After looking at it the rear cam plug is underneath the bell housing. So I have to pull the engine. I have a buddy with an engine hoist. Where/How should I attach the hoist to the engine? I assume with a chain and bolts I just don’t want to screw anything up worse than I already have.
I pulled the engine yesterday. The distro had a large hole in the body near the bottom which I hadn’t noticed since it was on the engine side. It was also very gritty and hard to turn.
I pulled the cam and didn’t see any damage to it or the lifters. The rear cap behind the cam was not pressed out by my antics when replacing the cam gear. It appears that nothing really keeps the cam from moving to the back of the engine. Is this the case? It seems rather odd.
I took some pictures of the head and cylinders.
These pictures are in the order of front to back.
I assume the oily buildup on the pistons is blow by from worn rings. My buddy told me If i could not catch a nail on the wear line at the top the cylinder I wouldn’t need a rebore. I can’t catch a nail so I thought I would hone it and replace the rings. Is this sound advice? Also should I replace the lifters if I don’t replace the cam? Anything I should replace since it is this torn down bearing in mind I’m pretty broke and I only drive the truck on short trips every couple of weeks probably around 300 miles a year.
Oh yeah and now that I have that cam out how should I press that gear on the rest of the way I was thinking of a bottle jack on the cam end with the gear end against an immovable object.
You would have to move the cam about 3/4 of an inch before a lifter would drop off a cam lobe and that would jam the camshaft in its bore…But with the nose of the cam buggered up, making it impossible to properly secure the cam gear, you need to do something…
You can remove the valve cover, the rocker shaft and pushrods, then the lifter gallery side covers on the side of the block, raise the lifters off the cam and remove the cam. With the radiator removed, it should slide out through the grill…Easier than pulling the entire engine…
I know you have a lot of time invested in this, but you only drive the vehicle under 1,000 miles a year. Unless you are going to build up the engine a little for better performance, you’d probably get away a lot cheaper and with a lot less headaches if you just got a salvage yard engine and dropped it in. You have half the work done already. Ford 300s are ridiculously plentiful–they were made for ages, they are fairly bulletproof (except for the plastic parts), and can probably be had for a song since they’re not in much demand.
Unless you’re on a mission to see if you can rebuild it, and I understand that because I did that myself once, you should just drop another motor in it in my opinion.
If I can by a set of rings for 42 and the distributor for 46 plus another 80 for gaskets how does this compare to purchasing a used engine? As I expressed before I have little money but I do have a lot of time. So I don’t mind doing the work but I do mind spending money.
thanks!
From the pics and as near as I can tell, the cylinder walls look pretty bad. This goes back to the low compression and ring problems.
Whether rings will fix the problem even on the short term is unknown. That depends on whether or not a good honing will remove all pitting and scoring and whether or not the cylinders are still round.
If the cylinders are egged an/or tapered badly then stuffing a new set of round rings in an oblong opening will only be a crutch at best.
You might flip the heads upside down combustion chamber facing up) and fill them with gasoline. Allow them to sit for a bit and note how much gasoline, if any, seeps out past the valves. If the intake or exhaust ports are wet within 5 minutes then redoing the heads is going to be a must. It should be a must anyway when rings are involved.
The camshaft has constant pressure toward the front due to the angle of the gear. No thrust is needed toward the rear. You need a good machine shop to install the cam gear and clean up that block and head. The No6 hole looks to need boring but it’s difficult to say for sure from the picture. Do you have a good shop manual to go by?
Pour an ounce or two of gasoline or kerosene or paint thinner in the ports and see if the valves leak. If so, it’s off to the machine shop…$$$. Make sure the lifters go back into the same bores…They wear in a pattern and you can’t swap them around…If they are all mixed up now, don’t worry about it…
I was once in a similar situation that you are in now. I had time, no money and an engine to rebuild. I would rebuild in your case and not go with a junk yard engine. You’d be looking at $400+ for a junkyard engine and only have a 90 day warrantee at best.
But you don’t need a world class rebuild. The valve look good so I would just lap them in place. I did this once by using a little valve lapping compound on the valve faces and chucked up the valve stem in a drill and seated them that way. The guys at the hobby shop thought I was nuts, but it worked.
Use a variable speed drill with a hone on the cylinders. Go slow on the rpms, but move up and down so that you get a good cross hatch. Don’t worry about every little vertical scratch. If you have a spot near the top of the cylinders that the hone doesn’t touch, use a little fine grit sand paper on those areas.
Then clean, clean, clean. I would suggest that you replace the bearings while you have everything apart. Last piece of advice, I hope you kept those lifters in order, they HAVE to go back onto the same cam lobe they came off of if you are reusing the same cam and lifters.
BTW, that was a Ford six (200 ci) that I was rebuilding. I only needed it to last a few months but it was still going strong after 50k miles.
I measured my crank bearing oil clearance using plastigauge. It was .0003 and the upper end of spec is .00014. Would replacing the crank bearings with some that are undersized without machining the crank be a dumb idea? It seem that most of the wear would be on the bearing not on the crank but hey what do I know. If I do the complete rebuild with machining it will be around $800. This is sounding like a better idea all the time.
thanks
Oh and my chiltons did not mention keeping the lifters in the same order so they are all mixed up. Although everything else is.
You have one too many decimal places in those measurements…003 and .0014 No undersize bearings needed, just a new set of standard bearings…
And yes, at this point, you might as well do the job right because if you don’t you are wasting your money…
I agree with Caddyman about the decimal comment.
The lifters are mixed up and that’s water under the bridge now. If you must reuse them at least make sure they’re worth reusing. Examine the lifter faces closely for pitting and then place a single edge razor blade across the face of each lifter (sharp edge on the face) and hold them up to the light one by one.
If you see light in the middle of the face the lifter really needs to be trashed. If you see light on each edge then it’s theoretically useable barring any pitting and so on.
I agree with caddyman, most of the excess gap is due to the wear on the current bearings. They are much softer than the crankshaft. New bearings will restore the clearances. However, if the crankshaft bearing surfaces are damaged, then you need to get it examined by a pro. Usually the only way they get damaged is when the bearing spins or totally wears out.
Sorry about the decimal mix up. So you think that that .0016 is just wear in the bearings and replacing them with a standard size will do the trick? I check those lifters out. thanks again for the sage like advice.
If the lifters don’t pass the razor blade test, buy a cam and lifters as a set…