tosoutherncars
Jedi Knight
Offline
Hi all,
I posted in the Spridget section, but since it's a Spitfire engine I thought this might be of interest over here...
I blew my head gasket (between pistons 3 and 4) on Friday (rather spectacularly - car lost all power, compression measured at 150 / 150 / 20 / 20.) I'm refreshing things as I R&R. Here's the list...
- Head milled .100" to raise compression ratio (it's the low-comp NA head, used with dished pistons)
- mild homebrew port job (intake runners only, Dremel and sandpaper cartridges)
- Valves cleaned and lapped
- Viton valve stem seals installed (on both intake and exhaust)
- new water pump
- mechanical fan delete (inefficient, heavy, broken clutch currently ziptied together)
- electric fan with automatic controller
- Payen head gasket and all ancilliary gaskets
- 165 deg. thermostat
FWIW, the Payen gasket set looks MUCH better than the one I took out (Felpro, maybe?) It is rubberized, has copper o-rings around each water jacket hole, and the siamesed rings (for the later, recessed blocks) are attached to each other (1&2, 3&4). The cheaper HG had four seperate rings, and of course it blew out between 3 and 4 where there is no 'meat' to the gasket.
Hopefully I can get it back on the road in a week, we'll see how long the machine shop takes. Funny story, I told them I wanted "a tenth of an inch" off. "That's too much, you mean ten thou" said the owner. "No, really... a tenth" said I. Had to show them the low-comp head before they would agree to do it.
My sorta-local Moss distributor (Pièces Robert in Montreal) was able to supply a controller / relay for the electric fan (ebay). A little pricey ($45) but it came with an inductive pickup that sits between the rad fins. I would be interested to know if I could use the temp sensor that is already installed in the rad... do these work on resistance? If I put them in boiling water and measured resistance across both of them, would similar readings mean I could use the stock sensor?
Pics... starting the porting.
https://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a126/tosoutherncars/Midget/headporting007.jpg
New electric fan
https://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a126/tosoutherncars/Midget/June23003.jpg
I posted in the Spridget section, but since it's a Spitfire engine I thought this might be of interest over here...
I blew my head gasket (between pistons 3 and 4) on Friday (rather spectacularly - car lost all power, compression measured at 150 / 150 / 20 / 20.) I'm refreshing things as I R&R. Here's the list...
- Head milled .100" to raise compression ratio (it's the low-comp NA head, used with dished pistons)
- mild homebrew port job (intake runners only, Dremel and sandpaper cartridges)
- Valves cleaned and lapped
- Viton valve stem seals installed (on both intake and exhaust)
- new water pump
- mechanical fan delete (inefficient, heavy, broken clutch currently ziptied together)
- electric fan with automatic controller
- Payen head gasket and all ancilliary gaskets
- 165 deg. thermostat
FWIW, the Payen gasket set looks MUCH better than the one I took out (Felpro, maybe?) It is rubberized, has copper o-rings around each water jacket hole, and the siamesed rings (for the later, recessed blocks) are attached to each other (1&2, 3&4). The cheaper HG had four seperate rings, and of course it blew out between 3 and 4 where there is no 'meat' to the gasket.
Hopefully I can get it back on the road in a week, we'll see how long the machine shop takes. Funny story, I told them I wanted "a tenth of an inch" off. "That's too much, you mean ten thou" said the owner. "No, really... a tenth" said I. Had to show them the low-comp head before they would agree to do it.
My sorta-local Moss distributor (Pièces Robert in Montreal) was able to supply a controller / relay for the electric fan (ebay). A little pricey ($45) but it came with an inductive pickup that sits between the rad fins. I would be interested to know if I could use the temp sensor that is already installed in the rad... do these work on resistance? If I put them in boiling water and measured resistance across both of them, would similar readings mean I could use the stock sensor?
Pics... starting the porting.
https://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a126/tosoutherncars/Midget/headporting007.jpg
New electric fan
https://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a126/tosoutherncars/Midget/June23003.jpg