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.

We cleaned the camshaft (ensuring all of the oil galleries are free of debris). We then hammered in the new bearings. The car is coming back together, slowly but surely. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to try starting it Friday.

I was also thinking about adding a thermocouple to monitor oil temp with my Fluke. Nothing permanent—just a check like you suggest.

I have thought about having the honeycomb rebuilt in mine to maintain originality, but I've externally bypassed mine and may not end up looking back. We'll see how I'm feeling once the cam bearings (coincidence?) are installed and the car is reassembled.

Beautiful car, Brian! I'm just glad you sweet talked the Stanley into towing you. Sights only seen at Hershey!

I had a very good Christmas indeed, and I hope the same for you! Paris sounds very fun this time of year. Things have slowed down on the '31, but I hope to get my friend to help machine those bearings in the next week or two. Then it should be a good amount of reassembly, and we'll see what happens after that!

Dave, do you have the same steel plate that sits between the body and the hinge as Joel shows? I can't quite tell. Mine is missing that...

Went through my photos of my '31 Series 80. This is the rear one. I think I can say with some confidence that the screws are not original. In fact, I've since replaced them with stainless machine screws and nuts. Still a pain given the firewall insulation in the way. I'll see if I can get photos of the front sometime.

Very true, but some of the sparkly bits are bronze.

Yes, indeed. I'm planning to use a full-flow filter in lieu of the oil heat exchanger (which I previously bypassed). There's still a small restriction where a previous owner bypassed the original oil filter, which has been completely removed on my car. As a result, this should not only filter all of the oil pumping through the system, it should also retain good oil pressure. I have consistently read 30 PSI once the car is warmed up and at speed. It's not even close to original, but I want to ensure during the process of machining the camshaft and bearings that there is zero chance of me recycling those shavings through the bearings and such.

Oh, and here are the four other bearings removed from the '31. Two of these were pinned in place, but they did not drill all of the way through the bearing as per the original. The other two were knurled and likely turned back down again to get the fit better, but were not pinned in place. I wonder why Buick pinned these in place given many other cars of the era were not pinned as I understand it. My friend suggests we tap the block to utilize setscrews rather than pins.