Well, I guessed that would whip up a few replies!
1. I have done and continue to do more than my fair share of preserving
our heritage of military vehicles and parts.
2. Call me an old cynic but the facts are inescapable. If you drive round
with a block that *might* take water at any time, you risk scrapping a lot
more than the block. Of course, I have no problem with using modern
technology to repair a modern block that some idiot has left out in the
frost without anti freeze and, if you read my posting properly, you will see
that on a jeep block there are cracks that occur between the cylinders and
round the stud holes that can, in certain circumstances, be repaired by the
experts.
3. However, that finest of teachers, experience, tells me that an
internal crack in the distributer drive housing is a death knell for a Jeep
block. If you want to stuff a roll of copper, a contraceptive or anything
else down the hole and drive round with your crank and bearings at risk to
prove me wrong, please be my guest.
4. Sledgehammering blocks at the distributer drive does give the
opportunity to examine the block *internally* at this point and that's quite
an education. There is no doubt that Mother Rust is eating away at the block
on every single one of your lovely preserved military vehicles. The walls
of the Jeep block are very thin round the distributer housing. Fifty five
to sixty years of rust in your WW2 block will not have improved the
situation. Unless I have missed something and the Americans have invented
Rustrodes to stitch weld rust, then all their wonderful technology ain't
gonna fix that.
5. I didn't mention our stock of blocks to try and sell them but simply
to give the uninitiated a guide to the cost of a change. Thanks to the
aforementioned rust problem they will all get sold in the end. Meanwhile if
anybody feels like 'saving' any cracked blocks that come our way, I will be
quite happy to send them on for posterity provided they pay the carriage.
Any takers?
6. Finally, I read another posting about boring out the block to plus .60
thou. This can certainly be done and all the bits are available to this
size but you can sometimes suffer from overheating problems at this oversize
due to thin cylinder walls - especially if the block has previously been
sleeved. The resultant rapid heating and subsequent cooling of the block
can cause condensation problems which give a Mayonaise in the oil effect
similar to a cracked block. This explains how you can get Mayonaise in the
oil without loosing water from the radiator. Purist members of The Jeep
Block Preservation Society should check their stock of cracked blocks and
scrap anything with a bore size over plus .30 thou. The American Army
obviously knew something about jeep blocks during the war because the
original workshop manual recommends rebore and parts available up to that
size only.
Cheers. Mike S. RR Services Ltd. UK
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 23:18:34 PDT