Engine – Day 13

Getting the final crank install items done today has proven a painful nightmare.

I have tried 5 times to get the timing gear hot enough to go over the woodruff get and I have 5 times.

The first time I tried using propane to heat the gear up (in my vise) but it just would not expand enough no matter the amount of heat.

Then I tried a variation of that with the gear on a brick I often use for heating things and that still failed.

Then I tried 3 times using the stove top method of heating up the gears in oil and all that resulted in was a damaged bearing, and ultimately failure to ever fully seat the gear.

The 2019 crank made with all new parts went together so easy and that was just using the torch heat method.

I’d have tried a small direct heating on a electric source but I don’t have one of those.

Now the new gear is also damaged and I assume that happened when I thought it was cooled down enough and moved it. I had removed my gloves and when I pick it up, it burned my fingers and I dropped it and it fell to the concrete.

I tried to file the damage smooth but I don’t think it is worth saving.

The damn distributor gear looks like it may be damaged… and I literally just opened it up out of the original packaging and placed it in the oil. I have absolutely no idea how it got scratched up already.

So.

I’m at a loss now and very frustrated and angry as this crank has just had one problem after another.

I pulled out Murbella’s original crank and removed the gears and ultrasonic cleaned them. The distributor gear is ok but the timing gear shows signs of wear, which I’d expect after 41 years.

I need to go through my other old parts I’ve removed and see if any of the gears are in good enough shape to reuse.

I also need to concentrate on some other parts of the car since this whole 2020 project is massive and I’ve wasted too much time on the engine rebuild. I’ve got suspension parts to restore and I should probably get focused on those for awhile since I can’t do anything with the engine anyway since the heads likely won’t be back from the rebuilder until sometime in August.