Wit and wisdom from How To Rebuild Your Engine by Ben Watson

[Number_35]

I picked up a copy of How To Rebuild Your Engine by Ben Watson from the library a few days ago, and am really enjoying it. (I don't anticipate having to rebuild an engine in the foreseeable future, but it's a good read and I'm always glad to learn.)

He writes knowledgeably and with a bit of dry wit. From Chapter 4 - Fasteners:

The Art of Torquing Fasteners, Theorem 1: Tighten a bolt until the head breaks off, then back it off a quarter turn.

Corollary 1: The more expensive the component into which you are tightening the bolt, the greater the probability of stripping the threads out of that component.

Corollary 2: The likelihood of breaking a bolt is directly proportional to the difficulty in accessing the broken bolt.

Corollary 3: The likelihood of stripping a threaded hole increases as the degree of difficulty in even seeing that hole exists.

Corollary 4: What works great for everyone else will never work for you when it really needs to.

 

[KGMtech]

Insert 4 fingers into tub of never seize, then smear onto threads. Attempt to use papertowel to remove excess from threads, give up on getting it off your fingers, arm, clothes.

 

[Number_35]

More wisdom from Mr Watson:

Carefully remove the valve keepers, and put them in a safe place. It is a little-known fact of engine rebuilding that an extraterrestrial race from the planet Zophod uses valve keepers as a nutritional source. Being a generous race, they take only one valve keeper from every engine rebuilt in the galaxy. Protect your valve keepers.

 

[Number_35]

And more ...

Rotate the block upside-down, and remove the oil pan. It will in all likelihood be stuck. After the bolts or nuts are removed, tap gently on the sides of the pan with a soft mallet. This will not loosen the pan for removal; it is just a ceremony of vain hope that professional mechanics perform before driving a chisel between the block and the pan.

And a little further on ...

Push the pistons out of the block. If you plan on reusing either a piston or a rod, it would be better for you to catch the piece than for the floor to catch it.

 

[meep]

Ok, this one had be rolling. I mean, I never would have done that, certainly not me, nope.

“Push the pistons out of the block. If you plan on reusing either a piston or a rod, it would be better for you to catch the piece than for the floor to catch it.”

man it’s been a long time.

 

[Number_35]

Ok, this one had be rolling. I mean, I never would have done that, certainly not me, nope.

“Push the pistons out of the block. If you plan on reusing either a piston or a rod, it would be better for you to catch the piece than for the floor to catch it.”

man it’s been a long time.

Some years ago I was prying a harmonic balancer off, it was resisting, and all of a sudden it popped off and hit the garage floor. Gah! There was hexagonal plate at the back of the assembly, almost certainly associated with the CPS, and one of the points got bent.

I straightened it out, changed the timing belt, and put everything back together. No problem at all. Phew!

I always put a pile of shop rags down after that.

 

[meep]

I had pulled a VW motor out of a junkyard car and brought it home. It was from a super beetle with the autostick trans, so it had both a torque converter, and a very rusted clutch. I was in high school and didn’t have anyone teaching me or showing me…. the manual portion of the clutch was rusted solid and under tension. I pried at it a couple times and it wouldn’t budge. Turned around to grab a hammer and I heard SNAP. Spun around and the clutch fell out of the air.

i put rags around stuff like that, and radiator caps, now.

 

[Number_35]

If the valve neck accidentally comes in contact with the grinding stone, replace the valve. This has likely weakened the valve in a critical area. Reusing the valve may cause it to break off the stem and become stuck in the piston in the future. Although this can generate some unusual sculptures, it is hardly worth the trouble.

 

[Number_35]

Back in the days of duck tails, white socks, and cuffs in your blue jeans, you might have found Billy Joe down at the town drive-in grinding his valves with a suction cup on a stick, to impress the girls and lesser males. This method is known as lapping the valves. A spot of valve-grinding or valve-lapping compound is dabbed on the valve seat. This compound is an abrasive grit suspended in a lubricant. When the valve is placed on the seat and rotated back and forth rapidly, the valve imperfections and the seat imperfections are theoretically matched.

The reality is that matched imperfections are still imperfections. Lapping also does not correct incorrect valve seat width.