NCRG Roundup - 5/27/2012 - Day 3

I'm a little late in posting this, so here goes.  The final full day of the Roundup was a lot of fun with the car games and the banquet.  The car games were held at the nearby Black Oak Casino parking lot where the spectators had a great view of the activities.  Many of our members participated in the games and I believe Mark & Jill Barrett took first and Jill and Nathan Barrett took second.  The games consisted of:
 - the pie-tin full of water - who had the most water left in the pan after driving the obstacle course
 - crush the peanuts - who could crush the most peanuts with the right front tire
 - bean bag in the inner-tube - drive over 3 inner-tubes without the tires touching them, back up and throw bean bags into them, all the while the tires must avoid the inner-tubes
 - coast to a stop - accelerate for a short distance then coast to a stop and getting the front tires closest to a line
 - pop the balloon - turn off the engine, both driver and passenger put on overalls, blow up a balloon, pop it on the side step, get out of the overalls and both people back into the car and start the car. 

My wife and youngest daughter drove up for the banquet, what a great way to end the event.  The banquet was packed, and we sat next to a fun group from Sonoma.  It was fun and the food was pretty good. 

The Barrett's won the Bill Jones award for participating and excelling in all 4 major events for the roundup.

I can't wait until next year in Pleasanton with the Acorn A's and especially in 2024 when we host it.

NCRG Roundup - 5/26/2012 - Day 2

Saturday - The second day is done, there were a number of things going on today,
the car judging, fashion judging, tea and fashion show, technical seminar, and the Hubley races.  But I think the best thing was the pizza dinner organized by Mark and Jill at t))he Elks Club before the Hubleys.

The car judging was dominated with SCVC judges and apprentice judges.  Bill C. as the man in charge, with John G., Gene M. Mark B., Mike L., Wayne I., Larry C., John P., and Will L.   I don't know how the SCVC member cars scored yet, hopefully at the banquet

Many of the club members were also involved in the fashion events

then the final event of the day, the Hubleys.  

Brandon Lee took 1st in the teenager class

Glenn Wildman took 1st after a bit of confusion by the folks running the event, Lizanne took second.

SCVC took 1st in the Club races, Vicki accepted the award, it was their car :-

NCRG Roundup - 5/25/2012 - Day 1

Friday -
Today is the 1st day of the Roundup and i won't get there until after dinner, sigh, the downside to a demanding job.  I am taking my modern car (truck) so the odds of me making it there are much greater than in my Roadster.  I'm heading out directly from work this afternoon.  I will try to update this space with exciting tales and pictures all without a computerr, just my Samsung tablet.

This will be my first Roundup, I'm really looking fotward to this.  My wife and youngest daughter won't be able to join up until Sunday for the banquet, then they head back home, I wull head out Monday morning.

Should be fun...

Update:  I arrived about 6:30, I'm very glad I did not have the Roadster, the rain and cold would have been miserable.  I signed in at the hotel and registered with the roundup. After settling into the room I wandered around and took a few pictures.  But since I only have my tablet with me, I needed to download the pictures from my camera.  With a couple of simple adaptors, I not only can download my pictures, but attach a keyboard and mouse to the tablet, completely replacing my laptop.

Here's my setup

And here are some pictures of a few cars.

The clouds were looking a bit ominous, 

hopefully it won't rain like it did on the way up here.

Tomorrow shoud be interesting with the car and fashion judging in the morning,.

Electrical cutoff switch

Well, it's been over a year since I last posted anything here, time really flies when you overworked...

I have been busy with work, but recently found time to do a little work on the Roadster.  I managed to install an electrical cutoff switch between the battery and the frame.  It works well.  Here's how I installed the setup.

I had to enlarge the hole in the cross brace behind the battery so I could mount the switch, amazing what a simple rat-tail file can do in just a few minutes.  Once that was done, I installed the 19" #1 gauge battery cable on the positive terminal, ran it through the gap between the transmission and the body to one side of the switch.  There was only about 5" between the other side of the switch and the nearest hole in the frame cross brace.  I didn't have a wire to mtch that so I used a 5" section of 1/2" copper pipe.  I flattened the ends 90 degrees from each other, drilled the mounting holes and bolted it on.  oh yeah, I also ground away any paint near the brace mounting hole to make for a good connection.

By the way, I did this entire post from my tablet...

Here are some pictures:

On the road again! 3/25/2011

Summary:
Dennis came over again tonight and after a couple of hours, we had the engine purring right along. Still has some noises and knocks, but Dennis thinks this is from the loose wrist pins and possibly piston slap. I'm a happy camper!

The details:
Over the past few days, I'd tightened up the connecting rods and cleaned up the oil pan. However, the tightened connecting rods prevented the engine from turning. I really wanted the engine to turn, so I had taken the car off of the jack stands and tried to push it a bit with it in gear and could only get the engine to turn about 1/4 revolution, then it stopped. So Dennis brought over his hand crank to see if we could break it loose. Well, it helps if the guide bracket lines up with the crank shaft... We had to loosen up the bracket so the crank could access the crank shaft. But it still wouldn't turn...

When I was tightening up the rods, I had noticed that only having #4 tight prevented the engine from turning, so we loosened the cap on #4 and sure enough, we were able to turn the engine even with the other 3 tight. I had kept a couple of shims we had removed from the other rods, so we found the best one and inserted it on one side of the #4 cap. Once that was in place and tightened up, the engine would turn. The next step was to hook up the battery and see if the starter would turn over. It struggled a little, but it worked!

We were on a roll, so it was time to put on the oil pan gasket. I had ordered a couple of those new oil pan gasket sets from Snyder's and they looked pretty nice. So we put in the square gasket which goes into the groove in the rear main seal. It was a rubberized gasket, it stayed in place and was easy to cut to size. I had forgotten to soak the small asbestos gasket overnight, so when Dennis arrived, I threw it in some oil to at least get it a little soaked. We inserted the cloth gasket into the oil pan and trimmed it to the right length. Instead of attaching the two gasket strips to the block, we sprayed some adhesive to the pan edges and attached gaskets to the pan. This should hopefully allow the gaskets to stay with the pan when it is next removed. It took a little bit of work to get the pan onto the block because the oil pump with it's spring was putting pressure on the pan, and also the holes didn't want to line up nicely.

Oh wait, the oil pump, can't forget about that. I had also ordered one of those special oil pump holders from Snyder's and it worked quite well. We lined up the slot in the oil pump shaft, slid in the pump and hand tightened the special bolt to hold the pump in place. No mess, no fuss.

Once the oil pan was in place I removed the special oil pump holder and put back in the original plug. I also tightened up the front bracket with the crank in place so the next time, I won't have to loosen it up just to turn the engine.

We tried to remove the distributor so we could pour some oil down the shaft to make sure there was oil to the rear main, but the cable to the distributor was attached to the head and we didn't want to take that head bolt loose. So it stayed on. We put the spark plugs back in and I poured 5 quarts of oil into the engine.

At this point, we were ready to try to start the engine.

The starter really had to work to turn the engine, it took a few tries, but the engine finally started. What a relief! There seemed to be fewer noises from the engine, but after it warmed up a bit, some of the noises returned. However, because we knew there was a lot of slop in the wrist pins, Dennis believes that and some piston slap are the cause of most of the engine noise. We let the engine run for a few minutes to make sure everything was in order and that no oil was pouring out anywhere.

I'm really looking forward to motoring down the road soon, weather permitting.

Kudos to Dennis for all of his help and support during this exciting connecting rod replacement endeavor.

Connecting Rods - 03/20/2011

As I was leaving the safety seminar a couple of weeks ago, Dave Jones stopped me and asked about the knocking noises coming from my engine. I didn't have much to say other than the engine was very tired and would need a rebuild soon. But I did notice that as I drove away, Dennis Rinaldi had a very concerned look on his face. The next day Dennis called and strongly suggested I not drive the car again until we had a chance to take a closer look at the engine because it sounded like I had a connecting rod problem. And so began my connecting rod adventure.

I dropped the oil pan to see if there were any bits and pieces of babbit from the rods or main bearings in the pan, luckily there wasn't anything obvious. There is some braising in the dip pans where there may have been rust spots or holes previously drilled in the pan, but that's it.

The oil pump stayed up in the block, so I left it there for Dennis to see. When he came over a few days later, the first thing we did was to remove the pump. Well, we both looked at it and we noticed it didn't look right and sure enough, the top 1 inch of the pump stayed up in the block. Luckily because it was only the top part of the pump and the spring was holding it in place, oil was still getting into the engine just fine. My dad gave me a bunch of extra engine parts when he gave me the car, and among them was an oil pump with the screen cover missing. Ted Kafer was kind enough to donate a cover for me so I now have a complete replacement pump.

It's a little scary seeing my engine with it's bottom exposed, wondering if I'll ever get it back together again. The engine was nice and clean inside. My dad had dropped the pan when he rebuilt the car and cleaned it out really well.

We worked our way through the connecting rods for pistons 1, 2, and 3. Taking them loose, inspecting them for cracks or missing bits of babbit. Each had a single shim which needed to be removed. On a couple of the caps, we had to file them down to get the proper clearance on the crankshaft when we torqued them back on. I now know how to use plastigauge, I'd heard about it, but never used it. One of the many things Dennis has shown me.

For all the pistons, we did notice a bit of slop in the wrist pin bushings. This could very well be the source of some of the engine noise I'm experiencing. Well, since we were on a roll, we continued onto cylinder #4. As soon as we removed the connecting rod cap, Dennis noticed a large chunk of babbit stayed behind on the crank shaft from the connecting rod side. That pretty much put a stop to any more work that night, and we were making such good progress too. We decided the next step would be to remove the rear main bearing cap, if that was busted up, then it would be time to rebuild the engine, if not, then we would proceed with replacing the connecting rod from below, at least that would be our goal.

Fast forward a few days and Dennis came back to help check out the rear main bearing. He brought along an original Ford wrench designed for just that purpose since it's a very tight fight for modern torque wrenches. We took off the cover plate, then removed the nuts for the rear main - the decisive moment where I either rebuild the engine, or eek a few more miles out it was at hand.


We pull off the bearing cap and.... it's fine and in good shape. No cracks, chips or missing pieces. Whew! No shims though, so it's nearing the end of it's life.



Now to tackle that pesky #4 connecting rod. It's a tad bit easier with the rear main removed, we don't have to worry about breaking off the oil tube.

Dennis kept reassuring me that it's possible to drop the piston low enough, without exposing the rings, to remove the keeper snap rings for the wrist pin, then slide out the wrist pin, and remove the connecting rod. Sounds doable, but would my car cooperate? We turn the crank into just the right position to gain maximum access to the wrist pin. Pull out the keeper rings and start working on the wrist pin. Over time, a shellac builds up on the wrist pin in the exposed areas which makes removing the pin difficult. After much coaxing, stuck fingers and no so gentle persuasion, we managed to get the wrist pin out. Success!

Look at that, no wrist pin or connecting rod in the piston!

A side note: While we were busy getting the wrist pin out, every once in a while, a drop of water would hit the floor. We finally tracked it down to a potential small leak in the head gasket at cylinder 3. There's no water in the oil, so I'm confident I don't have a cracked block. A bit of radiator stop leak will hopefully fix that.

As I mentioned earlier, my father sent along a bunch of extra engine parts, included in that list are two crank shafts, 4 pistons, and 8 connecting rods. We mic'd out the crankshaft from my engine, then measured the other two other crank shafts. Well it turns out that one crank is almost an exact match and it had 3 connecting rods still attached. We removed the rods and after inspecting each one, found one that looked pretty good. It measured out to be within 1 -2 thousandths of the original. Talk about lucky.

Because of the slop in the wrist pins, Dennis suggested we remove one from an extra piston and see if it was any tighter fit. We took one out and yes, it was a better fit in the connecting rod, but when we attempted to push it back into the piston in the engine, it was just a bit too tight, so we went back to the original wrist pin. The new connecting rod did fit a bit tighter on the original wrist pin anyway. The keeper rings for the wrist pins were a bit of a challenge to get back in, but perseverance paid off.

We torqued up the connecting rod and it was a perfect fit with no shims, just like the rest of the rods. I now have a 4 piston engine again.

When I dropped the oil pan, most of the gasket stayed up on the block. So the day after we got the rod back in, I spent a couple of hours under the car cleaning the old pan gasket off and scrubbing the gasket surface clean in preparation for putting the oil pan back on.

Today (20th), I decided to plastigauge out the rear main, Dennis is busy, so I'm on my own. The problem is that I don't have the special ford wrench and it's a tight fit for modern wrenches, but here again I lucked out. The rear main cap for my engine is one of the 'thin' boss type, which makes it easier to fit wrenches in. My 1/2" torque wrench with a standard 3/4" socket JUST fits inside the opening. I torqued it all up to 75 lbs, took it off and it measured out to 1.5 thousandths. Almost perfect. I shined up the surface of the cap, oiled the bearing and torqued the cap back on. The castle nuts even lined up with the hole in the bolt for the cotter pins. I'm almost there.

So what's left? I need to torque up the connecting rods, put in the cotter pins and make sure the engine still turns. Once that's done, then it's a matter of putting the oil pan back on, oh, and add some oil too. I'm definitely past the hard part. I should be back on the road soon!

Even with all this tightening up and the replaced connecting rod, I know I haven't eliminated the need for an engine rebuild, but I've hopefully delayed it for a few more miles.

I can't thank Dennis Rinaldi enough for his help, patience and support during this whole ordeal!

Niles Essanay SIlent Film Museum tour 8/14/10

The SCVC Model A club took a tour on 8/14/10 to the Essanay Silent Film Museum in downtown Niles. It turns out that from 1913 to I believe 1923, the Essanay movie production company was based in Niles. This is where Charlie Chaplin filmed 'The Tramp' which was his breakout film. The company was founded by George Spoor and Gilbert Anderson, this is where the 'S' and 'A' (Essanay) name is from. (That's my green roadster in the picture in front of the museum).

The group met at the corner of Calaveras and Park Victoria in front of the donut shop. It took me about 45 minutes covering 17 miles of city streets to get to the meeting point. The tour to Niles was only about 12 miles, again over city streets. I had never been to Niles before, I really enjoyed walking around town. Lots of antique shops, restaurants, etc.

Once we arrived, we wandered into the museum for a couple of silent movies; "The Tramp" with Charlie Chaplin and "The Making of Bronco Billy" with Gilbert Anderson. The museum often has live music accompanying the films for weekend and evening performances, but we were there during off-hours, so they used recorded music. Still quite a fun way to watch movies where you're encouraged to talk, boo, hiss, clap, etc during the film.

We then broke up into groups and had a tour of the projection room (metal lined in case of fire...), were shown many old hand cranked cameras, and had a short lecture about the museum and the production company history.



Then one of our docents took us on a walking tour of Niles. She showed us the former location of the production company, along with several of the bungalos built for the actors and employees which were still standing. We were shown some older homes along with the old courthouse and jail.
I headed back home about 1:30 or 2pm. A successful tour, no car troubles, I didn't get lost, and I made it home safe and sound. The tour was just under 60 miles for me round trip. Now it's time to change the oil in the car.