Evolution of the SLOroadster... 11 years in the making.

[Linda]

The motor REALLY smoked after that..

Linda

[SLOroadster]

Actually, the motor was still in the car when the shop burned to the ground. Sadly, the city condemned the rest of the area forcing everyone to find a new place to go. The buildings that remained were plowed down about 6 months after the fire.

So, I was now left with no help to build a motor, and a very sick motor. I managed to invade my friend Josh's garage (The guy who got me into roadsters in the first place.) to pull the motor. Once out I stated to tear it apart noting how things came apart, and how to put them back together. At that point I had never pulled a car motor fully apart, but I had pulled several aircraft engines apart when I was a kid. (I did odd jobs for our Airframe and Powerplant mechanic at the local airport) I pulled a Continental GO300 (pseudo rare motor I think only found in a Cessna 175, the type of airplane I grew up around.) I also got to pull a Pratt & Whitney R1340 9 cylinder radial (off a crop duster) apart. Much to my surprise, a U20 is far more simple than a 9 cyl radial.

Upon tear down, I discovered just how sick my motor was. It was really bad. 4 cracked pistons, and the front jackshaft bearing was about half what it should be. The jackshaft was ok oddly enough. The timing chains were also a bit longer than they should have been. The lower guide had also failed. The tensioners and upper guide however were still in usable shape so I reused them along with the gears.

At this point I took the whole pile of parts over to the guy who rebuilt the motor for my friend Josh. The block and the knife edged crank were magnafluxed, the rods refurbished and everything was balanced from the front pulley to the clutch pressure plate. That was the pulley, crank, rods, pistons, flywheel, and pressure plate. I'm pretty sure I had the crank gear on there as well. The block was already 0.040, so I had it bored out to 0.060 to go with the new set of pistons that had been sourced from Japan. I didn't have the $ to have someone else build the motor for me. I did have both the Bob Sharp Comp prep manual, and the Clymer shop manual, so I set about cleaning everything with acetone until it passed a white clove test (ok white rag test, but same difference.) I assembled everything dry so I could check the clearances, and after they measured out to spec, I pulled the bottom end back apart, cleaned everything and set about building the motor for real. While I had the head off, I figured that I should match the intake gasket to all the ports. I didn't get too crazy, but the ports did match the gasket. Who knows if it helped or hurt things.

I ended up missing Shasta '04, but I did the the motor back together, with all the timing marks lining up right where they should. The motor turned over without contacting anything, so I figured I should be good to go.

The hardest thing about building the motor was getting the gear that drives both the oil pump and the distributor clocked correctly. Right, about that. After tearing my hair out for 2 weeks straight with this, I finally got the car to run.

The good news was that it ran, and seemed to run really well. The bad news was that I couldn't go flog it. So, for the next 1000 miles I kept things below 4000 rpm. At about the 600 mile mark, the rings seated and it was a noticeable difference. The motor was crisp, tight and it wanted to go. It hadn't missed a beat so at Thanksgiving, I set off to my parents place to finish breaking in the motor. It was a 3 hr drive each way so I figured since it hadn't given me any issues I was good to go. I set out down highway 41 east and somewhere east of Atascadero, there was a stop sign. I had been cruising along in 5th and of course came to a stop. There was no traffic so I selected 1st and took off; except I didn't. I let the clutch out and it lurched and stalled. I pulled it out of 1st, clutch in, started the car and let the clutch out... lurch and stall again, but this time it wasn't even in gear. Great, I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the car is stuck in 5th gear What to do... Since I didn't have any other options (I couldn't even call for a tow truck since there was no phone coverage there.) I got out and just rocked the car back and forth. Eventually, it popped free. Off I went without another issue. On the return trip, the odometer rolled over 1000 miles so I put my foot in it down a back road that runs between highway 99 and I5 near Kettleman City. The car absolutely ripped. Just as I rolled into Paso Robles on highway 46, the motor revved unexpectedly like the clutch slipped. I thought to myself, that was odd, what was up with that? It told me the following morning on my way to work.

On my way to work the following morning, I jumped on the freeway and shifted to 5th, it started to pull, and then went neutral... Sweet, out of the frying pan and into the fire. 5th gear had just gone south.

It wasn't done yet, the following day, the water pump started to leak, the day after that, the starter called it quits and for the grand finale, I broke an axle leaving a stop light the following day. Right. Again, back to riding a bike. The car was parked and there it sat for the next several months. The black cloud of doom was back.

Will

[Roman]

Oh man, Will. Waited all this time for the next installment and now you are gonna make grown men cry with your sad tale.

[Roman]

Hey Will, did I drive you away from your own thread?

[SLOroadster]

Hey Will, did I drive you away from your own thread?

No, just been busy putting the car back together... again. It might drive tomorrow,It depends on my back (I tweaked it picking the transmission up last sunday.)

I got a first hand lesson from Dave Rebello on how to rebuild a roadster 5 spd last weekend. As it turned out, my thought that it was just a missing key-way ball under the spacer that sits behind 5th gear was not the only issue. As it turned out, the washer was chewed up, my 4 year old 5th gear was chewed up as was the cluster for it. The cluster was machined a little, 5th gear was cleaned up, the washer was cleaned up and I got the needed 0.008" of clearance needed for 5th gear. I also replaced the 1-2 shift fork, the 3-4 shift fork and the reverse idler gear. I'm trying to get everything sorted so I can make my next autoX on August 5th. Lots of stuff to get done.

Will