I’m not sure if I mentioned it the other week but I re-torqued all the head bolts. I say re-torqued but actually all I did was check that they were torqued correctly - nothing was loose - the torque wrench just clicked out every time.
I now wanted to set the tappets - I’m not sure if I’ve done this since the rebuild 10 years ago - I can’t remember.
On reading the Bentley manual it says to find TDC you use the marks on the crank pulley but also the position of the rotor arm int eh distributor.
Now my car no longer has a distributor, but I still have it in a box somewhere. I thought it might make it easier if I temporarily refitted it.
So I did that and turned the engine until everything lined up. It lined up one of the marks on the crank pulley and the rotor arm was lined up.
Great I thought, and started to adjust inlet 1. That seemed just about right so then I went onto exhaust No.1. This was where things got confusing. There was no way I could get the feeler gauge in at all, even when I loosened off the adjustment screw several turns. Also the adjustment screw was incredibly stiff to turn, leading me to the conclusion that it was under pressure from the valve spring.
So I’d obviously not started at TDC
We then had to go away for the afternoon and evening so I started thinking it through. I reckoned I’d misled myself with the dizzy, and I also remember form previous times that when finding the TDV mark there were actually two marks at that point, with the relevant one marked Z1.
I phoned I and an had a chat about it. He suggested a screwdriver down the bore to make sure and added that it was a pity that the cylinder wasn’t vertical. But I can make it vertical……
I tipped the engine on its side and was able to confirm that No.1 was TDC just as the Z1 mark on the crank pulley was hitting the timing mark on the bottom of the fan housing. I ignored the newly attached dizzy.
So I thought I was golden. but not quite. No.1 adjusted OK but when I went to No.6 I had a similar problem to before - the valve seemed to be partially open.
I remembered that there was something about two turns of the engine and it would hit the Z1 mark twice - so I guessed that I needed to turn to the Z1 again and start the process again.
This time it all went fine. Each set of tappers adjusted properly in turn
I replicated a chart I did to keep track of everything
Most of the tappets were OK - I tightened a few but only very slightly - except for the exhaust tappet on No 3 - that had a huge gap in it, which I guess would have meant that exhaust gasses wouldn’t have been escaping very well. So it felt good to tighten that one up.
While Iw as in there I was finally able to fit the set of apart plugs I bought about 15 years ago. The ones that came out were all pretty oily.
And then I fitted new gaskets - I’ve got those fancy-ass silicon ones for the lowers so fingers crossed this helps
Also since the last time I did this I’ve bought a bike torque wrench with effective range from 3-15Nm. I was able to use that to torque down the cam covers to the required 8Nm and have some faith in the correct torque.
I’ve enjoyed working on it today as I’ve been able to take my time on stuff to make sure I get it right.
I’ve got a full day on it tomorrow and am hoping to at least get the engine back together and ready for going in
Thanks for listening/reading
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