Engine So Far So Good

At the end of today's effort the refurbished head was installed and properly torqued, and the mixer was in place, and plumbed up to the cooling and exhaust systems. In the afternoon I hit a snag with missing bolts but I am confident that I will be able to finish the job tomorrow.

At 8 AM Bob Carroll showed up with a 3/8" drive torque wrench that he had borrowed from a friend as well as his set of metric sockets. It's hard to go wrong when you have friends like that.

I then spent 30 minutes setting up the work and another few minutes reading the instructions on how to use the torque wrench. Then I got into it, moving one slow step at a time. I hit what could have been a show stopper early in the piece when I could not get the engine to turn over. My technique was to use a wrench on the 160 amp alternator while bringing both sides of the belts together so that they would not slip. No matter how much force I applied I could not get the engine to budge. My guess was the piston rings in the open cylinder had gummed up even though I had liberally applied oil to the cylinder. I tried tapping the piston with a hammer on a large inverted screw driver but that didn't work. In the end I got desperate and used the starter motor. This was risky because one cylinder had no head and its fuel system was open. However, after three hits of the starter the pistons moved.

I spent some time thinking about the main copper head gasket because the spares that I had were thin rings whereas the one that had come off that cylinder was much wider and had an edge to it. I decided to stick with the one that had come off the cylinder.

I spent a lot of time cleaning surfaces and sanding them lightly where warranted. I then laid on the various gaskets and fitted the cylinder head, tightening the nuts by hand as instructed. I then bolted on the mixer and was ready for the torquing.

Unfortunately the head nuts were large - 24 mm or almost an inch - and the largest socket in Bob's set was 19 mm. I was soon on the way to the marina hoping to take up Joel the mechanic's offer to lend me a torque wrench. I got lucky. Before I even got into the shed I saw him. He immediately set me up with a large torque wrench and two sockets - 24 mm and 19 mm, with an extension. The whole thing took 5 minutes. Joel does no really know me - we only met yesterday - but he must have been treating me OK on the strength of Bob's introduction. Bob had described him as a quiet and easy going man and that is what I found. He seems like a kind man. A gentleman.

Back at the boat I took my time to torque the nuts properly. I tightened the 4 nuts in the order of an X pattern as instructed and "sneaked" up to the prescribed 101 foot pounds in 20-foot pound increments. I was careful to put my force at the middle of the handle and was careful to stop tightening as soon as the wrench detected the proper tension.

The next job was the injector and that is where I hit my snag. I could not find the two bolts that fix them to the head. This was disturbing because I had been extremely careful to place whatever Colin removed from the engine in plastic containers. On the other hand, Colin did take the injector away for checking and it was possible that he had taken the bolts with him. Later I sent Colin an email asking him about the bolts but I wasn't worried because they are metric bolts which I should be able to replace, at the expense of lots of walking around with the old head strapped to my back to make sure that new new bolts will fit OK.

At this point I feel that I am over the hump regarding this job. Tomorrow I will need to get those injector bolts the fit the injector. After that I will fit the valve rocker assembly and set the tappet gaps. After that I'll put the rocker cover on and - have I forgotten anything? - try starting the engine. (Oops, I forgot to bleed the system.)

The photos were taken in the order of installation. The first one shows the exposed cylinder ready for the head. The second shows my quandary over which copper gaskets to use for the cylinder. I stuck to the original wide one, which begs the question of what the others are for. The next photo shows the gaskets in place ready for the head. After that the head is in place, with nuts finger tight.

The next two are of the mixer which had to be bolted on before the head nuts were torqued. There were no flat washers for the four nuts holding the mixer so I used four stainless steel washers because I cannot do not like tightening a nut directly onto metal.

Finally there is the injector, a Bosch with the following markings: 060, 400 bar, KBA38S/13, 922.