Posts: 972
Today was a very stressful and frustrating day for my wife and I at work. I almost called off working on the car because my brain was fried. We really need to get going on this though so we worked on it. Unfortunately it ended up being a total waste of time.
I installed the crank seal in the seal plate. I showed the wife some pictures that Andy (82DMC-12) had sent me of how to seal in the plate. I have attached his photos.
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Posts: 972
I had my wife apply the sealant. These are the pics.
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Posts: 972
I installed the cover and the wife installed the bolts. I snugged all the bolts down.
We installed the engine stand mount and set the engine block on the stand (DON?T DROP IT!!).
We decided to call it a night.
Proud as a peacock I messaged 82DMC-12 from my truck before I left the shop. This is what transpired next....
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Posts: 972
So......we went back into the shop, took the engine back off the stand, removed the mount, removed the seal plate. Sure enough...tiny gap in the back corner. It would have leaked. Now everything is a sticky mess.
I take the blame. It's totally my fault. I should have told her how important it was to get the corners really well.
Now the sealant is a sticky mess. We covered the engine and went home defeated. I am glad to have a friend like Andy. It would have been awful to get the whole car back together and have it leak.
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Posts: 972
This.afternoon we made a new gasket, stripped the old sealant, and re-installed the seal plate. I figured we could get the cylendar liners and pistons installed also but it was not to be so. No matter what we did we could not get a single piston into one of the cylendars. Super frustrating. Going to try to find a better piston ring compressor to buy or rent this week.
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Location: North GA
Posts: 6,177
Club(s): (SEDOC) (DCUK)
Assuming the pic shows right before you tried to install it, try loading the piston into the lower half of the ring compressor instead of the top half...Soak with oil first.
Posts: 972
I bought a better piston ring compressor today. We managed to get the piston into one of the sleeves. We got excited but that excitement faded when we tried over and over to get the next piston into the cylendar. We said "Okay...what the heck are we doing wrong?" I kept thinking "I bet if we put the origonal rings on the pistons they'd go right in!!" Okay well if that is true why is that? At the same time we were noticing that the top piston ring wouldn't go flush with the piston. Okay so....did we clean the piston ring grooves good enough??....Did we even clean the grooves at all (besides just general cleaning of the pistons)? Nope I don't think either one of us did..
So we are going to take all of the rings off from all of the pistons and make sure the grooves are cleaned out really good, put the piston rings back on, and try installing the pistons again.
I watched some YouTube videos on cleaning piston rings and in the comments someone said "Just soak in brake fluid. Easiest way to clean pistons." So I pulled the rings off one piston and left it soaking in brake fluid. Hopefully it works and doesn't somehow damage the piston.
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Location: Olathe, KS
Posts: 1,680
My VIN: 11596
Did you vapor hone them?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAP602u14vQ
Andy Lien
VIN 11596 Jan 1982 build - owned since Nov. 2000!
Total frame-off restoration completed 2021-2023
Photography and Backpacking is life.
Was Fargo, ND
Now Kansas City
Posts: 972
No I didn't. I'd love to but that opens up more potential issue because I now need to get into removing and reinstalling the grundion pins. In fact the manual says if you remove them new ones need to be pressed in using special tools.Originally Posted by 82DMC12
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Posts: 972
Tonight we thoroughly cleaned the piston ring grooves. It was time consuming tedious work but we got it done. I ripped off thin strips of sandcloth and used it to clean the oil rings grooves. This worked great and made quick work of it. Obviously you need to be careful and not go crazy with the sandcloth. We used a stiff plastic bristle brush and little dental scraper tools to clean the other grooves and finish off the oil ring grooves.
I didn't take pictures but the pistons went into the cylendars pretty slick this time.
I feel like the technique for installing pistons in cylendars is to just SEND IT! The reason I say that is because there is always this moment where the ring is exiting the compressor but hasn't quite made it into the cylendar yet. So if you go slow the rings sometime get hung up on the way in. If you go fast it doesn't have time to push out as it is transitioning from the ring compressor to the cylendar.
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