drovak

The rod can be removed from the engine, though it required lifting the front of the engine enough to clear the frame where the rod was touching. Whether or not it can be jacked up enough from the front when a firewall is in the way is another question; the '32 parts car did not have a firewall in the way and allowed me to jack up the front quite substantially. I suspect you'll manage to do it without removing the engine, but it's not as easy as the '31.

Took the camshaft to the machine shop today to clean up the journals a bit more. Once that's back, I'll get some new bearings cut. I suspect the bearings shrank more than anticipated once pressed in the block. We'll measure the bearings very well this time around once pressed in...

And a couple more.

More photos. Is any of this of interest?

No radiator. I'll see what suspension parts exist. Probably not much. Did you also mention tie rod ends?

My friend reports that the bearings were cut 0.004" larger than the journals with the anticipation of shrinking to 0.002" once fitted. Unfortunately, neither of us thought to measure the bearing IDs once they were fitted... We were successful in getting the bearing off after a little bit from the propane torch and hitting it with an aluminum block and hammer. Nothing obviouly wrong that we see.

The bearing IDs were cut 0.004" larger than the journal ODs.

I may be misremembering what clearance we cut the new bearings. I will verify later.

I am all ears on how to correct this if it's a lubrication problem. The car indicates 30 PSI of oil pressure. Upon removal from the engine, the other five bearings were well lubricated. This indicates oil was flowing from the front bearing through the camshaft to the two middle-front bearings. Again, the front and rear bearings are the only source of oil for the four middle bearings on the camshaft.

I didn't have any good original bearings. All have been replaced before. None of the journal dimensions matched the factory drawings. Clearances were all over the place. My friend and I settled on 0.004".

Here's the bearing shortly after pressing it in. Yep, there was indeed an oil groove cut in it.

If there were inadequate flow to the front bearing, I would suspect there would be reduced flow to the front middle bearings as well, and they look very good. Oil pressure is very good, and after the bearing spun, oil was pumping out of the hole for pinning the bearing in place.

Well, the good news is the car got reassembled and was running quite well. But the bad news is, it did not last. Now the front camshaft bearing, one of the five replacement bearings, seized up. You can see in the above image, after removing the timing cover and pulling out the shaft half an inch, the bearing is coming out with it. And indeed, it is seized to the journal. The best working theory is that there was sufficient radial preload from the timing gear to cause the journal to reduce lubrication at one point, causing it to eventually grab and spin. But, I don't really have any proof. I've ordered more bronze from McMaster and will hopefully get another made, with plans to increase the clearance on the ID, and decrease the clearance on the OD for a more snug fit. The replacement bearing for the original failed one is showing some scoring, so it will get some attention from a cylinder hone, or I may go ahead and have a new one made with a slight increase in clearance as well. The saga continues!

Didn't get as much done yesterday as hoped due to unforeseen circumstances, but the new oil filter is mounted and plumbed up. Hopefully it will help save the engine from future destruction.

I think we indexed the generator and distributor correctly to how the car was when we first disassembled it, but we will verify that the timing is still correct. The generator gear has an index mark on one of its 20 teeth (60 teeth on the timing gear, 30 on the crank), but it's not clear to me how to properly index the three gears together using those marks. Any ideas? I would think one would also have to ensure the distributor is properly indexed to the generator for all of that to work from index marks alone, and I'm not sure how that was done originally. I also cut some rubber motor mounts for the front, which were missing. The castle nuts now are at the right height along the bolt to actually be used as designed. The oil slinger for the front of the engine looked weird. I compared it to the one I pulled out of the '32 and confirmed in the parts list that the same was used for '31, so whatever came on my '31 is certainly not original. Needless to say, it's been replaced with the correct one from the '32. I also scavenged the bolt holding the timing gear to the camshaft from the '32, as someone replaced it previously with a bolt that had too tall of a head, and caused the bolt to wear directly against the timing cover... One of many things I've discovered along the way that just wasn't right...and I'm sure there will be more.