Took a better pic of the piston in question on my way out the door this morning. This pic shows a lot better, that it is not a white caked on mess, more bare metal. Now this may be the dumbest question I have asked yet, but if there was water leaking onto the piston...wouldnt that water then find its way eventually into the oil pan...causing that lovely creamy white oil you get to see with a blown head gasket?
IMHO Don't worry to much about what went on before.....get it torn down and fluxed to see what you have. Make sure they flux the under belly webs (crank area). If your block is good....off you go for the rebuild! There is no mystery to the flathead other than it is old technology. You'll find lots of help here. There are a few tricks to learn and some good books are out there. I like John W. Lawson's "Flathead Facts", based on real world testing.
Anything at this point is speculation and you need to do diagnostics anyway on this or any rebuild. You bring up a good point about the creamy oil, but if it were just a bit of water, then it might survive combustion as water vapor and be exhausted. Also, remember that some water will always accumulate as condensation in the crankcase and also be cast-off as water vapor thru the crankcase ventilation system. I've heard of guys de-carbonizing combustion chambers by spraying a water mist into the carb while the engine runs. As long as you don't hydro-lock it, you can do this fairly safely. Sure, some will pass through the rings, but unless it has enough volume to emulsify, that will evaporate, too. The creamy oil thing is usually the result of a lot of water. Anyway, something sure shined up that piston, be it gas, oil, or water!
Just had a chance to look at the head from the side with the "clean" piston. There is some build up that is a brown color. Caked on the spark plug as well. I also got to removing the valves...well 4 of them, It actually went really easy. I figure if I am going all out I may as well get new valves so I was not worried about using a rubber mallet on the operation. I could not take pictures of the process as it requires all 3 hands. I will post a link to a video I found on line that helped me out a lot. My questions for tonight are: besides the sealing surfaces on the block, how rough can a guy get on the inside? Is there a trick to getting the lifters out or do they come out later on when you flip the motor over? Is it silly to reuse the valve guides but replace the valves and springs? How imparitive is it to have adjustable lifters on a fairly mild street motor?
Check the guides on new valves for clearance. I use adjustables because I have them. I will use stock next time I buy because I have the rig for adjusting the stems on my machine. Sanding the surface need's to be perfect square, imagine if your clearanced valve was not dead nuts square with the lifter surface. Lots cheaper to do stock lifter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8iGXa9H294 copy and paste that and it should take you to youtube to the video that helped me get the valves out. Keep in mind though, that I am putting new valves into this motor, so I was not worried about banging them out of shape. Also, the motor I am working on was a fairly solid runner, so nothing was seized up. The only tools I used were a rubber mallet, modified pickle fork (sharpened up the tips to fit in the springs a bit easier), and some elbow grease.
my goal for tonight is to get all the springs and guides out, should only take a half hour or so (famous last words), and flip the motor over so I can tackle the bottom end next week when I find the time. As I was removing the intake set up last week, there was a rod that went into the fuel pump. I have looked up pictures of said rod on the internet and found that there is another piece shaped like a bell that goes around it. I have about 1/2 inch of dirty thick oil sitting in the top end have not seen it floating around anywhere. Is this something that should just pop off with the rod, or is it pressed in somehow?
Grab the pushrod & pull it out. If you havent yet, in the valley are splash guards or whatever spring clip to the center oil tube. Grab em and pull them off. Further along when you have the cam gear off there will be a plug behind the gear that go's into the oil tube. On the other end behind the flywheel when you get the oil pump drive cover off there will be another plug, that comes out so a gun cleaner could be used to cean the tube. There are cleanout plugs in some crankshafts, itgo's on & on... Do it right and it will go 50 more years.
thanks for the heads up on the clean out plugs...Im in no hurry, so hopefully I will get them done right!
Got all the springs and valves out. The only thing giving me trouble is the valve guides on all the intake spots. I have two of them out so far, and both of them have a rubber gasket that seems pretty chewed up on them. Not sure if that is from the removal process or just old age and over use. I am working with a deep socket and a rubber mallet for these. I probably could get them out faster with a real hammer, but I don't want to risk missing and destroying the top of the block. I will get back at the rest after they sit for the night in PB blaster. Is there a reason all intakes would be stuck more than exhaust? Moisture? I also noticed that the most corrosion on the top of the valves themselves were in the 4 corners of the motor (the front one on either side, and rear ones). To anyone that over thinks things just to make them more complicated, the splash guards that attach to the oil tube just pull right off like Barry Wny said...nothing fancy.
I think from your pictures of the decks and pistons you're mixing up the left and right sides. The teardrop shaped water passages are at the rear of the motor. Left side is drivers side. Jim
When you take the sludge trap plugs out of the crank journals, I would suggest taping the holes 3/8" pipe and putting allen head plugs back in, short enough to be flush with the crank. These holes are oil pressure boundary items, so you don't want a leak there.
going out of town for a few days here this weekend, so I will get to the lower half sometime next week. This thing is consuming my mind!
Valve guides.... be sure to remove the "horse shoe" clips that keep them in place. New guides are readily available, (Speedway) and be sure to use new "O-Ring" seals on the intakes. Bare metal piston top...usually means coolant getting into the chamber, and the piston top being "steam" cleaned. 4TTRUK
You can get new valve guides from Speedway , as well as other suppliers. If this is an "all out" rebuild, it's worth the $ to do new ones. The intake guides have o rings on the outside, to keep oil from being drawn past them from the gallery. The openings below the water pump were, I believe, for sand core removal during mfg. There is also a book devoted to Ford flatheads by Frank Oddo, and is a treasure trove of info, specs, and more. tapping the crank throw cleanout plugs is a great way to go. Red Loc Tite will keep 'em in place. keep us posted,.... 4TTRUK
Im in the process of rebuilding mine right now too. I had the block Magnafluxed (it had 4 tiny cracks from the headbolt hole to the small water jacket hole, not an issue) had the block decked to equal deck heights, had the block bored to 3.3125 and and a valve job done with new modern valves. also had the EAB heads decked .018 to make flat and bump compression up. This will go back together with a Scat 286 balanced stroker kit, cam will be either A L100 regrind or the Isky 1007B Zephyr springs newguides etc...
The intakes get stuck because of the rubber seals they have that the exhaust doesn't. They get vulcanized from the heat and petrified from the age. Lube 'em up and/or add some heat from a simple propane torch. I'd use a real hammer instead of the rubber mallet, but with short heavy taps and not big swings. This isn't John Henry driving a railroad spike.
Flipped her over this morning and got to looking at the crank to see what I could see...I seem to have some grooves worn on it somehow. I have turned the thing and it doesnt hit the cam...any suggestions? Were these just cast like this? Seems unlikely.
Great thread, I'm about to pull the 8BA out of my 50 this week, for complete rebuild, and this is going to help immensely! I'm debating going all out with new parts vs re-using some things. Any tips on what can be machined and re-used in a mild build? I'm going to get a 4" Merc crank, with old-school Edmunds heads machined by H&H, Fenton dual intake with 97s, and Red's headers. Leaning toward the Isky Max-1. Subscribed!
That is a gray question... And I am not the one to ask! This is all new to me, just thought I would post up progress here so that someone else later on can gain some knowledge from the great answers I have received to my dumb basic questions. I would guess that the answer to your question will be: depends on your motor. What is reusable in mine may not be in yours etc. I'm finding out though that if you're already going to spend big money on a rebuild, why not go all the way. Seems silly to save a couple hundred here and there when in the end it's going to cost as much as a lot of people's entire cars do.
Yes, true, but it's up to $1000 difference, depending which way I go, and I have "the boss" to account to!
Took a few days off to go on a trip with the old lady and ended up with the stomach flu instead...so that was cool. Got the crank and pistons out tonight. Took me a solid hour and a half, next time I could get it done in thirty minutes easily. I did not take any pics but it is pretty straight forward. The one thing I learned was not to unhook each rod and push the piston as far as it will go. I did this initially so that I would have a much clearance as possible when turning the crank to get to the next piston rod cap removal. Instead next time I would undo all of the nuts holding the rods to the crank, but not detach them from the crank itself. That way when you are turning the crank you don't have any rods getting in the way. Anyways, that probably was not clear. With the crank out the pistons slid right from the inside. There were 2 that I had to unhook the piston from the rod and push out the top of the motor...the two nearest the center.
I also found broken rings on half of the pistons... On one of them even the larger "double stack" ring was busted. Bthis was on the "clean piston" that has been in question. Any clue if that has any tie in?
For those of you who have ever tried to remove the oil pump idling gear from the block, I'm sure there is a more graceful way of doing so...but this is how I did it. The gear assembly is threaded. The only reason I can think of for this is to aid in removal. Find yourself a 3/8 corse thread bolt at least 6 inches long, a piece of angle iron and 2 blocks of wood. Drill a hole in the angle iron for the bolt to go through. Lay the two blocks of wood on either side of the gear (my block was on it's end). Lay the angle iron across the wood blocks...these act as leverage and save your block from metal on metal contact. Put your bolt through the angle iron (in my case I was using an old bed frame!). Thread that bolt into the stubborn gear, then start cranking down on the nut that sits in the top side of the angle iron...or whatever metal piece you can find. I will post a pic when my computer is fixed. Crank till you can't crank any more, then find something in your garage for leverage. In my case I ended up throwing my old exhaust manifold over the end of the wrench...worked like a charm! A few more cranks and it cracked loose. Hope this helps someone that is in the same situation. Now my block is totally empty besides the cam gear as far as I can tell.
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