project: Atomic Four head removal

I'm partly through the removal of the head.

I got all the nuts off the studs without snapping one of the studs, without stripping the nut, and without breaking anything else.

Getting the head to actually come off has been another issue. I was able to get it loose by banging a screwdriver into the (hairline) gap between the block and the head. The Moyer Marine shop manual recommends filing down a screwdriver so it's has a nice taper (basically, you make a shank worthy of a prison-yard out of it) and using it to pry the block off the head. This worked, to a degree, but my real success came when I used the smallest screwdrivers I had. They were just small enough to work and just big enough to create enough of a gap to get a stronger screwdriver in there to pry apart the two pieces.

And I discovered that I have the dreaded "green gasket." That means the head gasket was either never replaced, or it was replaced, at best, 20 years ago. From what I have read at the Moyer Marine community boards, the green gasket was responsible for so many compression failures that people began to think the engine itself had come to the end of its service life. Apparently an engineer at a gasket company heard about the problem and invented the "steel reinforced" gasket we all use today.

I'm going back tomorrow to see what I can do about getting the head all the way off. Already, by peeking into the gap, I can see that it's a damned mess in there. I'm eager to clean, get the head back on, and then clean and paint the engine.


This first picture is the exhaust manifold (it's upside down). I think that this is the last stop for the cooling water and for the exhaust gases before they hit the muffler and exhaust pipe (next stop: the atmosphere, there to trap some CO2).



And this picture is the tap-tap pry-pry method of getting the head off the block. Effective!

Narrow Escape

Just found this and thought you might enjoy it.

Narrow Escape is the blog for a Long Beach, CA, Ericson 30. A friend of mine, Kevin, had one of these and I always admired it. This classic plastic looks super sweet.

troubleshooting

So after a week contemplating a strategy to pump the gas tank dry, and dreading every second the idea and execution of filling three five gallon buckets with the explosive cocktail of gas, dry-gas, and startron, I decided to do some more investigating.

I'll admit, I have a very, very basic idea of how engines work: Air and fuel mix; said mix gets a spark from the aptly named spark plug; explosion drives pistons; pistons turn propeller shaft (is this where the crankshaft comes in? I don't know.).

But I'm learning more by the day.

Last year I learned how carburetors worked.

And I learned how the ignition system worked, or at least part of it, when the starter mysteriously died between driving out to our committee assignment and coming back.

And I learned how cooling water circulates around the cylinders (home base for the explosion-driven pistons) when I did an acid flush and a high pressure flush of the block (look at him use the vocab!).

So far this year I have learned the remainder of the starting system.

But I digress. Dreading the gas pumping and wanting to eliminate all other possibilities I took another look around.

All the wires were attached, so I figured I had power. Once I get the engine going again I am going to make a wiring schematic with voltages for each connection point. We had these for the sonar gear I worked on in the Navy and it makes troubleshooting and isolating shorts, opens, and broken gear a lot easier.

And I checked the carburetor and fuel pump. Both seemed to be in good working order.

That left compression. I did the thumb test on all four spark plug holes (take out a plug, put your thumb over the hole, crank the engine and if compression is good your thumb should be pushed off the hole). The first was strong enough to push back my thumb. In #2 I couldn't feel a thing. In #3 I couldn't feel a thing. In #4 I couldn't feel a thing. Apparently this indicated a blown head gasket.

Fug.

The bad:

• take off the head! you don't know what the hell you are doing! People junk their cars because of blown head gaskets!
  
• what if you break it more? snap off a bolt? or worse, snap off a stud? 300# of scrap metal, at your service!
  
• what the hell are valves? what the hell are valve keepers? what's a good valve look like? what does a bad valve look like?
  
• you think you can put all that stuff back together the right way? HA!
  

The good:

• we know we have no compression and thus, no ignition
  
• an opportunity to clean and paint the outside of the engine
  
• an opportunity to clean the inside of the engine
  
• get to learn about stuck valves, valve keepers, and what the manifold does
  
• getting something done that hasn't been done in a good long time, if at all
  
• maybe we're making progress toward a solution
  
• not much else to fix once we fix this
  

So I commenced to labeling the crap out of every wire, hose, or any other part that connected to another part. And then, in this order, I: removed the alternator, removed the starter, disconnected the muffler from the manifold, and took off the manifold. I also started loosening the 16-ish bolts that attach the head to the block.

Interesting findings. More soon.

All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence.

The Gates Opening
by Walt Whitman

April 6.—PALPABLE spring indeed, or the indications of it. I am sitting in bright sunshine, at the edge of the creek, the surface just rippled by the wind. All is solitude, morning freshness, negligence. For companions my two kingfishers sailing, winding, darting, dipping, sometimes capriciously separate, then flying together. I hear their guttural twittering again and again; for awhile nothing but that peculiar sound. As noon approaches other birds warm up. The reedy notes of the robin, and a musical passage of two parts, one a clear delicious gurgle, with several other birds I cannot place. To which is join’d, (yes, I just hear it,) one low purr at intervals from some impatient hylas at the pond-edge. The sibilant murmur of a pretty stiff breeze now and then through the trees. Then a poor little dead leaf, long frost-bound, whirls from somewhere up aloft in one wild escaped freedom-spree in space and sunlight, and then dashes down to the waters, which hold it closely and soon drown it out of sight. The bushes and trees are yet bare, but the beeches have their wrinkled yellow leaves of last season’s foliage largely left, frequent cedars and pines yet green, and the grass not without proofs of coming fulness. And over all a wonderfully fine dome of clear blue, the play of light coming and going, and great fleeces of white clouds swimming so silently.

from: Specimen Days
1892