The Morbidmobile Blog

[827Roverman]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

Good news about the cam then! One less thing.

Regarding the speed reading, I have a turbo LH2.4 instrument cluster on it's way from Luke, apart from not fitting in a 740 dashboard (one thing crossed off, another to sort!) this should resolve the speed reading, do you think Dave?

The a/c or cooling otherwise is something for later, but if we can have A/C, that would be a big bonus for when we're motorhoming in the south of France, especially when trying to sleep with several bottles of wine on board which to be quite honest, is a very likely occurrence!

This morning I had a go at dismantling the Penta, you sure can tell it was a marine engine, lots of crusty bits - but it seems to have been well looked after as far as I can see. The crank pulley is definitely on there! The bolt is off but the pully not so much! I've soaked everything I can get to with WD40 and will try again.

Please excuse the mouldy, horrid, dirty porch. It used to have the ancient behemoth of an oil boiler in there which leaked water slowly, that has now been evicted (it put up a fight!) but I thought there was not much point in cleaning all the walls as I was likely to be flinging oil and rust etc around. At least it is dry in there now and is just big enough to have the engine on its stand and be able to get in and out, not a bad engine working room really - certainly better than under a gazebo in the garden.





The cam and tappets look good to me, no obvious wear marks or obvious damage - the same applies to the cam bearings. It seems to be a clean engine, at least internally! There isn't even any gunk on the inside of the rocker cover that I have seen on other engines.











The big moment, head off to see what the cylinders are like! The 1st photo here is before I touched anything, my impressions are:

-Head gasket looks good - not split, cracked or any obvious evidence of blowing
-Waterways look reassuringly good, I was concerned that as a marine engine these may be corroded, I can't now remember if the seller said it was run with a fresh water cooling system rather than raw, but the evidence so far suggests fresh
-Some dirt on the top of the pistons, IIRC when I got the engine it didn't have all 4 spark plugs in - so perhaps when it was stored some gack got in.
-Similar to above, cylinder 3 has a fair amount of surface corrosion where I guess the piston was resting.
-There isn't a wear lip at the top of the bore, there's a fair bit of coke/dirt but under that I can't feel anything obvious with my fingernail.

I did spray and wipe the bores gently with a clean rag and WD40, they came up quite well but I didn't take a photo, which was silly!





Cylinder 4


Cylinder 3


Cylinder 2


Cylinder 1


It's interesting the colour differences between the 1+2 and 3+4th cylinders, the engine was run on twin carbs so I wonder if one was running leaner/richer than the other judging by the soot build up on one pair of valves. The crud in the water jacket terminals came away nice and easily, so I'm not too worried about that..



I will keep disassembling, the oil filter assembly needs to come off - this has some sort of water separator thingy on it or perhaps a coolant oil cooler on there which I imagine is a marine specific thingy. The sump pan needs to come off and then I'll have to put my big boy pants on to get the crank and pistons out, this will be a pivotal moment as I don't yet know if it has the 9 or 13mm rods or which position the main thrust bearing is, I'm concerned it'll be 9mm and centre thrust, ideally of course it'd be 13mm and rear thrust but we will see!

Oh and I can't seem to get the cambelt tensioner off! It could be the rusted solid spring is holding it all on, so I may cut the spring to see if it'll budge. The bearing bolt is off and I can't see any other fixings.

I'm off to read up on cylinder bore conditions etc but I would appreciate opinions from the sages on here. Cylinder 4's exhaust flange will need repairing, but otherwise fingers crossed a bloody good clean and a hone will be all that is needed

A really good write up so far and I'm enjoying your post and pictures. David.

[TomSaintJames]

Originally Posted by 827Roverman

A really good write up so far and I'm enjoying your post and pictures. David.

Thanks Roverman, I am most definitely learning as I go and i'm not sure I would be able to do it at all without the help of the lovely people on here

No progress today i'm afraid, I was on a night shift last night so I am pooped! I do hope to do some shopping this evening, brake flexis, rear pads, gaskets etc. We'll see, the dogs are shouting at me that it's walkies time...

[360beast]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

Thanks Roverman, I am most definitely learning as I go and i'm not sure I would be able to do it at all without the help of the lovely people on here

No progress today i'm afraid, I was on a night shift last night so I am pooped! I do hope to do some shopping this evening, brake flexis, rear pads, gaskets etc. We'll see, the dogs are shouting at me that it's walkies time...

Lazy bugger, I've pulled the engine and gearbox for you, all you've got to do is rebuild an engine, service and reseal a gearbox, take a dashboard out, remove the engine wiring loom from the car and replace some rear flexis, should be done by now 😋

[loki_the_glt]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

I'm not sure Peter Egan can be credited with that definition. Have a read of this spoof version of Haynes definitions and it's in the second section, "Haynes Guide to Tools of the Trade" :

http://mez.co.uk/haynes.html

Scroll all the way to the bottom for the link to the Lucas Humour Page (spelled the American way "humor") and have a second laugh!

Peter Egan's column appeared in the 1980s IIRC so the material pre-dates t'internet; I have the article but there's no date on it.

As for the article on "Magic Smoke", this compound was also fitted to Maths co-processors in mid 1990 PCs, as I discovered when installing two such items onto identical motherboards: one of the notched sockets was installed 90degrees out of true and a £100 Intel 287 became a £100 piece of scrap silicon. More recently, model loco decoders have also been fitted with this technology and it still works. Apply 18v ac where there should be a 12v dc output and the magic smoke evaporates.

[loki_the_glt]

I've just done some further digging into the Peter Egan article; there's an advert for a Toyota RAV-4 with a web-site address and 1996 copyright so the article is mre recent than I had thought.

[Laird Scooby]

I suspect many of the Haynes "definitions" were created in the early 70s but modifed to include the spanner rating system that Haynes moved to when they "dumbed down" the manuals. Also that unless someone pipes up from some far-flung corner of the internet "It was me!", i doubt we'll ever know the true orginiator of them - they may have been a joint effort for all we know.

Also it's entirely possible if it was just one person, he/she may not even be with us these days, certainly the electrical page includes some references to things that weren't common by the 70s and certainly not by the 80s so again, who knows.

I just enjoy those pages for what they are - a harmless bit of fun-poking at theory Vs real life.

[TomSaintJames]

I had quite a few giggles when I read through the Hanyes spoof! Sometimes the instructions really are unachievable... But the manuals do make DIY stuff an awful lot easier.

So yesterday was a wash out, I got called in for emergency shift cover, thankfully just half a day (8am-2pm) but still, that was supposed to be my rest day after working Wednesday night (8pm-8am) and so I have done very little today in preperation for a 12hr shift tomorrow...

One thing I did do was a bit of shoppin this morning - Eurocarparts have a sale on which suits me just fine! Rear flexi's, rear pads, new slider pins, etch primer and stonechip paint purchased. I've also bought a wire wheel drill bit set and a spring tool for the handbrake shoes. I can collect the ECP lot on Tuesday and the others should arrive in the post soon, so Wednesday I plan to de-rust and paint the brake shields, then put the rear brakes back together with new pads and flexi's. Whilst the calipers are off i'll give them a quick brush over too, I thought about painting them - but I have more than enough other jobs to be getting on with! Saves me £20 too. Correct me if it is advisable to paint them though

[Laird Scooby]

Many people paint their calipers Tom, a good way to keep rust away from them but you need VHT paint as they tend to get a bit warm!

A lot depends on your preparation as to the final result but i'm guessing you know that by now!

[TomSaintJames]

Preparation is key, in life aswell as car stuff Dave, i well know! I'll look into it but may decide it isn't worth the time in the fave of everything else i need to get on with!

In other news, we've been struggling with what wheels to go for on the hearse. I iriginally thought a set of 16" 960 alloys would be smart. My concern being the 740 original 15" alloys would be out of proportion with the great big hearse body! Alas, it seems that most (if not all) 960 wheels are the FWD offset of ET43, the current steel wheels are ET45 so that would be pretty pointless!

In the end we went with the attached, i do think they look good on these cars and they are localish, reasonably priced and have 4 almost new tures (even if they are 'good' budgets). I'm collecting them Wednesday, which leaves me tomorrow to put the rear end all back together and paint the brake disc shields etc.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by TomSaintJames

Preparation is key, in life aswell as car stuff Dave, i well know! I'll look into it but may decide it isn't worth the time in the fave of everything else i need to get on with!

In other news, we've been struggling with what wheels to go for on the hearse. I iriginally thought a set of 16" 960 alloys would be smart. My concern being the 740 original 15" alloys would be out of proportion with the great big hearse body! Alas, it seems that most (if not all) 960 wheels are the FWD offset of ET43, the current steel wheels are ET45 so that would be pretty pointless!

In the end we went with the attached, i do think they look good on these cars and they are localish, reasonably priced and have 4 almost new tures (even if they are 'good' budgets). I'm collecting them Wednesday, which leaves me tomorrow to put the rear end all back together and paint the brake disc shields etc.

A set of 740GLE Rigels with 195/65/15 tyres - perfect!

You'll like the improvement in ride quality Tom! Also the tyres are a lot cheaper!