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!!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
