Chris Williams' Journal

This is a painful entry to make and I've been putting it off.
The report from Leo, my engine guy, was not good and although most engine parts are serviceable, the general condition of the engine was pretty appalling, showing signs of a considerable amount of neglect.
The rocker shaft, which we had previously thought may have been OK, looked more like the camshaft with a huge amount of wear. The rocker bushes however look fine.
The cylinders and pistons showed signs of very dirty intakes, possibly run with no air-filters.
The cams matched the lifters and the crankshaft bearings and rod bearings were very worn and pitted, the pits from the obvious water intrusion and having been left for a long period of time.
3 of the 4 top rings were broken and most of the other rings were jamming in the grooves.
The oil pump was in amazingly poor condition and will have to be replaced.
The sludge and grime throughout the motor was very heavy and the condition of the sump strainer was obviously due to the fouling and the pressure simply collapsed it. The scoring on the oil pump innards was very heavy.
I know when I cleaned the sump, I was scraping a heavy layer of clay-like sludge from the bottom about 10mm thick. This sort of residue was throughout the motor.
The cylinders had been bored to .020" over at some stage but it had done an enormous milage since then and had had little maintenance in that time.
The good news is that the block, camshaft and crankshaft are serviceable and although expensive the recon. process should be fairly straight forward.
Leo's going to do the machining required and supply the parts and I'm going to do the assembly. He would do it but it's labour intensive and therefore expensive.
It's something I think we (David and I) should be able to do with some help from the forum and with some reading.
With a little luck, we should have it back to us within a week and in a few weeks we should have it all back together and maybe up and running.
The galling thing about this is that according to the PO, the motor was one area that should have been good when in fact it will end up costing me about $2000 plus all the time to get it to a point were it is suitable. I look at this as being $2000 dollars on the purchase price that he ripped me off. But, maybe he didn't know.
The area of concern was the gearbox and I haven't looked at that yet.