tales from the Workshop; the grey XK120 story...
Last week, I posted about the grey XK120 that was rolled into the workshop. This 100K euros car needed a valve adjustment - well, that's what we thought...
Off came the radiator and we started to work our way to the camshaft. The water pump proved to be a mess: it leaked like a sieve! I can tell you that finding a new water pump for an XK120 is difficult. Contact with the owner gave the green light to go another route: the XK140's pump is virtually the same. However, the fan blades are larger. Long story: we had a complete XK140 unit lying around and that was adapted (blades were shortened and nice trimmed) to fit behind the 120's radiator.
Problem 2: the 140's pulley, now in place, has a smaller diameter. The belt wouldn't fit anymore!! Luckily, we're in a rural area of the country and a short trip to the local agricultural machines shop delivered a belt! Of the shelf - or better: from the attic!
Problem 3: what we did, one of the valves kept on 'ticking'. Long story short? Someone who did the engine forgot(?) to install cotter halves around the valve stem. Technically: the valve could drop down from the cylinder head down on the piston... That's a 'cylinder head off'- job. Or not? Some head-scratching later our 'Godfather of engineering' Uncle Bill came to the rescue: we blocked everything off and put air pressure to the block. The valve cam up and Uncle Bill managed to install the cotter halves!
Are the problems over? No. When reinstalling everything, we noticed that the 3rd cylinder's spark plug's thread is iffy. So we need to re-do the thread. Of course, you can't reach the hole under the right angle with everything 'in situ'... That's tomorrow's job.
https://i.postimg.cc/cJQ4vJY0/00-B36...A61-EF36-E.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/sx1r4fBB/F4-F01...-F690-DEAA.jpg
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