TR2/3/3A Steel vs Copper fig of 8's

[TR3driver]

Hi Randall,
I was just curious about how exactly you went about installing wire around the cylinders. What kind of wire did you use (solid)? Did you go around once, twice, twist, overlap...? Please tell me why you did that, so I can get a clear picture in my head of what/why? I will be rebuilding my engine in the near future, and I purchased a new 87mm sleeve/cylinder kit from TRF, so am trying to discern whether or not I should do what you did. Speaking of pictures, do you have any pictures of the wire installation?

The wire I used was bare unhardened (aka soft temper) solid copper 26 AWG. Think I got it from MMC https://www.mcmaster.com/?m=true#8873k24/=wk246p but not certain after all these years. I put one loop around each cylinder, with a short overlap at the ends, laid it in place next to the regular fire ring (where one side of the copper cladding is crimped over the other side around each cylinder) and secured it in place with soft (electronic) solder. I've heard that superglue will work as well, but solder is what I used the first time and I decided to stick with it the second time as well. On the first gasket, I cleaned up the area (so the solder would stick) with a Scotch-Brite pad. On this one, I tried using Tarn-X instead. Worked slick, much less elbow grease required than the Scotch-Brite.




(I went back and fixed the solder to cover the wire after taking the photo, unfortunately I forgot to take another photo so you get to see my mistake )

The reason I did it is because the liners were too low on one side, which was leading to compression leaks past the head gasket. When I did it the first time, I was only hoping for a stop-gap measure, to keep the car on the road until I had time and money (and space) to fix it right. (Which of course would be to remove the engine, strip the block and take it to a machine shop to have the top surface skimmed.) But as it happened, I never did find that "round tuit" and my Rube Goldberg repair was still holding some 10 years later when the car got wrecked. Then, after driving my current "barn find" TR3 for about a bit over a year, I discovered that it was leaking compression as well. Popped the head off, and sure enough, the liners were way low on one side. So I did it again, and again it's been holding fine ever since. I even reused that head gasket (which is the one in the photos above) once after the exhaust valves started leaking.

So, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a matter of course. Best practice is still to have the block machined to get the liner protrusion within spec (preferably on the high side of the range in the manual IMO). But, as a bodge, I'd have to say it has worked out very well for me.