Morris Minor Owners Club

I have a day off work today and just a few jobs to do before I can put the engine back in. Was hoping to have it back in the engine bay by lunchtime.

I am replacing the water pump but on fitting the new part I find the impellor is too long and it doesn't fit. Seems I have a crossover 1098 that uses the short impellor pump, at least according to Bully.

I wanted to put a new thermostat in but the thermostat housing refuses to budge. Its hanging on there like it has been welded on.

I refitted the clutch but the bearing thrust plate is not level. Should it be? I've not had cause to remove the assembly before so I haven't seen what it looks like before being messed with - remember I had to replace the thrust plate after it came off during engine removal. It looks like this, all wonky:

[frame][/frame]

Is that because I haven't put it back together correctly or can it look like that?? It was level before I started tightening up the bolts. There was nothing in the manual about any particular order for doing up the bolts but I did opposites and worked my way round and tightened by half a turn only before moving to the next one.

So looks like I'm going to have to buy a new clutch assembly for peace of mind and exchange the water pump. So instead of putting the engine in I'm off to Evesham to visit Bully in order to have the parts for the weekend.

Best laid plans and all that....

Was the clutch OK before you bolted it onto the flywheel?
What steering wheel have you got?

The "bearing thrust plate" should be parallel to the outer face of the clutch ass'y.
If the clutch was OK before you removed it, it sounds like you either do not have the clutch disc centered, or it's upside down.

Wonky thrust bearing is a bad thing.
The only problem that clutch plate could cause 9regarding thrust bearing) is if the clamped part of the disk is not an even thickness. This could be because it is not sitting square (i.e. not sitting flat on flywheel) or the disk is faulty.

If the disk sits nice and flat on the flywheel and even thickness, then the problem has to be somewhere in the cover assembly. I've only seen this once before where one of the 3 the pivot screws are coming undone - this shouldn't happen just by taking it off and refitting.

The Minor clutch cover should be clamped down evenly, but is fairly tolerant to this and your descriptions of assembly procedure sounds just right. [ On some modern cars the clutch cover is so thin it will distort when doing it up ! The thin ones need to be loaded in the middle before the bolts are done up - thank goodness the Minor is olde-worlde!]

If the problem has only come about from having the thrust plate come off and be refitted, then best chances are that the problem lies just here and not in the rest of the assembly, so it should be fixable... fingers crossed!

mike.perry wrote:Was the clutch OK before you bolted it onto the flywheel?

Yes

What steering wheel have you got?

This one:[frame][/frame]

I don't know if it was ok before I removed the engine as per previous thread - I found one of the retaining springs in the bellhousing after I took the engine out. I probably dislodged it but I didn't think I had snagged when pulling the engine. I got the spring back on again and it all looked ok before bolting on. I used a clutch alignment tool and the clutch plate was the right way round. It may be that I just bolted things up unevenly because as I took it off it aligned itself straight again. I should perhaps have tried it again but not wanting to take any chances I bought a new one anyway and it bolted on fine. I also exchanged the waterpump for the short impellor variety and now have that bolted on too. Just got to find some way of releasing the thermostat housing now. I may have to resort to extracting the studs or take a blowtorch to it because it is stuck fast.

Onwards and upwards. If the weather is fine tomorrow I may just get the engine back in.

Yes use a blowtorch, but you may have to smash it. When refitting run a drill bit down the holes to open them up slightly and smear the studs with copper slip,or just grease will do.