Been a while but today got some time in on this little green disaster zone. At present the car is all bundled up like a festive gift in a lovely blue tarpaulin to keep it safe and dry and efforts so far to un-seize the engine have been utterly in vain. So it was determined that today we'd see if it was the pistons, camshaft or crankshaft that was seized or a combination of all three.
Ordinarily for a first-time job like this I'd take a photo-diary of what was done but with the components being rather slimy-oily, using a camera wasn't a particularly good idea. Suffice to say the whole job was relatively easy, the only slightly more involved part being removing the woodruff key from the washer on the camshaft and then not losing the woodruff key. Everything was carefully wiped free of oily gunge with the exception of camshaft and crankshaft which I don't want to flash-rust as I'm not sure how long it'll be before I put this all together again. The other thing to be sure of is that everything was put away in order, with labels, so I don't lose anything, particularly vital for this sort of job.
With the block upside-down it was easy to unfasten the pistons first, this did drop the liners out of the block which I'm told isn't ideal but also that it's not the end of the world. I was expecting the liners to have some resistance to coming out but they didn't, they were really easy to remove. The pistons are really firmly stuck too so they'll be getting a bath in hot engine oil as a last ditch attempt to free them, there was no way these were coming out in situ.
The rest of the internals were carefully removed and set aside, all the various bolts that go in the block were put back in their respective holes so I don't lose them and things like the pushrods and head bolts were stored in some labelled cardboard for the same reason.
With the block now free of everything I could see quite a lot of orange gunge in the water jacket which can't have helped with historic issues this little engine has had. It also means getting a new radiator or refurbishing my existing one is a must, if this is what's in the engine there's going to be more of it throughout the coolant system and that all needs cleaning out.
The block and sump were pressure washed to get the worst of the gunk out, they'll get a deeper clean before the rebuild.
The good thing is that most items inside the engine are in good order. The piston bearing shells look re-usable and if the liners and pistons can be persuaded to part company there's a chance they will just need a clean/hone and new piston rings before going back in the car. The paper gasket under the liners will need replacing. Crankshaft and camshaft are both good too, neither showing obvious signs of scoring or excessive wear.
The one item that showed wear were the main bearings, some of which are badly scored, so I'll need a full set of those.
I'll get some snaps of the other bits and pieces that were done at a later date. The oil pick up/strainer is now lovely and clean after being de-gunged and the sump looks to be in pretty good order and just needs an exterior repaint. Overall I'm quite happy with this. Parts for the engine appear to be quite cheap and with it being so small and easy to work on it shouldn't cost much in time or money to get it all back together and functional again.
I just need to find a new set of main bearing shells, paper gasket for under the liners, a set of piston rings and pay a company to check the shafts and hone/clean the liners if we can get the pistons out of them and get the block properly cleaned before rebuilding it all. I'll also need a new head gasket, I put the cart before the horse and rebuilt and refitted the head not long after getting the car back from Wales without un-seizing the pistons, silly me.
some pics attached from Aregentine
