project 1980 Austin Princess

[SilverMachine]

just found this, could be useful?

https://www.angclassiccarparts.co.uk/products/austin-morris-bmc/morris-marina-ital-allegro-maxi/engine-gaskets-seals/head-gasket-set-marina-17-ital-princess-ambassador-oseries-engine

also the company name, could be a good omen?

[24vdiamond]

Worth checking if the head has been skimmed is the length of the head bolts, you need a vernier or something really, screw a head bolt right into the block and measure from the block face to underside of the bolt head and then measure the thickness of the head where the bolt squishes to make sure youre getting plenty of squish when its torqued down! 

[vulgalour]

ANG is my usual for getting parts, they're often the only supplier with what I need in stock.

Dropped the head off at the garage and the vibe was actually really positive.  Some mild ribbing from the younger lads about the Princess being an ugly car, not had that in a while, but the guy actually doing the work seemed keen to work on something properly old for a change.  We'll see what the report is from them soon.  I did ask for a couple of other extra things to be checked over so I'm not expecting that 24-48 hour turnaround since there's more work than a skim and pressure test to do, just little things I can't check or fix myself that they can.  However, on initial inspection they didn't spot anything glaringly amiss and were happy that I'd done all the stripping down of the head for them, so hopefully it all goes very smoothly.

[vulgalour]

Got a call from the garage to tell me the head is ready to collect.  It's all good, no horrors.  They did the extra bits I wanted doing so it did cost a little more and take a little longer and that's totally okay.  I've now got to wait until Thursday to collect since that's the soonest I can get a lift over to the garage to do so.  In the meantime I'm hoping for reasonable weather and health so I can get on with finishing the exhaust job on the van for its MoT, chuck it in and see what it fails on.

[vulgalour]

Ready to be rebuilt.  Hopefully I'm going to get into it this weekend.

[SilverMachine]

1 hour ago, vulgalour said:

Ready to be rebuilt.  Hopefully I'm going to get into it this weekend.

supermarket veg crates are handy! i have a couple myself...

hopefully there will be a few hours of sun over the weekend for you! but please, take it easy!

also wondering if theres still any companies that will put new linings on your old brake shoes, and or refurb them for you? as i know linings used to be available to rivet on yourself!

[Angrydicky]

8 minutes ago, SilverMachine said:

supermarket veg crates are handy! i have a couple myself...

hopefully there will be a few hours of sun over the weekend for you! but please, take it easy!

also wondering if theres still any companies that will put new linings on your old brake shoes, and or refurb them for you? as i know linings used to be available to rivet on yourself!

Charles Johnson in Norwich are who I use for shoe relining. Nos ones probably cheaper if you can find them. 

[plasticvandan]

I would kind of hoped they had found something,in at least it might have explained why it blew. 

[vulgalour]

Okay, a more full story on what's going on with this head then.  Pressure test was fine, no cracks or similar identified.  Bearing surfaces in the cambox and on the camshaft were given a light wet-and-dry just to clean them up, otherwise fine. Valve guide stems are quite healthy, no damage there.  Original waxstat housing installed in place of the modification that had been done, apparently the pipe that was in there was a real bear to get out so I'm glad I didn't try that one myself.  Head itself needed the barest whisper of a skim, almost as though the last time it was done it was maybe not done well enough, but it certainly wasn't bad enough that you'd call it warped in the usual sense.

Today I've spent time cleaning the carbon off the valves, lapping them in with the old twizzly stick and valve grinding paste,  and rebuilding the valve train.  I hate this particular job and I hate the next job I have to do even more, which is setting the valve clearances.  Fortunately I do have the proper Churchill tool which does make it a bit bit easier and I don't have to sacrifice a cambox to make one.  Next job is feeler guages and micrometer to get all the valve shims to the correct thickness so that the clearances are nicely balanced and I can hopefully do away with that one noisy one.

From what we can figure out it seems that the cause of the head gasket failure is a combination of a bad gasket and possibly a less-than-perfect skim when it was done last, it's just taken a while for these two things to get bad enough to actually fail and of course I caught it immediately so we didn't go into mega overheating and mayonnaise territory, which is good.

[beko1987]

That's good then! Be nice if it was just a 🤷 one of those things and fine forever now. Reckon you'll tell any difference in how it drives once done or had it not blown in a way that reduced the already I'm sure amazing performance? 

Only one way to find out though 😂

[vulgalour]

It had better.  There's still plenty of steps to go wrong between now and then!

I should definitely notice an improvement in how it drives.  Boxing Day I could get up to 40mph pretty normally, but getting up to 60mph from there was hard work.  Sustained speeds above 50mph would be accompanied with the occasional stumble too so was definitely down on power.  If I can get that noisy valve to be quieter I'll likely get better performance from that side of things too.  I do think the piston rings are pretty tired, if I had more time (impending house move), more money, my engine crane and engine stand (still down south), indoor space (garage still down south) to work on it etc. I'd do something about that especially since I've got a full set of piston rings in stock.  Job for another day that one, I'll just keep sticking oil in and staying off the motorway for now, drive around the problems, that's the way to do it!