"Why don't you take the FC on?"

[Stash]

Great work and great info Rob.

[ardiesse]

I thought hydraulic systems were straightforward until . . .

The FC's previous owner had bought new brake slave cylinders and linings just after taking the car off the road.  More for the sake of originality than convenience I decided to re-use the original master cylinders and tin-plate reservoirs.  Burt Bros stainless-steel sleeved the master cylinders and supplied new hoses. Electroplating Technology zinc-plated the metal reservoirs.  I connected all the brake hydraulics up, started to fill the reservoir and watched the fluid leak out of it.  The zinc-plating process revealed all the pinholes in the reservoir, and there were very many.  By holding the reservoir up to a light I found them, and soldered them up – this took hours.  The reservoir now held fluid.  But every other joint in the hydraulic system leaked.  This is Sod’s First Law of Hydraulics.  Most of the leaky joints came good with repeated tightening.  But there were two stubborn ones: where the front brake hoses met the brake lines.  They leaked slowly, no matter what.  I pulled the hoses off, and examined them under a magnifier.  In these hoses, the internal cone was made for a smaller diameter pipe, and the brake pipe’s flare was not seating on the cone.  And because I’d tightened the fittings up so much, I murdered the nut on the RHF brake pipe trying to undo it, and cut the pipe off in disgust.  I took the hoses and the pipe back to Burt Bros, and explained the problem to them.  “We’ll sort it out,” they told me.  Sure enough, they did.  They made up some copper inserts to go between pipe flare and hose, and made a new brake pipe to replace the one I butchered.  And finally, I got the brake hydraulic system to seal up.

After the engine and transmission went in, and I bled the clutch, the clutch hose swelled up shut.  I could disengage the clutch, but then the pedal would stay on the floor before coming up in its own good time.  A new hose, a new slave cylinder, and the system worked.  Sod’s Second Law of Hydraulics: any part that is good enough to re-use will give trouble when you attempt to re-use it.

And by the way, Sod's Law of Hydraulics applies equally well to fuel systems, as I discovered.

[mcl1959]

This is one of the big problems working in the car building industry. The customer brings in the car plus all these bits which "were working when they were removed so they should be OK". You get abused if you won't use them because you know they will go wrong if you do, and if you do decide to use them, the customer will want you to replace them at your cost when they do go wrong, because somehow it's your fault they don't work. You can't win

Ken

[FCRB26]

My fe has beem back on the road for 12 months and i hate to say it im still rooting around fixing bits and pieces that bloody handbrake is a bastard and is still being tempremental..

Good luck

Pete

[ardiesse]

Pete,

Maybe a fixed thread called "how to get your handbrake right, first time" would be an idea . . .

I thought I'd got the handbrake pretty good, until I put the car on its feet for the first time and used the handbrake to pull the car up from walking speed.

"Sproing".  And then it didn't work any more.  I thought I'd pulled the rear cable outers through the mounting clamps, but no.  And so I made all the adjustments again - shoes, eccentrics, equaliser, clevis, front cable adjuster, and now it seems to be ok.

Rob

[ardiesse]

Just after I pulled the FC apart I set the engine and gearbox up on axle stands, which allowed me to start the motor and get it running.  But it didn’t seem entirely happy, even though it ran quietly and had hardly any blow-by.

The manifold gaskets were leaking, and I pulled the manifolds off to discover that the faces no longer lined up.  Rather than risk breaking bolts I had the machine shop at work mill the faces true.  Then I did an old trick with the manifolds off: Squirt a tablespoon of kerosene into the inlet and exhaust ports of each cylinder at the beginning of the compression stroke, and turn the motor over by hand.  Badly seating valves will make a bubbly sound, and this test is way more sensitive than using a compression tester.

After I tested just one cylinder I realised that the head needed to come off.  This was a good thing.  As well as the valve seating problem, the head gasket showed leaks between the centre four cylinders.  I cleaned up the head, and it showed repaired cracks and valve seat inserts in the centre four cylinders.  The guides were good.  I ground the valves in nonetheless, and did the petrol-in-upturned-combustion-chamber trick to confirm that the valves were well and truly seating.  Oh, and I got out the Dremel and carefully blended the inlet valve seats to the combustion chambers, as the edge the valve seat cutter left was shrouding the valve heads.  The bores were in very good condition, and the vernier said it was a 3-1/8 bore motor.

I was about to bolt the head back on when my father suggested caution: “Why don’t you lay the head on the block, no gasket, and check the fit?”  This also was a good thing.  I put the head on the block, and it rocked.  The left-hand back corner of the block was holding the head up.  It gets better than this.  When the block was decked at the reconditioner’s, they didn’t run the cutter all the way along the cylinder block, and it left a stair-step arrangement on the left hand back corner of the block.

In situations like this, you’re supposed to strip the motor down completely, and get the block decked (again).  But who knows if the place you go to won’t make a hash of the job like the previous place did?  My father is a geologist, and one thing we do not lack at home is polished, flat pieces of granite.  With a large flat file, granite, many sheets of wet/dry, and bearing blue, I set to work on the mating faces.  I took off the “staircase”, and the head sat on the block at all four corners.  OK, so the head is shaped like a barrel vault.  I worked up the head and the block, and the contact patches slowly grew, but always in the areas between the bores, and not beside them.  So the cylinder block was like corrugated iron.  I could see that with a straightedge and a light.  More work, and when I couldn’t slip a .0015” feeler gauge in anywhere, I figured that was good enough.  The purists will say, “But the faces aren’t necessarily flat!”  Who cares?  I have matched the head to the block.

I asked the guys in the machine shop at work what caused this problem and they said, “Oh, that’s easy.  The reconditioner used blunt cutters.  Between the bores, the cutting head would rear up under the load of removing material, and then come back down in the middle of the bores because there’s less metal there.”

Now I was worried about what nasty surprises there might be in the bottom end.  I tipped the motor upside down, pulled the sump off, and lifted the two middle main bearing caps and a couple of big-end caps.  The bearings and journals looked good, because the previous owner was very good at changing oil.  There was a little cavity in one main bearing surface, so I interchanged the two bearing shells so the one with the void was on the block (no-load) side.  By the way, it was a 30/30 regrind crank.  I thought you could only go 0.020 before you had to bin the crank.

You can never be too careful with grey motor timing gears.  I took the harmonic balancer and timing cover off, inspected the gears, removed the lube fitting, blew it out with compressed air, replaced it, chucked a long screwdriver bit into the drill, engaged the oil pump drive (sump on by now), and wound the drill up, just to check the oil delivery.  Satisfactory.  Timing cover and harmonic balancer re-installed, with a new seal.

[ardiesse]

5000-character limit exceeded.  Where were we?

The old head gasket (copper/steel shim) cleaned up well, so I Hylomar’d it liberally, ran a tap down the head bolt holes, and bolted the head on.  The valve gear was in good order, and when I bolted it on, the valves had negative clearance.  That means I would have removed at least 6 thou of material from head and block.  I reset the clearances (cold) to 0.010/0.015, and started the motor.

It was way better, but still unhappy off-idle.  I selected a good coil, replaced the points, found that the central HT lead was shot, and replaced it.  The motor was still unhappy around 1500-2500 rpm.  And no, the timing was not over-advanced.  I put an oscilloscope on the ignition, which told me the problem was not ignition-related.  Mixture perhaps?  Float level checked and adjusted.  With the engine running at about 2000 rpm, I slowly slid my hand over the air intake so it was partially covered, and at one point the stumbling and missing went away.  Lean mixture.  I figured I’d go up one main jet size at a time, and ordered a 52 and 53 main jet from Carburettor Service Co.  With the 52 jet, the motor run well.  By this stage I had built up another distributor with a Pertronix electronic ignition module, so I swapped them over.  A little messing around because it seems you can’t time a Pertronix module statically, and then I got it right.

The motor ran like a clock.  Even from a cold start it needed no choke and idled smoothly.  Good to put back in the car. (Hmm. Photo missing from Photobucket)  (No, found it. Out of order.)

[mcl1959]

Engineering at its best - I love it.

Ken

[FCGos]

Hey, your engine mount seems a bit soft 

Great rebuild, love the storyline.

Cheers Wayne

[Not Happy Jan]

A great read Rod... Love it
Nick

[ardiesse]

With the motor in, the front panels could go on, and then the front doors.  The boot was last to go on, with a day’s delay to learn how to pull the boot lock cylinder apart, fix the mess it was inside, and reassemble it.

Then the bumpers, and the seats, floor mats and seatbelts, and I have a vehicle.  (Sequences compressed, as they say in the phone company ads).

With the car mobile, a front wheel alignment was next.  It seems you can never put too much caster into a king-pin front suspension.

It was about at this stage that I discovered Sod's Law of Fuel Systems, and had to correct all the weeping pipe unions.

The final hurdle to overcome was the dreaded (in NSW anyway) blue slip.  The main struggle, I find, is in finding an inspector who understands old Holdens.

And then,

TA-DUMM

December 16, 2011



Hmm.  Focus not as good as I'd have liked.  But you get the idea.

And a little later, on a shakedown trip to Canberra, I couldn't resist the Martian Embassy for a backdrop.

[fcwrangler]

Rob, the car looks fantastic!!!! Hope all went well on the shake down cruise, it must feel great to be able to drive it after all the work you put into it. Are you going to Perth with it, if so are you driving.
All the best, Jim

[Ed]

wow that went fast!

enjoyed the blog too.

Car looks great.

Cheers

Ed

[ardiesse]

Ed and Jim,

Yeah, it went fast, I know.  I wanted to finish the story before I leave for Perth.

And yes, I'm driving there and back.  I took the FC to Parkes a couple of weekends ago, and it just went.  So I'm fairly confident about the long drive.

Rob

[Maco]

Rob,

That is an amazing story, it is a credit to you & your dad.

Your dad is an inspiration to me, I hope I am as active as him at his age.

John

[TTV6FC]

Well done Rob,you give me the hope that I too will one day have a "Ta-Dumm" picture at the end of my thread.....

[zulu]

Top story Rob, and what a result.

Congratulations to you and the old man!

Is it a Standard or a Business Sedan?

Gary

[ardiesse]

Gary,

It's a Standard, not a Business.

Rob

[graham_fuller]

Hi Rob,
Great job its also great that you could do it with your dad.Have to employ you to help me with my rebuild. Have a great trip to WA keep safe.
Hope you can keep us up to date as you travel to WA
See you on your return.
Cheers,
Graham

[ardiesse]

The story doesn't quite end with getting the FC registered.

The speedo stopped about ten minutes after the blue slip inspection.  The square drive end, where the cable engages in the drive, had worn round.  It was easier to silver-solder and file the cable than find a new one.

On the first long drive I noticed the rear wheel bearings were a little noisy; but after repalcing them, the car was a whole lot quieter.

Door seals are a constant source of frustration.  Particularly the portions of the front door seals which are on the B-pillar from the waistline down.  I had to put the seal in the channel at an angle, so the lip would come forward enough to bear on the door, and then hold it in place with clear Silastic.  It's a similar story with the rear door seals on the B-pillar too, except that it's a lot more difficult (read next-to-impossible) to move the seal with the door in place.

It's taken a couple of attempts to get the front wheel alignment right.

And I changed over to a Bosch generator and regulator yesterday.

I'm starting off on a long drive into the sunset tomorrow.