Beans.101 1970 mk1 Escort

[bean.101]

Project discussion above

This has been in storage but that has come to a end so it was time to dig it out of the shipping container its been sitting in. I've had this for about eight years. I bought off my brother, its dead in the reg so plan is to get some live plates back on it. It has a few spots of rust in the body and the engine dropped a exhaust valve.

 

So I pulled the short block out as the head had been pulled off years ago. Although it dropped a valve it hasn't done any major damage. Someone has done a sweet red paint job on the engine bay. I won't open up a can of worms by painting it at the moment. Just concentrating on just getting it up and running then focussing on the rust to get it back on the road.

[bean.101]

So I took the engine into work to strip and assess the damage. The cylinder head has been sitting around on the ground for a few years, so its pretty rusty. I have bought some molasses. It's pretty good for breaking down rust. We normally mix two of these 500g jars up with about 40 or so litres of water. The mix isn't that critical. I'll leave the head and rocker cover in the molasses solution for three or so days. The damage is pretty minimal. It's must of been idling when it dropped the valve. There's only a very small nic in the top of the bore and a small dent in the valve seat. 

[bean.101]

So I forgot to get a picture of the molasses. But here's a couple of pictures of the head once out. The molasses sort of just loosens the rust. Then you have to wire brush to get the rust off. 

I didn't put the block in what we call our hot tank as I haven't removed the cam bearing.. Our hot tank is only for ferrous metal. And the cam bearings would react with the acid. The cam bearings are in reasonable condition and this is build is on a budget. I run the tap through the head bolt threads and main threads. Removed all the gallery bungs and frost plugs. I found a decent build up of rust at the rear of the block that i chipped out with a screw driver through the rear frost plug hole. And also gave the block a good wire brushing. I gave all the machined surfaces a sand up with emery tape on a file.

[bean.101]

So I got the block into the boring bar. It's pretty straight forward boring a block. Doing a cylinder liner is a bit more involved as far as the boring bar is concerned. This block is at 30thou over or .75mm in metric. I have bought 40thou over or 1.mm pistons. It has a bit of wear. But hopefully it's should clean up once it's honed. This picture is of a test cut. So you dial the boring bar head into the bore. If you have a decent amount of wear it pays to slightly offset the bar towards the wear so you clean all going well at the next oversize.

So in this picture you can see the boring bar hasn't totally cleaned with this size cut. I have only set the bar at 81.90mm. So I have .1mm or 4thou to hone out to get to our finished size of 82mm. We generally like to leave this amount to hone to achieve good rk rvk this is the depth of hone pattern. I'll go into that a bit more once we get to honing it.

Once we've finished honing we normally go to the surface grinder. The top of the block is a little corroded so I'll probably take a few cuts to clean it up. 

 

So I've done a light cut to see how it looks

You can see it still needs more off it. In this case it's not a issue to take more off the deck. When you are dealing with a late model diesel or performance engines that have been set up with good tight clearances it pays to watch how much your removing as you may have to detop your pistons as they may start getting to close to the head once assembled. Also valve reliefs can also need deepening. But this is more so a issue in extreme cases. This good old xflow should be fine. But i will be checking all this later once i can dumby the engine up

[bean.101]

So i fitted the torque plate for the honing process. We only have torque plates for certain engine's. But lucky Ford xflow's are in formula Ford's so the boss saw the need to get one made. The torque plate allows you to simulate the tension of the cylinder being fitted to the block while honing. Some blocks move considerably from the head bolts being torqued up. This can distort the bore, sometimes up to 2 thou on various blocks. So it's like honing them in there assembled running state. I have heard stories of shops honing with hot coolant running through the water jackets to simulate total running conditions. All in the name of perfect ring seal you need a perfectly round and straight cylinder.

We leave 4 thou of material to hone out as this gives us a good base to start achieving good rk rvk and there's another value aswell but I can't think of it right now. But we start off honing with a course stone which gives us a deep groves and removes material quickly.  Once we've removed 3 thou we change stones to a smoother grit this removes the tops from  the course stones while taking more material out. I'm also happy say I have removed all the bore wear marks after removing 2 thou of material. Now we move to a finer stone again same thing applies. Each different grade of stone removes material in different ways. Some stones will take more out of the bottom middle or top of the bore, so you have to measure the bore to make sure you're keeping it straight. The stones also react to load. Theres a round handle onto of the machine that applies load to the stones in the bore. If you wind to much load up it normally takes more material from the middle of the bore as there's no real strength there. Extra load can also create heat which will give you a false reading of size from the material expanding. 

Once we are at finish size we have what we call plateau stones. These are 800grit they don't really take much material out but smooth the tops off from the previous set of stones. Then we move to our cork stones. Which look nothing like cork. These are really good a removing left over honing material out of the cross hatch. We only give the bore a couple of strokes with these. Once a year we clean the machine out. It normally has about two 20 liter buckets fill of cast iron sludge sitting in the bottom of it. This machine runs 200 liters of honing fluid. Which is great as one of the jobs of the fluid is to keep the block cool as well as wash the honed material away from the honing head while honing. A drum of honing fluid isn't cheap at $2500 Then there's all the stones we burn through. So the honing process has one the highest consumables cost in the workshop per year. From start to finish it can take a hour to two hours to hone a block after a rebore. A deglaze or what we call a rering hone is normally about three quaters to a hour. 

[bean.101]

So I'm just trying to get the short block completed at this point. There's a fair bit of maching in the cylinder head, fitting valve inserts so I'm just concentrating on the bottom end. 

So I measured up my crank and found that the mains are worn about 1.5 thou. But the big ends are within book size. So I mount and measured the rods. I found that I had 2.5 thou vertical oil clearance. Which isn't a major issue but I'm building it for myself so I'll resize them to tighten them up. We would offer this to any customer but more often that not the budget comes into play. And budgets generally compromise most engine builds. My budget is definitely compromising this build mainly in the parts department. 

So I removed the dowels and grind the rod and cap parting faces. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the cap dresser.

Note the rod thats been ground on the left.

Now I reassemble the rods and hone them back to a tighter size than they were. I want them three quarters of a thou tighter.

 

Now that they are all honed to the same size I will mount and measure with the bearings fitted to double check my clearance. This is just a picture of them apart showing them honed and ready for bearings.

[bean.101]

So i got my hands on some plus 15 back -20 main bearings. Thanks to Ford and their below average machining they mis machined the main tunnel on some of their blocks and had to come up with a solution of +15 back bearing to take up the slack. These can be challenging to get at times. 

 

So then I mount and measured them so I had a size to machine the crank too.

Got the crank dialed in the crank grinder. Start to bring the wheel in and just touch the journal and you can see the .002 thou wear. The grinder has just started to clean up the left side and a bit in the middle.

 

Once it's all ground we put it into this modified wood lathe we use for polishing.

 

[bean.101]

So I have the crank ground and ready to go.

So I got started on the Align hone. This block didn't necessary need align honing It was within book spec in the mains. I haven't fitted aftermarket studs which is another reason for a tunnel hone, the studs normally tighten the tunnel up due to the extra torque you can apply to the stud giving better clamping load. Another reason is if you have run the main bearings this can also put the tunnel out of round and or put a bend through the tunnel. Here's a picture of the cap dresser. I used this to resize the rods earlier on. This is the main cap in it. It ground about 3 thou off each cap.

First picture is the cap ground and ready to be torque up back onto the block. The next picture is with the block in the Sunnen Align hone. Sunnen is one of the industry leaders in honing. Our block hone is also a Sunnen Cv 616.

So I just refitted the main bearings to check clearance. I've got 2 thou vertical oil clearance in the tunnel. Its nice and straight now. This isn't something we do to every block as some don't need any attention. But most old blocks either weren't that great from the start or have had a hard life.

 

[bean.101]

So assembled the short block to check piston heights. Normally old engines have heaps of piston to head clearance.

I found the pistons are below the deck surface 20 thou or half a mm. My head gasket 52 thou thick. So ideally i won't the piston above the deck 10 thou to get my 40 thou piston to head clearance for good squish. So it was back to the surface grinder to remove 30 thou. While i was there i sat the block in the surface grinder on it's deck surface and run a dti through the main tunnel to check how true the tunnel is to the deck and i was surprised to find it was within 1.5 thou.

I haven't put a pic of it being surfaced as there's already one earlier on. So I gave it a wash. I went through all the galleries with gallery brushes. Then put it in our Bupi wash. This is pretty much just a big dish washer. Made in Germany and it's one of the more handy things in the workshop.

Then we just give them a good going over with soapy water. Normally just dish washing liquid and hot water to brake down any left over honing oil. And really get all the machining swarf out of the oil galleries and other spots in the block.

[bean.101]

So I turned a Accumulator groove into my pistons. Its a groove machined into the ring land between the top and second ring. This groove accumulates residual gasses from combustion to stop ring flutter improving ring seal. I also added some Contact Reduction Grooves in the top land these limit piston to cylinder contact during high rpm and high temperature. They also disrupt detonation waves.

Now I've pretty much got most of the bottom end machined except for the valve reliefs. But to machine these I need to figure out what size I want to make my valves. Here's a picture of standard valves vs some oversize valves. I won't be useing these particular valves. I will make some valves out of Mazda/Ford FE 8v valves.

While the head was lying around my work mate Al decided he would do a little porting to open up the intake runner where it pinches down at the intake manifold face.

You can see he has opened it up enough to be able to run the calipers down the runner to the bowl area without it pinching the calipers this tells him he's got it pretty evenly round. This should give good even area volume. So the intake flow stays at a even speed. Before hand you would expect the intake flow was speeding up through this area then slowing down before getting to the back of the valve. Hopefully I explained this ok. I'm no guru on porting. This is just rough cut off the burr. We will probably leave it that way as it can help in atomization.

[bean.101]

Here's a picture of the standard valve stem size

Here's the Mazda FE valve stem size.

So I need to open the guides up to accept the bigger stem size. This is also good because it means I don't need to fit a new valve guide. Its just a matter of reaming the guide hole the honing to finished size

 

And now the guides are big enough to get the valves in. I will be machining these down to 42mm for the intake and 34.5mm for the exhaust.

[bean.101]

Time to cut some holes for valve seat inserts. We have a Sunnen VGS for all our head work. First picture is setting up the tool cutter to cut the hole. We are looking for between 3-5 tho crush.

 

Once holes are cut just hammer the inserts in.

Then turned down a intake valve and a exhaust so had something to check valve spacing and clearance of the side of the bore.

I detopped the inserts in the VGS and then surfaced the head. I didn't get a picture of it in the surface grinder as there's pictures of that previously. 

Here's the valves. And a shot of the head bolted on to the block looking into the bore to see how much clearance the valves have off the side of the bore.

[bean.101]

I'm happy with the valve size. So I cut seats into the new valve inserts. 

I cut all the seats as close to the same height as possible. Al my work mate had done some research into the best seat angles, and we used a radius throat cutter profile. Once they are all cut to the right depth and right size to get the 45degree seating where we want it on the valve face we are ready to synchro seat the seats with the stone gear. We believe this gives a good sealing finish on the seats. I didn't get any pictures of this, but basically you face the valve seat grinding stone on the valve facer to get the same exact angle. Here's a picture of me stoning the seat.

You can see the seats are polished up. I now check to see if they are seating the whole width on the valve face. I didn't get a picture of this. But we use a engineers blue to wipe on the valve the put the valve into the head and push the valve onto the seat and look to see if the engineers blue makes full contact from the valve to the seat.

 

So the valve and seats are done. So I need some valve springs so I went down to Kennelly Cams to see PK and Adam. They have a good selection of springs in stock. This is also where I got my cam reground. 

So running the FE Mazda valves I need to use a different valve spring retainer to the stock xflow item. I looked at using the FE retainers but unfortunately that was going to make my spring install height to tight. The spring install height is the measurement from the spring seat on the head to the valve spring retainer. Stock xflow is around 33mm. So that's what I'm trying to get close to. So Al grabbed a Toyota 1kz retainer and we took a measurement and they looked like they would do the job with a bit of turning in the lathe.

 

You can see the spring isn't sitting in the right spot. So I made a arbor to spin the retainers in the lathe

Finished retainers sitting on the spring. 

[bean.101]

With the head sorted i can put the camshaft in and check piston to valve clearance. But first I need to dowel the head to the block. These old beast come from the factory without any location other than the head bolts. 

So I center off one of the head bolt holes and drilled it to 14mm. Then bolt the head one without moving anything and drill the head bolt hole out to 14mm.

Then fit the head on the dowel and drill the other head bolt hole for the second dowl. 

So dialed the cam in.

Then bolted the head on and found my rockers where a little worn so gave them a tidy up.

Forgot to take pictures of the head fitted. But basically fitted the head, put two layers of plastersene on top of the piston in the valve cut outs. Then turned the engine over to get the valves to in print into the plaster. Then I cut half the plaster away to see how thick it is. This gives you a good indication of the piston to valve clearance.

[bean.101]

So now I know I definitely need to make the intake valve pockets bigger OD wise by 2mm. Which was no surprise as I've increased the valve size a good amount. I also found I need to deepen the exhaust pocket by 1mm. So I used a the mill to machine the pistons. We normally use a guy to do our valve pockets as we don't really have the gear to do a really nice job of it. But I'm doing this on a budget so I had a crack.

This the tooling I used to take the OD out. Above 

And this for deepening. They came out ok. But we would normally out work this job. I gave them a tidy up with wet and dry and a small file. Tried to take the sharp edges off the top of the piston. 

Here's a pic of a few parts. I wasn't going spend $250 on the double row cam chain gear kit. But it had to happen.

[bean.101]

Time for final assembly. I bought a new set of cam followers as the old ones look a bit thin in the head. And I have had one break in another engine.

Put the crank in.

Short blocked.

 

 

Checked the front pulley for tdc.  It's the best time to check it. Not a common problem with solid front pulleys. But definitely common for old harmonic balancers to move and cause a headache when timing your engine.

Assembled the head.

[bean.101]

So Al my work mate was good enough to give the intake manifold a bit of a tidy up with the die grinder while I was assembling the engine

 

With getting the engine pretty much together I thought it was time to get onto a few of the bolt on items. I know from my mk1 cortina that I was wasting my time the orginal alternator. So I found a old Nissan alternator and fitted that.

Redrilled the holes and it pretty much lined up. Changed the pulley over from the old Lucas alternator. Which just ment turning the hole out to suit the Nissan alternator.

So it's pretty much together just have to sort the flywheel out next.

[bean.101]

On to the flywheel. First remove the dowels

Weld a stud to the dowels to attach the slide puller.

Weigh it.

Into the lathe.

Sorted.

I also machined the face in the lathe. I machined the outside area where the pressure plate clamps down .5mm to give the pressure plate more clamping load.  Weighed it after.

[bean.101]

Here's a better shot of the .5mm step

This is our flywheel grinder

The flywheel get mounted to the round turn table. Then the grinder head swings to the left and you wind the grinder head down onto the flywheel.

All sorted and ready to go off for a balance. We don't have a balancer so we use another reconditioner for balancing and he uses us for crank grinding. There's some machines that arnt viable to own as you may only use them a couple of times a week. 

[bean.101]

You can see at 6 o'clock on the the flywheel there's a small hole drilled into the the flywheel to remove weight and also the clutch cover has had a small amount sanded off it in the same area.

Flywheel torqued up.

Here's a starter motor adapter that I've had lying around for years. 

Drilled it for the Honda starter motor and gave it A lick of paint.

Starter motor fitted