Engine running again, the good, bad and ugly

I finally got my Ford V-6 going again after partially dismantling it
to repair a cracked timing chain cover. As I mentioned previously,
I'd noticed the crack in the timing chain cover the first time I
assembled the engine, but "repaired" it that time using some metalized
epoxy that was recommended. After running the engine for all told
about half an hour, I discovered oil sitting below the crack. Well we
can't have that, obviously the epoxy wasn't doing the job. Plus there
was oil leaking out past the vibration damper. I wasn't sure what was
causing the vibration damper leak, but surmised that it was likely a
torn oil pan gasket as I had pulled the timing chain cover to
troubleshoot the no start situation of several months ago and did not
drop the oil pan to do that. Since the oil pan is bolted to the
timing chain cover, when I removed those bolts to pull the chain
cover, the gasket tore. I reassembled using RTV to repair the torn
gasket but I it appeared that might not have worked.

Now I had to remove the cover again to repair the crack, again, so I
dropped the oil pan this time and removed the old gasket and cleaned
everything up. Bruce Frank recommended using RTV rather than another
gasket, which suited me fine. I had a tube of red RTV for use in high
temperature areas, but no replacement oil pan gasket.

The timing chain cover went to a shop to be TIG welded, they did a
good job. About the crack, this timing chain cover is also the mount
for the water pump. Some of the bolts that attach the timing chain
cover double as bolts for the water pump housing. But the TCC (timing
chain cover) also has two bitty tabs on each side of the top that have
holes in them for two short bolts to the block. The crack appears to
me to have occured when some ham handed mechanic once removed the
timing chain cover and neglected to remove the tab bolt on the right
side, then probably prised on the cover with a big screwdriver. The
crack sort of almost circles the tab. It's in a non structural place
and seemed emminantly weldable to me. At my request, the welder put a
bead on both sides of the crack.

I hadn't originally wanted to remove the oil pan for the no start
diagnosis because all the pan bolts were safety wired. Well, just had
to bite the bullet, snip the wires and redo them. I didn't have the
luxury of having the engine upside down on the engine stand this time
though, and it was hot and humid. This job took a long time and
wasn't as good as the first time because of clearance issues that
weren't there when things like the PSRU weren't installed.

Anyway, everything came together Sunday morning when I poured in the
$pecial Chevron straight 30 wt oil and spun the oil pump to pressurize
the oil gallaries and make sure the oil pump was primed. This was
easy, using a spare distributer drive chucked into a drill. The
distributer rotates counter clockwise so you spin the pump drive the
same way. I wasn't sure it was picking up, so I turned on the
ignition key and flicked on the instrument switch. I found I really
didn't have to do this (turn on the oil pressure guage) because once
the oil pump began pumping, the drill slowed down dramatically and ran
under a load. The oil pressure guage showed 75 psi. I let the drill
run for about 20 seconds or so, to make sure oil got everywhere.

Then I topped off the oil and filled the radiator, and installed the
distributer.

First try resulted in a couple of hopeful bangs out the exhaust, but
no extended running. A few more tries were less and less successful,
with backfires out the carburetor, so I hooked up the timing light and
checked. WAY OFF, in fact I couldn't even see the mark. I checked
the distributer and discovered that it was now very loose and had
obviously rotated from it's initial setting, unbeknownst to me. I
guess it had not seated properly when I first tightened it down. I
had to rotate the distributer at least 90 degrees before the timing
mark got close.

Now ready to try again, all switches on and the engine fired up
instantly with it's characteristic "ROW ROW ***BROOOOM***. It took a
couple of tries to get things settled down to a reasonable idle, then
I let it run for a minute or two before shutting down to check for
leaks.

There were none. Thankfully, the leaking at the vibration damper must
have been the result of the torn gasket after all because it's bone
dry now.

More topping off of fluids followed before I broke out the IVO prop
and installed it.

I'm skipping the part where I used the winch installed on the test
stand to winch the engine up into the truck. Suffice to say, it was
too scary by far to do that on a regular basis due to the odd sloping
of the ground outside my shop, and the very top heavy engine/test
stand. I'm going to have to fabricate some guide tracks in the truck
bed before I try that again.

But the climax of the day was to drag the engine outside after
installing the prop. The limited clearance of the sliding door
opening to the shop means that I have to rotate the prop till one
blade is pointing down (three bladed prop) so that there is enough
clearance to roll out without hitting the prop on the top of the door
opening.

The IVO installation is perhaps unique in that you do not adjust each
blade individually. Each blade has a lever imbedded in the blade and
the lever fits into a groove in a threaded cylinder which threads into
the hub. So you simply adjust the cylinder so that the levers fit
into the groove and crank the crush plate down to the specified
torque.

If you want to make an adjustment, you insert a LARGE rod into the
cylinder that sticks out in front of the cruch plate and crank it one
way or the other. The blades simply twist to the new adjustment
because they are deliberately fabricated to be relatively flexible.
All the blades move at the same time and you don't loosen anything,
you just crank the cylinder. There's really no need to take blade
angle measurements, you flight test or ground test and adjust the
angle until it's where it needs to be.

So once out beyond the car port overhang, I chained the test stand to
the test stand mounted winch to prevent the thing from rolling away
under power, and fired it up with the prop on for the first time.

The prop diameter is 74 inches, and I made sure that there was enough
ground clearance to run the engine without worrying about the prop
picking up gravel (about 20 inches). Well, that didn't mean that the
prop wasn't capable of blowing stuff all over the place when I revved
it up. I was standing at the instrument panel being sand blasted! I
had to shut down and go get my grinding face mask to protect myself.

It was extremely gratifying to see the prop disappear in a blur and
feel the pressure of the air being shoved back over the engine and me.

The engine is WAY too loud to do this kind of running for very long.
I'll either have to install some mufflers, or perfect the means for
getting it into the truck to haul into the woods next to us to run the
thing for extended periods.

Corky Scott