Wheelspin July 2012 - Sporting Car Club of SA

The wedding was on Saturday the 26th of March 2011. The
Mustang was finished being assembled the previous weekend.
Still a lot to do during the week to get it wedding ready! Leanne
and I took the car out on the Thursday before the wedding to
Hahndorf. It rained all of the way there and back. We suspected
that it was burning a lot of oil but we needed to be at the wedding
on Saturday.
The Wedding Ceremony was held at the Botanic Gardens at Mt.
Lofty. The Mustang took the groomsmen to the ceremony, the
groom travelled up in a 1989 Porsche Speedster. The bride and
her accompaniment arrived in a pair of 1970’s Minis.
The comment from the driver of the Porsche was that the Mustang
was blowing a fair bit of smoke. We made it back to the reception
and took the Mustang home. Under the bonnet everything looked
ok the breather was hooked up properly, the vacuum lines all in
place. Much head scratching?
A few weeks later, our eldest son Chris was racing his Group N
Mini at Mallala at the Easter Nationals. We took the Mustang to
Mallala to get some miles on it to see if we could bed in the rings
and stop it from smoking. Marion to Mallala and return, 40 litres
of petrol and 2 litres of oil, we may as well of bought a Zeta!
Only one way to fix this, pull the motor out and strip it down, this
is what we did. At first glance all looked good. The pistons and
bores looked ok with some funny marks at the top and bottom
of the stroke. All of the pistons had large carbon deposits on the
top of them. Some of the exhaust valves were not seating correctly
due to the carbon build-up in that small number of miles driven.
On closer inspection, the rings supplied by the machine shop
were too narrow for the ring grooves in the pistons that they had
supplied. This caused the rings to flutter and flex at the top and
bottom of each stroke, hence the marks! We noticed some
strange (for the mileage) wear marks on the main bearings. I
went back and complained to them. They said it was my fault for
not checking the parts and not checking their work. They supplied
new rings but refused to re-hone the bores or offer any
compensation. They advised just re-assemble it. It will be fine.
I took the block, crank, rods and Pistons to Chris Milton Engine
Developments. Sam was very helpful. He diagnosed some other
serious errors made in the machining process. The tunnel bore
thru the main bearings was out of tolerance, Pistons assembled
onto con-rods incorrectly, Bores at +20 not bored to specifically
suit the pistons.
I re-lapped the valves in the heads and checked them with
kerosene in a leak down test. (I still think that this is a more
thorough method than applying vacuum to the port).
Reassembly of the motor went smoothly. All measurements
checked, all surfaces and components cleaned and checked.
New rings, gaskets, bearings, the extra machining just an extra
$1000.00.
The installation of the motor back into the body turned out to be
tricky. The previous installation, went smoothly. This time no
such luck! Exhaust pipes fowling on the chassis rails and on the
steering box. Lift it out, Change the angle of approach. Still
fowling! Lift it out again. Same again. Eventually after what
should have been a few minutes dropping the motor in we
managed to have it sitting on its mounts waiting for bolts.
Simple assembly followed. Use up all of the parts, use up all of
the nuts bolts and washers when there are no parts left on the
bench you must be finished! Put fuel in the tank, connect the
battery and crank it over. Oil pressure showing on the gauge,
that’s a good thing, hook up the distributor and try to start it.
The engine fires but doesn’t want to keep running. Lots of black
smoke coming from the exhaust. We check the carburettor only
to find that fuel is running out of the float bowl straight into the
manifold. This should be easy to fix. A rebuild kit for the Holley
carby is installed. Apparently an easy job made more difficult
because the kit has 7 different gaskets to suit the different models
of carby! The gaskets all look the same so unknowingly we
installed the wrong gaskets only to find that the leaking in to the
manifold was now worse than ever.
This is now January 3rd and it looks like the Mustang isn’t going
to make it to Meeting On The Move on Friday. We made a
couple of phone calls and found a Holley Carby to borrow. The
borrowed item was a different model, hadn’t been on a car in
years but it did show some potential. Stripped threads on the
fuel inlets, more fuel leaking (good thing it’s cheap). Swap some
parts between the two carby’s and try again. This time, success!
The Mustang starts and runs. No black smoke, no blue smoke,
excellent oil pressure, no water leaks, even the troublesome
rear main seal isn’t leaking.
We drive around the block just to be sure that all is ok. We drive
as far as Henley Beach to Chris’s house. It runs fine the engine
temperature is good everything seems fine. The borrowed
carburettor is OK but not quite set correctly. On Wednesday we
took my carby to Allan at Auto Carburettor services on Norfolk
Rd at Marion. He did a quick fiddle, checked the unit over, put
in the right gaskets, he called me a goose for getting it all so
wrong!
On Thursday, Chris refitted the correct carby and drove the
Mustang in to Willshire Motor Trimmers as I had returned to
work after what seemed a very short Christmas New Year break.
No excuses now. We had to take the car to Meeting On The
Move.
Home from work on Thursday after work, who would have thought
that a car could get so dirty just sitting in the shed doing almost
nothing? A quick wash and a chamois over and it looks almost
presentable.
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