HOOD UP

 It was raining yesterday so I tried putting the old hood on the car. It fit fine however I think the hood was made with the frame reversed. Anyway it worked and was fun trying to get in and out with the hood up. I'll have to make a video of that.

I'll have problems finding a trim shop that can make a new one and re-cover the side curtains.

IT'S RUNNING

 Lit a fire yesterday. Great oil pressure but the solid copper head gasket leaked in several spots. I changed out the gasket for a stock one today and all is well. Drove it for a few miles and oil pressure never dropped below 30#; at 40MPH the pressure is 45#. 

I'm a happy camper!! Just need to learn how to drive it now.

edit 12/4/21:  Drove it 20+ miles today. At the end the oil was 15# at idle and 35# at 40 MPH with 10W30 break in oil. I think I've nailed it.

edit2 (12/7/21): I now have 100  miles on it. Coil issues and burned points. Replaced coil with one with built in resistor and new points; perfect running the last two days. Oil pressure holding strong.

ENGINE ALL BOLTED UP

I got some Permatex Copper gasket spray today and mounted the head. That finished up the engine. I thought. I still had to wire the flywheel bolts so with the engine hanging on the hoist I did that. Then I remembered that I had no wired the main bearing bolts!! The day before I mounted the pulley and realized I had not put the oil slinger on the crank so off with the pan put on the slinger. Today off with the pan wire the main crank bolts. FINALLY it's all done and the engine is in!!

ENGINE BUILD

Scroll down to see the problems and fixes that were done.

The cam, crank and timing chain are now in and feel good. I purchased new con rods from the UK that have shell bearings rather than Babbit. These can take higher RPM and will last longer. More to follow.

Valves are now in. I use 3 wrenches 18mm, 17mm and 10mm and the rod to go through the lifter to hold for tightening. The 18mm has been thinned down to fit the narrow flats on the lifter.

THE BOOBOO

 As hard as you try a booboo can creep in. I was making the last cut on the last bore with the line bore machine. I needed to take out .006" on the diameter to finish the job and I moved the cutter out .006" instead of .003". So the rear bearing is 006" too big in diameter.

After spending several days kicking myself and thinking of ways to fix it the light bulb flickered on. I'll just machine a sleeve of the proper ID and OD to fit the oversize bore!! This is no different than how the can ran to start with. I had a nice piece of  Meehanite iron which is a fine grade of iron and made the sleeve.

It's now in place and the oil holes were then easily drilled. Booboo now fixed. Maybe I should have done this for all of them.

INSTALLING THE CAM BEARINGS

I bought the cam bearings from Small Ford Parts in England. The first problem was what diameter the block has to bored to accept the bearing shells. Small Ford gave me the OD dimension of the shell so I machined a test piece and pressed the shell in. Measuring the ID of the shell I found the ID to be beyond the Ford wear limit for the cam bearings. 

I then contacted a shop in the UK that specializes in Ford side valve engines (  https://www.facebook.com/pg/FordSidevalveEngineServices/posts/ ). They gave a smaller dimension so I made another test piece and found it was too large too. I picked 1.664" as my bore size and shaved .003" off each side of the bearing shell so as to reduce the ID by .002". This would allow me to scrape the installed bearing shell to the correct ID and eliminate the high spots in the shells (poor quality parts).

Here is the shell being pulled in. I machined a plug with a step so that it just fits into the shell and catches the edge. A 3/8" threaded rod screws into the plug and sticks outside the engine plate. A nut draws the shell into place.

 

FINALLY THE ENGINE WORK IS PROGRESSING

 The problem is that my oil pressure with a hot engine at idle was near zero and at speed was only 20 PSI. The cam bores in the block were beyond the Ford wear limit so my oil pressure was being lost at the cam. Oil goes from the pump to the cam and from there to the main bearings and then to the rod bearings. I have no idea how much, if any,  was reaching the rod bearings. The For 100E engine has cam shell bearings and uses the same size cam as the 93E engine in the Morgan.

 I took the block to a shop in April to  have it line bored so I could install 100E cam bearings. The shop did make the end plates and two bushings to support the cutter shaft in the last 2 months. I finally went and picked it up and brought it to my shop to finish the job. I was very fortunate to be able to borrow a portable line boring device and finished the cuts myself.

This machine clamps to the end plate that supports the cutter bar. The spindle is driven by a drill motor. The one shown ran too fast so I borrowed a variable speed drill to get the RPM down to about 150. This device has a lead screw that is connected to the cutter bar and advances it at .005" per revolution of the cutter bar. The cutter bar has to be supported with bushings on each side of the bearing being cut. So for the #1 bearing you have to have a bushing in the end plate on the front of the block an a bronze bushing in the #2 bearing location. To cut #2 a bushing is needed at #1 and #3 bearing. For #3 a bushing at #2 bearing and the rear end plate.

Here is a better photo of the machine.

Look closely at this photo to see the cutter bar going through the block.

The cutter bar. This end attaches to the boring machine with a set screw.

 

The cutter has a locking set screw and a height adjusting screw underneath. I made a V block to measure  the cutter height above the bar surface. The dial indicator is first zeroed to the bar surface. Simple math tells me what the cut diameter will be (if I'm paying attention).

The cutter.

DOORS

 I finished the interior by installing the door coverings and door latches. On one door the screw holes were all stripped out or had broken off screws in the hole. I fixed this by using a Bung cutter to cut some 3/8" dia. plugs and I drilled the old holes and filled with the bungs. I first made a template of there the holes were and then shifted the latch down about 1/8" or so and drilled new screw holes. This worked well.

INTERIOR

 Finally, after 4 months wait I was able to pick up the seats and door coverings. 300 bucks was a very good price I think. The seat squab will hinge at the front to allow the set base be a storage box.

NICKEL PLATING

 I wanted to nickel plate the steering wheel nut so I did some research and found it is dead simple. It requires white vinegar, salt, a 4 volt 1 amp power supply and some nickel strips available from:...you guessed it Amazon!! If interested go to youtube and have a look at "nickle plating". 

STEERING WHEEL HUB

 The hub on the original steering wheel is a zinc casting and it had started de laminating badly. 

Among all the parts I got was a machined hub to accept a modern style wheel. I decided to take this and modify it by adding a lid and milling slots to fit the spokes of the original wheel. Some tricky work but it came out very nice.

Doing this required removing the zinc from the wheel hub; not an easy task.

Machining the slots in the hub. Did the same for the lid and some filing to match them up.

I had to machine a fake nut that would hold the wheel to the steering shaft. I plan to nickle plate it next. The finished product came out nice I think.

REGISTRATION PLATE, LUGGAGE RACK

 Still haven't gotten the engine back yet so other project move on. I have renewed the registration plate and I had a new wheel cover made by a friend; also installed the luggage rack. I bought some oval head screws but found they stuck up too high due to the angle of the chamfer. I put them into the lathe and made appropriate cuts to change the angle. Better fit now.

The car had been registered by the previous owner as a car to avoid the helmet laws. I was unable to change that when I registered it. I'll have to live with the HUGE tag. The front plate is in progress.

PROPSHAFT INSTALLED

I installed the shaft and gearbox yesterday. I used this bicycle inner tube to go over the input gear and a sleeve glued to the propshaft. This was a perfect fit.  The RTV got smoothed out more before it was bolted up.

PROPSHAFT FINISHED

The new propshaft is finished now. I had to have the shaft straightened as it cam in with a bow; was replaced but the new one was bowed too. Anyway the clutch splines are cut as well s the keyways and the snap ring groove to contain the bearing. 

 

The support bearing is 7/8" x 2" and the torque tube is 2.375 ID nominal so a sleeve is required.

The gearbox input shaft or constant mesh gear leaks down the keyways and drips into the torque tube. That oil can pass forward and end up in the clutch disk. See my previous post to prevent this. It didn't work. I have been advised to get a short length of bicycle inner tube to fit the gearbox input and to make a sleeve to Loctite onto the prop shaft to accept the forward end of the rubber tube. This looks like a great solution.

This photo shows the torque tube flange to the right with the propshaft sticking out to the left. The gear box is removed. When installing the gearbox I have the rubber sleeve rolled over on the  input shaft. I slid the propshaft into the input shaft and rolled the rubber sleeve over onto the alum. piece to make the seal.

I will follow up with how this works out.

 

new propshaft

 When driving I got a vibration at about 45mph. It has to be the dreaded propshaft whip that is so common with the F type Morgan. My choice is to make a new shaft from 7/8" dia. 4340 steel. The bar should come in by the end of this week so today I made a test spline to be sure I could do it; never done one before. It came out just great, maybe a bit too tight so I'll add a couple thou. of slop in the real shaft.

The Bulletin has several articles on the subject. I'll add a support bearing part way up from the rear but not at mid point of the shaft. Some of the articles talk about using 2 or even 3 support bearings but I believe one is enough. One works fine with the twin car 2 piece shaft and it has worked with my JZR also. The idea is to break up the harmonic frequency of the shaft and raise the critical speed of the shaft.

More to come on this as it progresses.

CRANK SHAFT AND NEW RODS

I ordered new con rods from Small Ford Spares. They have redone the rods that now have studs and nuts rather than the bolts that strip out. With the shell bearings I should be able to take the higher compression that I'm getting with the Aquaplane head. The crank had to be ground down about .005" to fit the rod big ends and the job came out just perfect.

Now I am waiting for the crank case that is having E100 cam bearing shells installed. More on that later as the shells don't fit right.

 

NEW DRUM/SPROCKET

 The rear drum/sprocket had many chipped and broken teeth. A new batch has become available through the MogSpares group so I got one while they were available. It arrived in 3 days and cost $253.00; a bit pricey but worth doing since I plan to do a lot of driving in this car. I may also get a new set of close ratio gear before it is all over.

UPDATE ISSUES- paint and engine

 The paint job had two bright spots show up on the rear body. I sanded too deep. It has taken quite a while what with catching Covid and cold weather but it is finally repainted and all looks great. More buffing to do to finish it up. The second photo looks bright but that is just the lighting in the shop. Down by the door it matches.

Next, I have not been happy with the engine. Low oil pressure, over heating, high compression. So the engine is out again and I will have cam bearings installed, hone the cylinders for more clearance and install new rods with shell bearings to better deal with the high compression head. I'm really glad I did this because I found there was some grit in the oil that did some minor damage but it was caught in time. This should all add up to a good running reliable engine that I can drive with confidence.