A Look Inside the Engine

Hello Everyone!

The front seal modification is finished.

Have a look.

The Blue stuff you see around the screw heads is Hylomar Universal Blue Sealant.




Perhaps I went a little overboard with the stuff but I'd rather have too much than not enough.

There is also a bead of the stuff under the mudshield.

Now I'm just waiting for the seal to arrive.

I thought I ordered it quit a while back but I guess I didn't. I ended up grabbing the wrong seal and ruined it.

As the good people at British Pacific said "Help is on the way." The new seal, plus a replacement for the ruined one, should be here next week.

I also opened up the engine in preparation of replacing the crankshaft rear oil seal.

My brother helped me flip the engine upside-down so it would be easier to remove the oil pan cover and the rear main bearing cap.

Now one would think that having sat for almost a year all the fluids would have drained out. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. As soon as we flipped it a lot of radiator fluid gushed out as well as the last of the oil. At least I had a lot of kitty litter!

There's the guts. Not too bad if I say so myself. Even my brother was surprised at how good the condition was.


We also checked for any slop in the connecting rod assemblies but found none.

The crank shaft next to the timing chain mechanism.








The section next to the the rear oil seal.

To the extreme left you can just see part of the rear main bearing cap.


Not sure what the numbers are for but I think they look to be '4 0 9'.

And here's the oil pump. This doesn't look too bad either and there wasn't anything stuck in the wire mesh.




Well, that's about it for now.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~

Bob IS my Uncle

Hello Everyone!

Well, as the title states - Bob IS my Uncle!!

In other words - today has been a great day!

Let's get to the Land Rover part of the day - I finished the front seal modification.

WOOWHO!!!!

How about some pictures...

The first few were taken a few days ago.

This is the inside of the timing chain cover showing where the outside mud shield is riveted to the cover.




The tail ends of the rivets are drilled off.

Outside view of the mud shield and rivets almost all the way off.







Just another view of the rivets before I pulled them out.

Note how grungy the shield and cover are.

















Now I can start the clean-up process and get ready for the 'modification'.

The rest of the pictures are from today.

Nice and pretty ain't it.

It took about an hour and a half to clean the gunk off but it was worth it.



I was a bit surprised the mud shield turned out so well.

The cover is so clean you can just about make out the numbers stamped in it. I don't think the stamp was hammered hard enough to leave a clean stamp though. I wanted to get a picture but it just wouldn't show up.

The first screw is in and the second tap is underway.

Before I forget; for the record I'm using a 6-32 NC tap.

And there you have it - all the screws are in and they work great.

I really don't know what I was worried about in regard to tapping the rivet holes. I had heard that the taps can bind and break off and I'd heard that you can screw the tap up by not getting it straight, but none of this happened.

It turned out that this was one of the easiest tasks I've done so far! I was expecting to use a lot of elbow grease with a few grunts thrown in but it wasn't necessary. It was fast and easy with very little effort. Each whole took less than 45 seconds to tap - I timed it!!

Man I can't believe I was sweating this project.

Now all I have to do is reassemble the sucker.

Hopefully Bob will be my uncle then as well.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~

Finally - an Update

Hello Everyone!

Yes - believe it or - here is an update!

Even though the house scraping and painting MUST come first, I've been able to do a few small projects in regard to Grover.

First item up isn't really a part of Grover but something for Grover.

For about as long as I've owned my Rover I've wanted a vintage Auto Association badge for the front grill. They always seem to go higher than I'd like to bid though.

Fortunately, a few weeks ago I found one that went cheap. It went cheap due to it's condition.

Not in the best shape is it?

The years for this one are from 1966-1967 so I'd still like to get one for 1963. I just found out they're readily available on eBay UK - perhaps I'll have to get one of my UK friends to bid on one for me.

Here I'm prepping it for restoration.

It wasn't all that hard to do. The worst part was waiting for the paint to dry due to the high humidity.

And here's the finished product.

Not too bad if I say so myself.







Okay, on to Grover.

Since the most I've been able to do is piddle with Grover I decided to start cleaning up a few nuts and bolts as well as a few small parts.

Here are a few pieces sitting in a vinegar bath.

I had never heard of using vinegar to clean off the rust, but several on the LRO mailing list swear by it so I tried it.

Here are the results.

The parts soaked for about three days and when finished I gave them a once over with steel wool. I was really surprised how well they cleaned up.

This is the next batch to soak.

This time, instead of using vinegar I used a commercial product called Evapo-Rust.

This stuff seemed rather interesting as well.

Here they are soaking.

This batch had to sit and soak a lot longer than expected. I injured some of the fingers on my left hand and didn't want to chance getting the chemical on cuts and abrasions.







Here are the parts after sitting for three days in the Evapo-Rust.

They are a bit darker than those soaked in vinegar but then again I didn't scrub them with steel wool either.

I had another Rover suggest a Molasses & water bath to remove rust; I'll try this method next.

Moving on to bigger items.

The next thing I wanted to tackle was replacing the front main oil seal. This required the removal of the timing chain cover on the front of the engine.

BTW - the next few photos were actually taken a couple weeks ago.

This isn't the best picture, but it's the only one I have showing how I secured the crankshaft flange (the one the flywheel attaches to) so I could remove the starter dog.

All I did was screw in two large bolts to catch on the engine mount.

I've had people tell me I'd need either an impact driver or large break-over bar with a large socket.

With the large socket and break-over bar I set off to remove the starter dog.

SWMBO, as well as my father, followed me out to the garage to watch while expressing their beliefs that I wouldn't be able to remove it.

With the break-over bar in hand and my feet braced I gave a massive yank; with that I about fell over backwards!!! The starter dog was not on near as tight as expected. I could probably of removed it with just a large socket wrench.

Anyway, here is the started dog and it's washer.








Now with the starter dog gone the next step would be removing the pulley behind it.






This wouldn't be as easy as the started dog either.

The only pulley pullers I had at the time were not big enough. In fact, one of them even bent under the pressure. This meant I'd have to buy a heftier pulley puller before I could continue.

Last Thursday I went out and bought an 8", 3-arm, 1 ton pulley puller.

With a few turns of the ratchet wrench the pulley popped out lickity split and Bob was my uncle.

Unfortunately I found a groove worn into the shaft. I knew it was a possibility that this would happen, due to a failed oil seal, but I was hoping it wouldn't be there.

So now I need to make a decision - repair the groove, use a speedi-sleeve to cover the area, or replace the pulley.


On the bright side I was happy to see that the timing chain innards appear to be in great shape.

See, not bad looking at all, at least to my untrained eye anyway.















Just another view.

Before I replace the cover I do want to make sure that nothing is broken or needs to be replaced. I'd also like to make sure it's in proper working order. This work I will NOT attempt to do myself; I'll enlist the help of someone who actually knows what they are doing.




The next step I'm planning on doing is a front seal modification as suggested by Alan Richer.

This is the the outward facing side of the timing chain cover.

The round, metal, doughnut thing is what will be modified.

Here is the inside of the cover with a better view of the round section to be modified.

Basically, those little rivets need to be drilled out. Once they're gone the holes need to be tapped from the front side. Doing this will enable the mud shield, that holds the oil seal in place, to be held in place by screws. This will make it easier to replace the oil seal in the future. In other words, I will not have to remove the cover from the engine, exposing the timing chain system, to replace an oil seal. Now why didn't they do this from the inception?!

I'm throwing this last picture in for the fun of it.

What I'm wanting you to see is just how thick the crud build up inside the water system is. First thing I thought of was the build up of plaque in blood arteries.

I would like to figure out how to clean this stuff out of the areas I can't reach.

Well, that's about it for now, time to go the my parents' house for our 4th of July get together.

Till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~