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Neil's '41 Super Model 51


neil morse

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23 minutes ago, valk said:

Nice work Neil…wish I had a Don near me. 

 

Yes, I don't blame you for feeling that way!  I am very fortunate.

 

I will have wait until tomorrow before posting the exciting conclusion to the story. 😄

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One bolt is always worse than the other. It must be due to the direction of current flow. Those don't even look that bad. I have seen much worse erosion than that in many cases before they cease to work. Often most of the thickness is gone. You might want to make sure the solenoid is knocking that disc back the proper amount. The disc is spring loaded a tiny bit, or should be. The solenoid bottoms out but the spring loading allows the disc to touch slightly before the solenoid bottoms. As the bolts wear the spring ensures that the disc will still touch them.

 

There is also an adjustment on the solenoid plunger (threads) that adjusts how far the drive gear pushes out. I would be sure to check that too.

 

Nice looking work!

 

 

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First, a pic of the brushes that I forgot to post earlier.  As you can see, there is hardly any wear at all.

 

starter4.jpg.c01df89a690cb347c7ae1b45b4f27597.jpg

 

Now the story takes a little detour.  We put the solenoid back together, being very careful (we thought) to get everything back in the right place.  The mechanism is quite simple, but has some complicated aspects.  Each terminal bolt is mounted with a series of spacers, washers, insulators, etc. to keep the current where it’s supposed to be and insulate it from where it's not supposed to be.  And each side is different. Well, when I went back home and put the starter back on the car and connected the wires, something was obviously amiss.  When I tried to connect the braided ground wire to the negative terminal of the battery, I got a huge spark.  Oops.

 

So after a delay of several weeks, I took everything off again and took it back down to Don's.  We found the problem right away.  In our haste to finish the job, we had assembled the "sandwich" of washers and insulators wrong on the “hot” side.  A fiber washer had failed to seat properly. The problem was further exacerbated by the fact that when I was connecting the cable from the battery, the copper bolt twisted in place and cracked one of the insulators.  Result: the “hot” terminal was grounded.

 

starter7.jpg.562c0fa95326f6ebfe9c063808a86b48.jpg

 

So we carefully took it apart again and put it back together right.  Don had another solenoid (from a '49) and we disassembled it hoping to find a replacement for the broken insulator.  It turned out the insulator on the other solenoid was broken in exactly the same spot, and in even worse shape than the one on mine.  This was an indication that we weren't the first people to have the problem of the "hot" terminal bolt twisting when the battery cable is connected.  We were able to glue the original insulator back together and reuse it.   

 

We also bench tested the starter this time.  I put it back on the car this morning, and was careful not to over-torque the nut that holds the battery cable in place on the "hot" terminal.   I connected everything, and it's working fine. 

 

Bloo has already commented on another issue I wanted to mention.  As Bloo says, there is an adjustment on the solenoid plunger so that you can control how far back the Bendix is pushed when the solenoid is activated.  If it's out of adjustment to the point that the Bendix is bottoming out on the starter casing, I think this can inhibit the solenoid from moving forward sufficiently to firmly engage the copper disc against the terminals, even with the spring arrangement that Bloo mentions.  We figured that this must have been the situation with my solenoid.  We made sure when we bench tested the starter to adjust the plunger so that there's a 3/16" gap between the Bendix gear and the end of the case, as specified in the manual.

 

The final issue concerns the uneven wear on the terminals.  It seemed to me that the wear should be even unless the copper disc is off-kilter in some way.  However, it's interesting to hear what Bloo had to say about the uneven wear.  Another friend of mine proposed exactly the same theory suggested by Bloo, i.e., the direction of the current causes the erosion to be uneven.  It seems that the "hot" terminal wears more than the grounded terminal.

 

So time will tell whether we found the actual problem or “fixed” something that didn’t need to be fixed.  But I’m pretty confident that’s what was causing the problem.  It's also nice to have the peace of mind of knowing that everything has been checked out and is functioning as it should.

 

 

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Bloo,

The adjustment was my first thought, however Neil had already replaced the rubber boot when he brought the starter down so we didnt know the adjustments original position. So we went ahead with the job.

You may be right about the contact errosion - I never gave it a thought.

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  • 4 months later...

Core Plug Replacement

 

As I posted on another thread, the core plugs on the left side of the block on my engine had all corroded to the point where something needed to be done.  Here's what they looked like:

 

coreplug5.jpg.848ebf5b29c955f5ead0ca2e95d6f2fd.jpg

 

These plugs are just under the intake and exhaust manifolds, and can't be reached with the manifolds in place.  At first, I considered removing the manifolds to get at them.  But then I discovered that there's another plug in the rear, right up against the firewall that's completely inaccessible.  The good news, however, was that the rear plug is in the head rather than the block. Since I knew that the manifolds are prone to cracking and shouldn't be removed unless absolutely necessary, the solution was to remove the head with the manifolds in place.  With the help of my friend, Konrad, we pulled the head off today and were able to get the old plugs out.

 

head_off.jpg.5d3f394c1a5be42ce5063924dfdb8317.jpg

 

plug21.jpg.922fe19e3b7881bdb758ec90d55665fc.jpg

 

old_plugs.jpg.8f2fc2e61bc1be99635a3cef9b251559.jpg

 

As I have said before on this thread, this kind of work is routine to many (if not most) of you, but it's all new to me so I found it pretty interesting.  We will be assessing what, if anything, needs to be done before sewing everything back up.  I'm going to flush out the block as well as I can for sure.  We were already able to remove quite a bit of rusty scale from inside the water jacket.  But the valves and bores look good, and I think we will just put in the new core plugs and put it back together.  The engine was running really well before this, and has never had an overheating problem.  Stay tuned for further developments.

 

 

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Neil, regardless of the varied experiences you could encounter here in the forum, the fact that you are digging in to your cars problems is over half the effort.  Glad you are forging ahead rather than ignoring the issue.  Your car's service life will be greatly extended with you in charge.

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3 hours ago, kgreen said:

Glad you are forging ahead rather than ignoring the issue.

Thanks, Ken.  Clearly, some issues can only be ignored for so long!  I'm amazed that my engine held any coolant at all given the state of these plugs.  It's a tremendous relief to get this taken care of.  Like most jobs I've tackled so far on this car, it turned out to be much less of an ordeal than I anticipated.  I am very fortunate to be getting so much help!

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Thanks for the magnet suggestion, Ben and Matt.  I have already used a magnet to get a bunch of crud out, but I'll be picking up one of these today that should be very helpful.

 

https://www.acehardware.com/departments/tools/hand-tools/pickup-tools/2061273?store=10163&gclid=Cj0KCQiA09eQBhCxARIsAAYRiynTocv0X3h2xpkvtLywiWtiyBHTYkQLn6uvelYFxT2_ogzA5rr_mLAaAtMaEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

 

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I got my magnetic pick-up tool with the flexible shaft and was able to make some progress cleaning out the water jacket.  I also cleaned up the crankcase inlet vent.  Not much else to report -- work continues.

 

rusty_scale.jpg.9bc6b3698e021558172d2b8dfa0af840.jpg

crankcase_inlet2.jpg.93aef878fd9f997839497f586d27426f.jpg

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I have a question.  After some struggling, we finally got the water jacket drain plug out of the block.  However, the passage is completely blocked by crud and no water drains out.  I have tried to get a wire or coat hanger, etc. in through the hole to clear it out, but the passage makes such an abrupt right angle turn that I haven't had any success so far in clearing it.  I wasn't surprised to find it blocked because I've read on the forum of others who have encountered the same problem.

 

Any ideas of how to clear this drain?

 

One idea is to screw a nipple into the plug hole that I can use to attach a hose and see if I can blast it out that way.  Any other suggestions would be most welcome.

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Not sure you want to pressurize the jacket in that direction, pushing crud the wrong way, back up into the block. There must be a clever way to reverse flush that passage, but what do I know…good luck Neil, we all know you’ll figure it out, then we can, again, benefit from your experience.

Peter

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Neil, are you referring to the drain down low behind the distributor?  That sucker is at or almost at the bottom of the water jacket.  And it probably does not go in far. Inch or less?  And the jacket may only be plugged a short way. Perhaps a small slow turning drill to break through and then some kind of a water nozzle?

 

  Ben

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21 minutes ago, Ben Bruce aka First Born said:

Neil, are you referring to the drain down low behind the distributor?  That sucker is at or almost at the bottom of the water jacket.  And it probably does not go in far. Inch or less?  And the jacket may only be plugged a short way. Perhaps a small slow turning drill to break through and then some kind of a water nozzle?

 

  Ben

 

Yes, that's the one.  It feels like it goes in at a slightly upward angle for about an inch, and then must take a sharp vertical turn at 110 degrees or so.  I can't find anything (I've tried a coat hanger and stiff copper wire so far) that will make the turn when I try to stuff it into the hole.  Do you mean a drill on a flexible shaft of some sort?  The water nozzle is our next idea.

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24 minutes ago, EmTee said:

Maybe heat the area with a propane torch and spray some penetrant (e.g., WD-40, PB Blaster, etc.)?  Treat it like a stuck bolt...

To be clear, we got the plug out (using just the methods you suggest).  Now I'm trying to clear the passage which is blocked by all the crap that has collected in the bottom of the water jacket on that side.

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Understood - I was just saying to treat the solidified scale the same way.  Maybe the heat followed by injection of cold penetrating oil would allow it to wick-in and break up the scale so that you can ream it with the wire...

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My drain passage was blocked exactly the way you describe yours. I almost think it was never finished at the factory--whatever was blocking it was immune to everything I tried, including 100 PSI of air pressure, Evapo-Rust, various wires and drills, etc. Nothing I did could open the passage up and my engine was pretty clean inside. I think a significant number of engines have a casting defect or were never finished properly for this drain to work. I have no other explanation for how solidly blocked it was.

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Thank you all for your responses.

 

EmTee: Okay, sorry, now I get what you're saying.  That's an interesting idea.  However, as I posted above, I don't think I'm coming up against the "solidified scale" when I'm pushing with a coat hanger or other wire.  I thought I was just hitting the block where the passage took a sharp turn.  (However, Matt's post suggest another possible reason.)

 

Matt: Hmm ... that would explain a lot.  It would be great if someone could chime in here who has had the experience of actually opening up this drain successfully so I could get a better idea of the twists and turns of the passage.  Logically, it seems like it must take a sharp turn as I posted earlier.  But if the passage actually doesn't go through to the water jacket, then I'm really just hitting a wall.

 

John: Compressed air is one of the first thoughts I had.  Alas, the "Morse Garage" is not equipped with such a basic resource.  

 

I will keep trying and keep you posted on the outcome.

 

 

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1 hour ago, neil morse said:

 

 

John: Compressed air is one of the first thoughts I had.  Alas, the "Morse Garage" is not equipped with such a basic resource.  

 

I see Matt tried that and did not have any luck anyway. 

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Neil, I probably misunderstood. If you are already "in" the drill is not needed. As far as what the passage looks like best I can suggest is if the head was removed, looking straight down, the passage is the area between the outer wall of the block and the cylinder. I can not locate a picture of the drain position to see, but it is probably opening directly opposite a cylinder. So only a short distance.  It IS NOT a passage in the sense I think you mean.  Just an open space. 

 

  Ben

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Thank you, Ben.  Your post has made me realize that I wasn't correctly visualizing what was going on inside the block.  I think I understand it better now, and tell me if this makes sense to you.

 

The drain hole is right under the "shelf" that runs along the right side of the engine that the tappets sit in.  Here's a photo with a rod stuck into the hole.  You can see that the drain is between tappet #'s 12 and 13.  It's actually right between two cylinders (6 and 7).  It lines up with the rear-most core plug hole on the opposite side.

 

water_jacket_drain.jpg.fb1e4f1cc4bd854a136734972dfc02b3.jpg

 

Now, if I'm understanding this correctly, here's a cross-section of the engine showing where this drain hole is located.

 

910837991_248_cross_section(2)_LI.jpg.353d3ca508847158f372ceada5fab41f.jpg

 

You can see from this why this drain gets plugged up.  It hits the water jacket at it's lowest and narrowest point.  If there's a pile of sediment above it, it gets blocked.  But I think my visual image of the shape of the "drain passage" was wrong.  It doesn't have a bend in it -- it's a straight shot into the water jacket.  However, the problem may amount to the same thing since whatever probe you are using is still going to have to make a turn upwards to "drill" through the accumulated sediment.

 

However, a probe (drill, whatever) shoved into the hole is not actually hitting a cylinder wall, as it might appear from the cross-section drawing because the drain is located between two cylinders.  This realization just sent me back down to the garage where I confirmed that I can get a coat hanger wire into this area from the other side by sticking it through the core plug hole and in between the two cylinder walls.  I think this approach may enable me to free up the sediment that's blocking the drain.

 

Thank you for sticking with me if you've gotten this far.  This stuff is hard to describe with words and pictures if you're not standing right next to the engine.  Ben, if you wouldn't mind stopping by my house tomorrow, I'm sure you can help me solve this problem! 😄

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I will be right over, Neil!!    If only I could.  I would like nothing better.

 

As that picture shows the water jacket is not overly large.  You "may" already be through.  May be junk above the drain hole.  Do you have the head off?  If so, perhaps a probe from the top?

 

  The way I see it, the water jacket being dirty should not contribute to coolant [radiator] being too hot.  The engine not cooling properly, yes.   Hot spots. Probably. I believe old racers actually fil a portion of the lower water jacket with concrete to stiffen the block.

 

  Stick with the party!

 

  Ben

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Neil;

Here's a photo of my using my power washer blowing water INTO the side drain and it exits out the core plug hole on the opposite side.

 

DSC_0643.thumb.JPG.085240fc1968e49b51cb668836dffbc7.JPG.d072853946d1a61eb55770b0f1c6a818.JPG

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Thanks, Ben.  Yes, the head is off as you can see in the first post of the core plug discussion, above.  Unfortunately, there is no water passage directly above where the drain plug is.

 

And thanks, Gary, for posting that photo.  That makes perfect sense given the location of the drain just opposite that core plug hole.

 

I'm going down to Don Micheletti's place on Monday to borrow a bunch of hose fittings, copper tubing, etc. that will enable me to put water in various specific places.  I'm hopeful that will solve the problem.  In the meanwhile, I will keep digging in the drain plug area by going in between the cylinders from the core plug hole.  We shall see.

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Well, what do you know?

 

 

Here's the amazing sophisticated tool that did it -- a piece of coat hanger wire on my electric drill.

 

Drain_plug2.jpg.f9de0fc0be8248c72b0fd4d4565b9edb.jpg

 

Thanks again to everyone who helped.  The key was my finally understanding the anatomy of the engine so I could visualize what was going on inside the block.

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Not much to report.  Even though I cleared the blockage in the drain, I decided to still go down to Don's this morning to borrow his DIY pressure wash set up.  We made some "wands" with different lengths of copper tubing.  This enabled me to use the vertical holes in the top of the block to get water to as many areas in the water jacket as possible.  All the water running out is clear, but I'm still picking up some stuff with the magnet, so I will keep going.

 

pressure_wash.jpg.b0dda149e066de5fde3c62f3ebdfe3f2.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Stuck Valve Lifter

 

Some may have wondered why this thread went dark all of a sudden in mid-project.  Well, here’s the story.  It has an ugly beginning but fortunately a very happy ending due to the generosity and ingenuity of my friends.

 

As I have mentioned previously, I am reasonably handy and have taken on a number of mostly cosmetic and some “light” mechanical tasks in working on my car.  However, I have no experience or training with any heavy mechanical work.  I have enjoyed learning more and more about how an engine works, but until we took the head off my engine, I had never seen a valve lifter or really understood what they did.  It was recommended to me that I remove the lifters and clean them out since they were very grungy inside to the point that it might interfere with the proper contact of the push rods with the bottom of the lifters and make readjusting the valves difficult.  They were easy to get out, but a bit harder to get back in.  I figured out that you had to jiggle them slightly to get them seated in the bore, and then they easily slid back down in place.  Unfortunately, before I figured this out, I got frustrated trying to get one back in, and in a “brain fart” moment, decided that all I had to do was “carefully” use a block of wood and a hammer to tap the lifter back down into the bore.  Then, for good measure, I “carefully” used a piece of hollow plastic rod and hammer to tap the lifter down the rest of the way.  Huge mistake, of course.

 

After my brain began to function again, I realized what a mess I had created.  The lifter would not budge.  After a consultation with Don, I tried rotating the crank to see if the lifter would come up.  It did.  I tapped it down again the same way, and it did not take much force move it down.   But I could not rotate it or push it down just with my hand.   I cycled it a number of times to try to free up whatever I had managed to get stuck between the lifter and the bore that was making it so hard to move, but we could not come up with any way to get it out, despite a number of attempts.  (A nipple extractor, for example.)  I felt like an idiot and imagined all kinds of scenarios involving things like having to pull the engine, etc.

 

I enlisted the help of my friend, Konrad, and he and Don brainstormed about ideas of a tool that they could build to do this job.  Here’s a drawing by Don of the idea he came up with.

 

LifterPuller.jpg.429ce27383faa837584246ab8559d71c.jpg 

 

This called for making a steel plug to fit inside the lifter and cross-drilling it to fit a retractable pin which would fit into the drain hole in the lifter.  Then by tapping a vertical hole in the plug and modifying the base of a slide hammer, the tool could be inserted into the lifter, the pin extended to engage the drain hole in the lifter, and lifter could be pulled out using the slide hammer.

 

Konrad and I went down to Don’s shop yesterday where Konrad used Don’s lathe and milling machine to make the tool.  We, of course, had another lifter to use on the bench to make sure everything fit.  Between Don’s idea and Konrad’s workmanship, the tool came out perfectly.  Here’s what it looked like when he was done.

 

LifterPuller3.jpg.8465bc05adf80ab79dcceaf068a0a3c8.jpg

LifterPuller1.jpg.37163f6812fee5c69108eb9be76c98bc.jpg

LifterPuller2.jpg.f46d47be9fde6e0f246f92f1a71cdb64.jpg

 

And here’s a video of how it worked when Konrad came over to my place this morning.

 

 

When we got it out, it was difficult to see exactly why it had become so jammed.  It  was very slightly out of round, but that was probably from all the efforts to pull it out, especially the nipple extractor which may have distorted it.  But Konrad was able to true it up fairly easily with a stone and 400 grit sandpaper, and it’s now back where it should be and functioning normally.

 

To say that I’m grateful and feel blessed by my friendship with these two kind and generous (and highly-skilled) individuals is an understatement!  My bacon having been saved, we can now get back to fixing my core plug problem.

 

 

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6 minutes ago, JohnD1956 said:

@neil morse Whew!  Thats an ingenious tool.  Was the pin that latched into the lifter drain hole spring loaded?

 

 

That would have been an elegant feature, but I think they decided to keep it as simple as possible.  No spring.

 

And, of course, if anyone should somehow end up with a stuck lifter (probably not likely), I will gladly lend out this tool!

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Neil, while I don't condone the use of  hammer to install lifters, I think Tom may have found the root cause for your difficulties.

 

Tom noticed that the ID of the lifter was bored about 0.020 out of position. This resulted in a rather thin wall on one side of the lifter. This thin wall and the soft nature of the lifter it was very easy to distort the wall with the impacts of the hammer.  We saw the distortion as a widening (mushrooming) at the top and O.O.R. condition of about 0.0015".

 

I have to say I too was a bit surprised that the nipple puller had distorted the lifter wall. I would have expected that the lifter bore in the block would have supported the lifter wall. But as you saw we could see the contact area on the lifter as I moved the lifter up and down the block. 

 

I used a Norton 400 grit India stone to stone off the high spots. In the end, the lifter will now move down the lifter bore under its own weight. (most of the other lifters don't do this as they have a layer of varnish).

 

As to the tool, the tapper on the slide hammer controls the extension of the drive pin. There is no need for springs and the complexity they represent.  The  primary concern with the tool was offering enough metal support to keep the pin attached to the slider adaptor.  This is a problem in that the drain hole is at the very bottom of the ID (straight bore) of the lifter. (This is where drain holes are to be placed). The trick was to use the volume (radius) normally used for the push rod end. This was critically shallow.

 

I was lucky to get a good clay impression of this cavity. And with some luck was able to support the pin with adequate material.

 

I need to thank Don for the use of his cutting machines. I had fun relearning many of the basics of machining as I haven't turned the wheels on a manual, heck any, lathe or mill in over 30 years!

 

 

Neil's drain hole.jpg

Neil lifter clay model.jpg

Edited by Konrad
correct grit size (see edit history)
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Back on Track

 

I spent the afternoon in the sunny back yard staying out of trouble and cleaning up various parts to prepare for putting the engine back together.  I spent some time cleaning up the rocker assembly, which was a mess, and freeing up all the adjustment screws which obviously hadn't been moved in many years.  I am curious about the process of readjusting the valve lash (in which I will be schooled by Konrad), and wonder whether he has lined up an octopus to help us!  I am so relieved and happy to have that lifter problem behind me.

 

rocker_cleanup.jpg.32454a2dff50ed40467748d2e0d3e1c5.jpg

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