites!! Can't believe I'm this excited to find Mexican made stuff. Oh well....


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Heads are on. Right now I'm scrubbing the worlds dirtiest valley pan and putting new lifters in. I've devised an interesting plan...

You guys should get a chuckle out of this.

Carb cleaner is doing a great job of dissolving the carbon and getting the lifters freed from their 53 year slumber.

Now. I've got one of those spray cans that runs on compressed air. I've put motor oil mixed with cam shield in it and am spraying that on the cam lobes and turning the engine slowly by hand to make sure the cam has oil on it. Of course I'm then lubing the lifters up before they go in.

I figure this should protect the cam rather well.

I should have this thing running tonight/tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the cars 53rd Birthday so here's hoping!

Bill


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Here's wishing you good luck!!!!!!

---John

 

Thanks John! Should hopefully have her running tonight!



Nice shiny new lifters


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Update - IT'S ALIVE AND KICKING!!!!

Somehow I managed to fuck up the distributor install but that's being fixed.

Long story short whati thought was 6 degrees of timing ended up being 30-40 and at 20 or so the distributor is at max clockwise adjustment. Worries, that's an easy fix. Anyhow...

Had it running enough to warm it up..... Virtually no blowby. Before it would be chuffing smoke and running like shit, now its smooth and not running like shit. After a shut down I pulled the breather/oil cap and there was just a hint of vapor, not what looked like the smoke from 3 cigar smokers being exhaled.

I ran out of time and space to do the rings. I'm going to see how she runs on the road butif need be ill deal with them once funds accumulate a bit. (I'm not working at the moment...).

New:

Valve stem seals
Lifters
Pushrods
Head gaskets
Motor mounts (old ones were TRASHED)
Valley pan gasket
Intak gaskets (old ones were crusty and showed signs of leakage)

So I'm happy. Tomorrow I am getting the new exhaust on. In the meantime I get to hear the amazing sounds of an uncorked 430, music to my ears.

 

It's alive! Running dramatically better.

Exhaust is on. Still some messing around to do but I'm very happy.

Oh. And we took it to the bar tonight...




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Hmmm... Celebrating a bit, it would appear. Well played!

 

happy for you i got the ford running too! hope you can make the hill mon night see you there teddyp