Timing Cover Leak

[mobylette]

Plenty of room on mine..

[svenedin]

Thank you for taking the trouble to take a photograph of your installation. Marvellous!

Stephen

[svenedin]

I am just about to start the installation of the damper pulley and quite a lot of others jobs whilst the front is off the car and the access is so easy.

There is still a coolant leak as my diagnosis drip tray shows. I think this is as simple as a leak from the bottom hose to the radiator as it is definitely wet there. I have some replacement hoses in stock so this is a trivial issue.

Whilst I am in the engine bay I am going to:

1) Swap over the starter motor and dynamo for refurbished units. The old units are still functional but overdue overhaul. When done they become the good spares. I actually have 3x dynamos and 4x starter motors but only one pair in tip top order.
2) Fit the damper pulley AND the refurbished timing chain cover with new gasket and front crank seal.
3) Swap the manifold for one I have refurbished and painted in VHT paint.
4) Swap the rocker cover for one I refurbished and which has a breather to create a 2x breather engine.
5) Swap tappet chest covers for refurbished ones including the cleaned out oil separator. New gaskets and cup washer seals.
6) Consider doing the engine mounting rubber blocks if I don't think it's too difficult or dodgy with the sump supported with wood and a jack underneath.
7) New water pump, refurbished water pump pulley, fan blades.
8 ) New radiator hoses.

Should keep me busy!

All of this is to get the car fit for Minors on Tour 2024 to Holland in May.

Stephen

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[kevin s]

I may be getting mixed up but I seem to remember the damped pulley needing a longer bolt, I ended up cutting the threaded part of the starter dog off and welding it to the new bolt. (still fitted fine).

The other thing was couldn't use the flat ring spanner I had to tighten the bolt up becasue of the dish in the damped pulley, ended up making a deep socket by cutting a normal socket in half and welding a piece of tube in.

[svenedin]

I may be getting mixed up but I seem to remember the damped pulley needing a longer bolt, I ended up cutting the threaded part of the starter dog off and welding it to the new bolt. (still fitted fine).

The other thing was couldn't use the flat ring spanner I had to tighten the bolt up becasue of the dish in the damped pulley, ended up making a deep socket by cutting a normal socket in half and welding a piece of tube in.

Thanks for the tips.

[svenedin]

All has not gone to plan and yet again it seems I have been an idiot.

Somehow whilst tightening everything back up I have managed to strip the thread in the front plate of one of the timing cover 1/4" set screws. I really don't know how I did this because I was not using excessive force to tighten up. I realised very soon that thread had gone and the remains of the thread came out with the set screw. I wonder whether it had been damaged already but I do not know.

Anyway, the question is what do I do now? Could it be repaired with a helicoil? I have never used a Helicoil and the front plate is rather thin. Isn't the front plate too thin there? If it worked would it leak oil anyway?

I could actually raid a front plate from one of the scrap engines I have but I am not not entirely sure how to get the front plate off my engine with the engine in the car....It looks like I could support the sump with some wood and support the engine on a trolley jack. Then undo the engine support towers and then somehow free the front plate from the towers. Then removing the front plate looks straightforward.

Best Wishes,

Stephen

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[Bill_qaz]

Drill and tap to next size up, possibly metric so you don't have to drill too big. One metric bolt will not be noticeable. Or 5/16 if you don't want metric. Drill the cover to suit. Paint mark the location so you know position for any future dismantle refit.

[svenedin]

Drill and tap to next size up, possibly metric so you don't have to drill too big. One metric bolt will not be noticeable. Or 5/16 if you don't want metric. Drill the cover to suit. Paint mark the location so you know position for any future dismantle refit.

Thank you. Yes I am considering going up to 5/16" like the other set screws. This is one option and probably quite a good one because the bigger set screws used on the timing cover are 5/16". It seems such a pain to harvest a spare plate from one of my scrap engines just for the sake of a stripped thread but being me I might actually do that. It would slow down the reassembly of the car a lot though as I'd have to de-rust and paint the spare plate. That would take me weeks.

The idea of painting the head of the odd one out bolt and the timing cover next to it is an excellent idea because (see below) that 5/16 thread bolt with have to be shorter than the other 5/16 thread bolts used in the timing cover. Due to the location of the damaged hole if one of the other bolts was placed in that hole it would foul the sump before it tightened on the timing chain cover.

Here is the stripped thread grrr:

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[philthehill]

Bad luck.
I would re-tap the holes to 5/16" x 24 TPI UNF.
You will require a 6.9mm dia to drill the tapping hole and a 8mm drill for the clearance holes in the timing chain cover.

[svenedin]

Thanks Phil, Already done

I've drilled and tapped the stripped thread hole for a 5/16" 24 tpi bolt. This will work but it does set a bit of a trap for the future because the other bolts in the timing cover that have 5/16" thread (1/2" heads) go into the block and are longer (5/8") than the 1/4" bolts (3/8") which just go through the front plate. If one of these longer bolts was used in the newly tapped hole it will go through the front plate and hit the sump I think. I will check tomorrow and if necessary I'll have to cut a bolt down in length. The idea of marking this odd one out bolt with paint on the head and a paint mark on the timing cover next to it is a good one from Bill-gaz.

I just checked and a 5/16" thread x 5/8" length bolt in the re-tapped hole will hit the sump before it has tightened on the timing chain cover. The 1/4" bolts are only 3/8" in length. The lazy way would be to use an extra washer or two. At least I could put the car back together again and have a functioning car quickly this way.

Not happy about it at all but these things happen I suppose, especially with a moron like me with a spanner in his hand. This will really bother me until I have replaced the front plate and put everything back as it should be. One stripped thread has caused an enormous amount of work.


Stephen

[philthehill]

Even though you have replaced the 1/4" UNF bolt with a 5/16" UNF bolt you still need to keep the torque to 6 lbf ft.
Just shorten the 5/16" UNF bolts to suit and do not get hung up on the size and length of the bolt. These things happen and non standard solutions implemented.
There is no need to paint the bolt heads and timing chain cover as anyone worth their salt will recognise the size of the bolt and use a suitable spanner and tighten it to the required torque.

[svenedin]

Even though you have replaced the 1/4" UNF bolt with a 5/16" UNF bolt you still need to keep the torque to 6 lbf ft.
Just shorten the 5/16" UNF bolts to suit and do not get hung up on the size and length of the bolt. These things happen and non standard solutions implemented.
There is no need to paint the bolt heads and timing chain cover as anyone worth their salt will recognise the size of the bolt and use a suitable spanner and tighten it to the required torque.

I was only going to paint the one bolt because it has been shortened compared to the other bolts that size and nobody would know where it is supposed to go. If the normal length bolt is put in that hole it will hit the sump before it tightens on the cover.

I have PlusGas working on the old scrap engine. I have taken nearly everything off it to get the front plate off. The crankshaft pulley and camshaft sprocket are off, there are just a few bolts to undo to release the front cover but I was too tired and fed up.

Incidentally, when I took the timing cover off I found an awful lot of blue goo and some much older black goo. It took me ages to clean off the old gasket and goo. I suspect the timing cover has been a problem even before I owned the car and that is going back over 3 decades. It may have been overtightened a long time ago and there was a weakened thread just waiting for me to break it. I was only using a small ring spanner and it didn't seem tight at all to me. Maybe the thread broke when the bolt was undone. The engine front plate is not in great condition. There is pitting to the steel which I am sure contributes to the leaking problems. That is the other reason why I would like to change it for a better one in due course. I would have to do it with the engine in situ though and that sounds a bit dodgy. I know the engine mounts can be changed with the engine in situ (suitably supported) so I am thinking the front plate could be changed providing the crankshaft pulley and camshaft sprocket have been removed before the engine is loosened from its mounts. Anyway, that is a job to do in much warmer weather.

[svenedin]

I have been looking a some photographs that I took today.

I did not install the duplex chain. This was done by ESM. I don't have any instructions.

I did not disturb the chain or sprockets today. I just took off the crank pulley and the timing chain cover. I locked the flywheel with a flywheel locking tool before undoing the crank bolt (the engine is set at TDC).

Am I going totally crackers here or are sprockets installed incorrectly? I thought the timing marks were supposed to line up with each other. It seems to me that the camshaft sprocket is 180 degrees out. The timing on the crankshaft sprocket can be seen at roughly the 1 O'clock position but the timing mark on the camshaft pulley, rather than being lined opposite it seems to be also at the 1 O'clock position. Is this correct? Sorry surely if this is wrong the engine would not have been running for over a year since the timing chain was replaced. In other words, it can't be 180 degrees out but it looks like it is. I am puzzled.

Stephen

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[StillGotMy1stCar]

You’re at TDC on the exhaust stroke of piston number one, another complete rotation of the crank will line up the dots and put the number one piston at TDC compression stroke.

Regards John

[svenedin]

You’re at TDC on the exhaust stroke of piston number one, another complete rotation of the crank will line up the dots and put the number one piston at TDC compression stroke.

Regards John

Ah......Many thanks Jon!

I must have made an error because I had intended to set the engine at TDC compression. I judged that it was TDC compression by looking at the distributor rotor and seeing that it was next to lead 1 BUT the flywheel locking tool did not lock properly at first so there was some fiddling around and I must have gone round again without realising. It does not matter because all I wanted to do was make a timing mark on the new damped pulley when I finally get to install it. I will check again in the morning!

Stephen

[svenedin]

Had the car together again today and started the engine.

Now I find that the new pulley fouls the fan blade. I had hoped we could go out for a drive but that is not to be.

I see Minispares have a fan spacer, one is 4mm thick and the other is 12mm thick. I will have to measure and work out which one to use. 12mm might lead to problems with the fan hitting the radiator but 4mm seems a bit minimal on clearance. Perhaps 2x 4mm spacers is the answer.

There is no issue with the starter dog fouling the radiator.

No obvious leaks by the way but not a fair test as I had the engine running for a very short time.

I was very carefully tightening up the bolts on the timing cover. I do have 3x torque wrenches with different ranges but nothing that goes as low as 6 ft Lb.

Thank you all for your continued patience with me!

Stephen.

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[svenedin]

I also swapped over the dynamo and starter motor.

I have never serviced or changed the starter motor in my 35 year tenure of the car and I suspected it was the original. As you can see, the starter motor is marked 1969 which matches the car and I am pretty sure it is original. For those who rubbish the quality of Lucas electrical, I would say that is remarkable service! The dynamo however, has been changed several times but then the dynamo is always turning. I do of course still have the original dynamo as well and also original carburettor, distributor, wiper motor etc.

Both parts will now be refurbished.


Stephen

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[svenedin]

I am waiting for a fan spacer to arrive in the post. Probably it won't be here until Monday.

After the stripped thread utter fiasco (which at the time annoyed me so much I would have left the car in bits for all eternity but I quite quickly retuned to rationality) I looked for a reasonably priced torque wrench for small torques. I have looked previously and have only found rather expensive professional tools. I only wanted something suitable for occasional use. I found this "Amazon Basics" torque wrench. It is 1/4" drive with a range of 35-200 inch-Lb so it is perfect for jobs such as the 1/4" bolts on the timing cover (72 inch Lb; 6 ft Lb) or indeed the 3/8" bolts (168 inch Lb; 14 ft Lb). It cost £22.75. Seems good enough to me! Now I have 3 torque wrenches which covers the whole range of torques found on the car.

As is so often the case, I had everything back together and nothing had gone wrong until I realised I had left out the oil thrower. I had to take everything apart again, put back the oil thrower and then I stripped the thread. Tired, not paying enough attention and rushing. I should know better.

Picture showing how I have marked the cut down bolt that must be in only one place on the timing cover since I had to make a modification after stripping a thread.

Another picture shows the timing chain cover with a lot of blue goo and black goo suggesting it has been bodged repeatedly over the years.

Stephen

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[philthehill]

Did you put the oil thrower plate the right way round?
The stamped 'F' should face forwards.

[svenedin]

Did you put the oil thrower plate the right way round?
The stamped 'F' should face forwards.

I just laughed at that because actually I did put it the right way around! Thank you for reminding me. I did find the "F" for front on the oil thrower. Wouldn't that be fun if I hadn't!!! All apart again for the third time........

@Phillthehill As the fan blade is "just" touching the crank pulley now do you think the 4mm fan spacer is going to be enough? Isn't that a bit of a narrow clearance? I am just wondering whether there are any reasons why with that clearance there could be an unexpected collision of fan and pulley at a later date.

Stephen