Rare 1952 Jaguar XK120 Motor Rebuild

hello everybody richard michael owen here at own automotive and we have an exciting new project here at the shop it's this really early jaguar xk motor that has a lot of really early design features one of them being the front motor mount here it's a cross brace that was changed early on in production this was this was kind of a flawed design and i'll get into that in more of these unique details as we take it apart and that's the plan really today what we're going to do is disassemble the motor carefully disassemble the motor examine it for wear show off some of the early details and really build a plan for rebuild so where'd this motor come from it came from a 1952 jaguar fixed head that we dragged out of a barn it had been sitting there for 40 years actually alongside an alloy car which we recently sold with sotheby's and yeah it's going to be a neat car it's originally opalescent bronze with tan interior and the plan is to take it back completely original so what we want to do is rebuild this motor don't want to change it too much just refinish it rebuild it as necessary not going to go overboard and i'm excited let's get into it according to the cylinder head here we can see w4520 that's the engine number it should be right near the oil filter housing here let's see what we find let's wipe it off and have a look here oh look at that it's a matching numbers blocking head 4520-8 you can see here the dash was actually the number one but yeah so there we are matching numbers uh let's dig a little further into this thing now that we know what we have okay gonna take out the transmission and bell housing unit don't want to put any unnecessary weight on it just lightly support it from the bottom get the rest of the bell housing bolts up and it should just slide off what we don't want to do is put any strain on the constant painting shaft and bend it we'll record we're live okay let's see what the clutch looks like in the pressure plate there we are oh the release bearing has barely anything left there so now we can have a look inside the bell housing here a lot of oil deposits from the front seal of the transmission the transmission oil has been leaking in here for a long time and making it a mess the release bearing here it's fully mechanical that's why this rod protrudes right through the bell housing and it's suffering there's a graphite bearing there that's worn right down to the metal so this would have needed to be replaced a long time ago and it's been wearing right against this surface here and wearing it out there's a groove in there actually i can feel it so the pressure plate here this is the 10 inch style spring pressure plate we'll get that new with the clutch and a release bearing it comes as a kit just having a look at the hardware here for the bell housing these are all original bees bolts and black oxide and that's how we'll refinish them the one thing i want to talk about was this red paint or rust prevention i don't know what it is but i see it on a lot of the bolts that even came off the chassis and it was originally there from the factory so if anybody knows what that red stuff is please let me know oh yeah and look at the ground strap it failed a long time ago so i have to get a new one of those and we got the original starter bolts here i like using reusing all the original hardware refinishing it it makes things go back together way faster and easier okay just having a look at the flywheel here it's pretty heavily grooved it'll need a resurface i got the 10 bolts here on a lock tab very similar to what we see with the e-types my dad noticed the pilot bushing is just falling right out of there look at that that's pretty easy to redo there it is awesome thank you so we're getting there got the heavy parts off the back side of the motor and i like to do that all while it's still on the engine hoist don't want it tipping over all the while we're developing a plan all the parts we need have you guys been keeping track we need a clutch kit we need a flywheel lock tab pilot bushing and ground strap i had a good look at the flywheel on the bench i don't think it's original to this car it's not stamped with a serial number it doesn't have any timing marks and looking at the ring gear here i think we're going to need to do some work on this or have the machine shop do some work if it would pull a focus you can see a lot of the teeth are missing there on the top surface and so the process is to machine the ring gear right off the flywheel have the machine shop do that and then press fit a new one on there and yeah it wasn't coming off very easy if you have a look on the back side here there's these big dowels and that's why it has to kind of bang and wiggle off the end of the crankshaft my next task is to deal with the top end of the motor so the cylinder head and the cylinder head is one of the things that i really like about this motor it's the early style cylinder head that came from a foundry called william mills it kind of has these siamese spark plug i don't know what you call them beds and the studless cam covers these things look really beautiful they're studless because the later ones featured studs and acorn nuts all the way around the camshaft cover to stop the leaks and i see all sorts of modifications like these small set screws and hold downs on the top here to prevent oil from spilling out and i see i'm going to be probably fighting some sealer too so i'm going to try to take these cam covers off without bending or warping them they're extremely rare and i think we're going to try to fill these holes and make this car look back to original now while the cylinder head's still attached to the motor it's going to give me a bit of leverage so i can take this manifold off these get really stuck on so i'll show you the process we'll take out the studs and maybe that will help and assist with that so yeah really the next task is to get these cam covers off and i see a lot of sealant here so it might be a bit of a struggle okay i've removed all the fasteners for the cam cover i just want to take out this rear plug that might help work it loose because it just will give it more room to move okay light taps with the soft mallet here oh it sounds pretty hollow i think it's gonna lift off of there [Music] yeah it's hollow all the way around so i think it's just going to lift right off oh look at that okay what do we got here so make sure i got everything in view definitely see some deposits in there so the engine's gonna be you know pretty well used i imagine i don't see any cracks though so it looks like these things are gonna be reusable just have these uh holes in the end here to contend with gonna weld those up awesome okay let's just have a quick look at what we've uncovered definitely have an oil bath in there that's normal that's what keeps the whole top end lubricated not too much drama here cams are looking good just from a visual from a visual perspective see the upper timing chain here now one of the guides here is busted off that's not a big deal though that just helps locate it when it goes inward to remove the cylinder head uh the lock wire now that's not looking so good that doesn't look like a professional job so i don't know we're likely dealing with maybe not a great rebuild one of the cam followers is stuck down one of the valves is stuck now that's really common with these that's why you don't want to turn the engine over until you make sure that the cam shafts are out of the car and all the valves are actually free other than that we're looking pretty good uh you can see when you overly seal these engines over here it puts a build up sometimes ingress and like just like that there it falls down into the motor and clogs up the oil pump you can see right there too and then that lubrication point down there there's also some sealant stuck in there so it's important not to use too much sealant when putting the cam covers on but overall looking healthy i would say there we go so now we can see why these intake manifolds get stuck on here these are really long studs and if there's a lot of rust in there there's no hope of ever getting these off with this one look at that not a lot of corrosion that's why i was able to just tap it off really sweet we can see the part number here c4953 and the william mills number there there's also some stampings up here in the corner not sure what those mean and the outlet pipe with the otter switch that controls the starting carb on the inside here let's see how the gasket was performing seeing the water jacket quite a lot of corrosion next up i want to deal with these studs i'm going to take them all out of the cylinder head get them refinished measure them all because there's a lot of different lengths here and i want to put them back in the same spot so i'm going to measure them and note where each one goes now these studs typically come out of the cylinder head pretty easy they're in there with a coarse thread so for the most part you can get them out but if they won't budge for whatever reason if i have to use too much force then we'll use some heat but i think they're gonna back out let's see first one here look at that just sliding out no issues whatsoever so there you go nope so there you go you can see the coarse thread in there that's why these withdraw so easy i want to reinstall them i'll put them in with a little teflon they don't need to be really torqued in there they just need to sit in place so next up i want to deal with the cam shafts i want to take them out have to deal with the timing chain the timing gear so i'll show you how that's done but first i just want to clean off the caps here they have a stamping in them and i want to make sure they all match so i'll clean it up and then we'll show you what what is revealed now after cleaning it up we have the numbers matching see that hp4 on the cap to the head you gotta make sure that those numbers are matching at a white right way around yes the stampings need to be close together okay let's continue on we're making progress but we got a long way to go before i get ahead of myself i just want to regroup so figure out what we have what we're going to do and what we need to order so i have all these aluminum pieces here on the bench i'm going to clean them off with a process called walnut blasting that is a real safe way to get rid of these oil deposits and not put any grit inside like the intake manifold here i also took it apart i was trying to take the otter switch out and of course the fasteners had corroded in and needed to weld that stud and get them out with welding and luckily i got all those three out now another thing i did was i tested the back side of the intake manifold with a straight edge and it seems nice and flat that's great so i have to also consider my ordering what i need to find i don't know if you can order them or the studless gaskets that don't have the holes here at the front so i get a proper gasket for this really early engine and lastly just stand organized bag and everything and it's going to go to its respective refinisher make good progress okay next up i have to loosen the chain tension behind this breather cap believe it or not is an eccentric cam that moves the center sprocket up and down it'll loosen the tension on the upper chain so let's crack into this give it a light tap take it off this is a constant area of leaking these motors i'll bring you guys in close we can have a look at this system okay got a close-up here you can see there's a lock bolt whitworth size that needs to get loosened and then i gotta free up this other secondary lock and then we can move this cam either way to reduce or increase the chain tension oh that's really on there there we go should be good sometimes this gets all rusted in place so it might need some tapping well it's gonna turn now let's see oh it is okay that stops freeing up a little more that's what we want to see is it that nice movement there this isn't the best tool we have a better one but okay and now we can see we have movement here there we are so it's freed up the chain completely nice so what that means now if you look at the top here you can take off the sprocket the cam sprocket it's toothed it has a tooth tooth design in there so we'll under these nuts a lock ring and then we'll be able to uh move the sprockets inward that's a pretty cool system i'll show you what's going on let me explain that a little bit okay i got those two nuts off that had that crappy lock wire on them and now i should be able to tap just using this tap the uh sprocket off of the end of the camshaft there it goes let's get the other side it's not on there by much there we are next comes the cool part so check this out not the sprockets are disconnected we can tuck them in towards the center of the engine see that there we are and now with them up tight in the center that provides clearance so the cylinder head can come up and off with the camshafts on it without disturbing the timing and it's a wonderful design i love this okay let's see if we can now wiggle this camshaft free here the cap there it is lots to see here lots to see here we got the cam followers in their guides they should be free moving like this a couple are stuck down so there's some drama there either the springs are broken or the valve is bent now like a lot of this this system here that you see it doesn't usually wear out and it's perfectly acceptable i think just to reuse it um you know maybe you can change the cam bearings this one here showing a little bit of you can when you start seeing lines in it like that and ridges that's when it's time for replacement but all the rest of the cam bearings look pretty good the intake side here yeah pretty good no drama now on the bench i have the camshafts i did a quick measurement i measured about five thou difference between all the lobes which is fine i think these are reusable they have 5 16 lift and they're marked s e so i think they're i think that these are camshafts have been added to the engine i think it might have a longer duration i'm not sure exactly what the sc camshaft difference was because it has the same lift as the standard spec and again we can see more of the camshaft bearings here we'll probably end up replacing those all right cylinder heads coming off had to deal with some hardware here at the front there's some studs poking through down here and some coarse thread bolts that go through and hold the front of the cylinder head on so getting ready for liftoff i took out two studs kind of at the ends of the cylinder head so it won't get caulked as we try to lift it up with this engine hoist so let's apply some gentle pressure and see what happens three two one lift off oh it's off it's coming off so lucky it's up at the back quarter inch okay we got movement whoa whoa whoa whoa it's still oh yeah it's coming off nice just get your plastic quite so in there and just it is it's recording right now is it oh it's getting stuck on the timing gear there you go oh bring it on well that cylinder head came off nice and easy sure happy about that what was lurking underneath here though isn't so pleasant what do i mean well look at the rust down in the water jacket this engine was run without uh proper antifreeze for a long time it was actually attacking the steel cylinder head gasket you see it was just eroding away and this was going to have a blowout in no time so what can i say about the pistons they look like the original domed pistons you can kind of see the dome if i go down here and they look like the original pistons i can see the um the the stamping on them which was the sizing from the factory now the cylinder wall it has an appreciable step here at the top which means that we're going to need new pistons and probably bore this engine out 20 thou over okay so here we have the old head gasket the one that's getting eaten away by coolant and its replacement which is a multi-layer steel gasket mls gasket from kinetic you can actually get these in three five and even seven layers and i think it's the way to go this is kind of like a modern oem style cylinder head gasket that would be in your new car you can really tell a multi-layer steel gasket because it has these tanks which overhang out got the cylinder head here on the bench now a lot of people say this is improper storage but for the short term i think it's fine the concern is warpage due to gravity i'm not even sure if that's true but if anybody has any definitive proof that aluminum warps due to gravity over time please let us know in the comments below so what do we got here we got the cam followers they're looking a little worn i can see these round ridges uh dug into them so probably get new followers i just took the first one out here you can see there's a shim in there and that gets the valve clearance the right valve clearance so i'll try to measure them all as i take them off but this one at the end of the valve i can see it's been ground down now that's because either the previous person didn't have the right shim or the valve seat is recessed too much so um yeah usually a lot of machine shops would never do this it's a big no-no if they have to start grinding the valves they just replace the seat out right because there's not a lot of clearance here between the keeper and the valve and you want the valve to touch the shim so yeah what i'm going to do is take out all these followers and let's check this head for warpage now that i got those followers out i discovered a little bit of bad news and that's that this cylinder head is warped it's convex that's really typical these things kind of warp convex so it's high in the middle i'll show you what the stair straight edge is doing in the cam bearing journals and on the surface here for the valve cover it's just slightly warped probably more than ten thou and you know that's one reason why these hold downs were put up at the front because how is how are those cam covers supposed to seal all that oil the pool the oil we saw here if it was warped and there was a huge gap at one end so hopefully fingers crossed it's actually warped on the bottom so this whole thing can be straightened out all together because if somebody has decked the bottom flat that's going to make it a lot harder to correct this problem so let's get this thing flipped over and check out the bottom one thing i'm going to do is take out all these studs i really don't want to get them bent the studless cam cover is hypersensitive to these being bent or if they're the wrong height so i'm going to take them all out we'll flip this thing over and see if it's okay on the bottom side got the cylinder head flipped over here we can see part number c2242 that makes this the very first style of cylinder head that was fitted to the xk motor there's a lot of corrosion here these water jackets are not looking good in fact down here at the end we can see that the coolant here has attacked the aluminum past the sealer almost right to the edge of the seal so this is going to need to be built up this cylinder head is going to need a lot of work so what i'm going to do next is i'll clean off one side we'll get the steered straight edge and hopefully we'll see the same shape of warp so the cylinder head can all be put back straight all right i have to say i'm pretty disappointed i cleaned up one edge here of the bottom of the cylinder head and we have a straight edge on there the steered straight edge and it's perfectly flat now why is that that's because whoever was machining this in the past had a warped head they decked the bottom and they went forward and that really is not smart what the problem with that is that we have cam bearing journals chem cover surfaces they're all warped and now we want to try to correct that and it's going to be a lot more difficult with the deck being shaved completely flat so what we're going to do is i'm going to clean up this cylinder head we're going to get it through the parts washer i'm going to get it walnut blasted and my machine shop is going to try its best to unwarp it then if it can get unwarped it has to be crack checked it has to be welded these water jacket areas need to be welded they corroded too much into the seal surface and then we can go through the whole regular process of valves and valve guides and valve seats so it's going to be a big process to get this back to a1 we'll try our best with the original head and yeah that's the story of the cylinder head um i'm gonna move on to the block now so i got the engine on a stand here just makes it a little safer to work on and at a better working height so what i got to do is take this water pump off it has a bolt that's in behind the pulley here got to get pulley off has a chunk missing out of it i think i'm going to heat it up and use a puller let's see how that goes not a very hot flame here just enough to get things moving i wonder if some gentle taps might do it yeah it's off awesome okay great little heat really helped there save the pulley okay now we can see what's going on with that pulley removed there's a very unusual bolt here that kind of slices right into the water passage there and that's because this is the second version that was fitted to these xk engines i'll show you what a first version looked like it actually was a much slimmer design and then when they needed to enlarge the flow i guess the one they enlarged the whole water pump right around this bolt here and that's why there it looks like a kind of a design flaw really let's get it off okay time to take the water pump off i thought well it's attached to the engine i'd remove this fitting well it was so corroded the fitting actually just fell apart even though i heated it up around here so i'm gonna leave that in there because the water pump rebuilder will be able to deal with that that's a good point actually is this water pump you send it out to get rebuilt that's i'm not doing it myself let's see what the water jacket looks like some light taps there there we are pretty crusty i must say i think there's an adjustment here you can measure the clearance here on the impeller to the body but this one's going to get rebuilt in any case holy oh it doesn't look so bad in there does it all right next up i want to deal with the crankshaft damper there's rubber in here holding the outside to the inside and it perishes so it's always a good idea to replace crankshaft dampers now hope i can get this early style brand new uh that remains to be seen but i take up this crank nut it has some dog drives here for a for a starting handle which is really interesting because only the first 50 or so xk's aluminum ones have a hole in the radiator so you can use a starting handle on the um on the engine i guess it was just too big of an engine to start by hand here's a picture of my friend michael with one in his hand uh it was one of his favorite parts of uh number 53 there so next i have to get this thing off it's on a tapered fitting they're usually not on that tight i'm going to try a puller maybe a few taps let's see what a few taps do sweet good thing i put the foam down foamed awesome okay with that crank damper out of the way we can look at the cross brace motor mount here so what's interesting is that this is actually the second generation block c4820 and one of the main differences are these extra holes for a proper motor mount but at the time i guess the chassis were still being made to accept this cross brace and it's not a great design these things flex they crack and they they're not a great design so i can see why they move to a more traditional amount like we see with the e-type in the end term they put this small strut in here i guess that helped the flex but really we can see the damage here i think that this is supposed to be more to 45 and the whole motor and transmission we're actually sitting a little rearward we can see the rear mount is actually bent as well so i can see where they wanted to update the design that wasn't a significant enough motor mount for the weight of this whole unit okay with the oil pan off now we can take the timing cover off it attaches onto the bottom of it i'm not used to seeing these studs poking out this is an early xk feature for that motor mount but i think it should just slide off here let's see how this goes okay it's loose now gentle persuasion here okay wow look at this so here we can see the two change the upper chain and the lower chain the tensioner here it's just a spring blade type tensioner not really sophisticated it kind of does the job though i mean it's somewhat loose i mean you can see its action there trying their best this is before hydraulic tensioners of course and i don't know if it's on count but this is a really long distributor drive going down to the oil pump holy dude hey sweetie pup it's old okay i got all that timing gear out of the block here we can see it's really dirty a lot of grease and grime it was a messy job getting that out so i'm just trying to regroup as i did earlier and develop a plan for everything that came out so we see the guides here that we're down to the rivets this is a rubber guide it's down to the rivet so that's no good definitely got to replace that and try to find a high quality one because these have been known to be made with low quality rubber and sometimes they have to get replaced almost right away here's the tensioner itself well the metal was really grooved and almost all the way through so you're gonna need a new one of those now there is some different kits available to convert to a hydraulic tensioner um i don't know if i'm gonna go that way with this motor maybe just get a new spring and go with it if we can find it we've got a timing cover here as i said earlier we somebody shoved in the wrong threads down here so we have to clean that up but you know when you start looking at the timing and the timing gear you know you're in trouble when the motor is dirtier inside than it is outside yeah that's uh generally cause for concern so what can we say about the upper timing gear mechanism here well you know this is one i've had walnut blasted and here's what came out of the car so we got a long way to go to get this clean and clean enough to put back together now we're going to put new chains on this that's for sure but there's a lot of talk about the sprockets here that drive the chain and how they wear now i have a new one here i'll show you what that looks like in comparison to an old one i wish i had one that was more worn out to really show you guys what a worn one looks like so what happens is the chain actually digs into the side of the tooth and when it gets to the point where it kind of creates a ridge on the side of the tooth that's when it's really worn out now a lot of people say oh yeah well when it's point when it's when it's worn when it's pointed over but that's really just the side loading of the chain kind of eating away at the at the side of the chain so you know i guess it's another point of where some people replace all the sprockets some people just replace the lower sprocket um i guess we'll have to have a really close look at all this stuff and decide what to do all right before i turn the motor over i want to have a look at the deck see what we're working with i cleaned it off put the straight edge on there very very minimal discrepancy so it's usable in that regard now this deck still has the stamping numbers for the bore grade that tells me that it's never been uh surfaced and the surface has never changed here and it looks like a lot of the original pistons are here because they're they kind of match the pistons should be graded one letter higher than the bore so you see there here we see a g h ff to f g to h f to g [Music] f to g now this one this piston may have been replaced because it's a g to g and the piston looks a little different has a stamping slightly in a different spot so we might see that some of the lower end of this engine might be uh not original and just want to have a look at the oil pan here took that off sorry guys missed that the only thing really interesting is this um sender unit it actually sends to a gauge on the dashboard and it relays the oil level and that's pretty interesting because we're in an era right now where bmw they don't have a dipstick and they rely solely on a device like this so yeah pretty ahead of their time look at that right on whoa look at that oh just there we are okay thanks this thing float in here does it look at that pit it's up and down doesn't it it's just very weak isn't it floats in the oil somehow got that motor flipped over and my dad had the floating suction chamber that's what they call it in his hand there it moves up and down with the oil level to make sure the oil pump isn't starved the first thing i want to do is set up the dial indicator i want to see what the end float of the crankshaft is so we can see if we need to order any new thrust bearings or not that's pretty important to not forget before it comes all apart now i want to talk about the specification of what we see here i'm going to geek out a little bit so bear with me this is a combination of some really early parts and some later upgraded parts and so when you take apart these xk motors they're not all the same what do i mean by this well you have these sludge plugs here you can see this pinned over kind of machine screw in there and those come out earlier designs that was a welsh plug in there that you couldn't easily thread out so that's nice those will come out they need to come out to to clean out all the heavy metals that are in there the lead and whatnot that's in the oil way so really important to take those out and i'll get order six new ones of those and we'll clean those out and see what that looks like now get into part numbers okay so the crankshaft here we see it says c2239 and that's that's a very early crankshaft number which kind of matches the the year of the car being 1952 but according to the spare parts catalog it should have a c4808 so i'm not quite sure what to believe the the parts catalog also says we should have a later type oil pump this is a really early type oil pump it has two gears it mounts on the side of the main cap here and these things you can't buy them new they have to be rebuilt in england so this one's going to come off the engine and get rebuilt by specialists in england same with the water pump and what else can i say um well one thing i want to do is check the main caps make sure they're numbered correctly so if we look on the block here ff1 ff2 ff3 all the main cap should match those numbers so i want to double check that there is some marking here on the surface it's not too much of a cause of concern but it does definitely doesn't look original has something happened to piston number one here i'm not sure okay well let's see what this envelope looks like okay let's measure how much this crankshaft moves far and aft spec is from four to six thousands and uh if it's out of spec we need different thrust washers we'll need to order them so here we're going to gently move the crankshaft back i can see the dial indicator there move ten thou so what that means is i need to fit oversized thrust washers in this motor probably just one fourth out oversized thrust washer to bring it back into spec because temp hours too much movement at the crankshaft four and aft okay next step i want to take this pinned in sludge plug out i like to use a hex socket and i'll just give it a light tap to make sure it's well seated i get the most contact possible and i've just jammed the crankshaft with a wooden hammer oh i just moved gotta find something better you see here damn that's in there okay i put as much torque as i am comfortable with on this sludge plug it ain't coming out so i'm gonna get the machine shop to take off a little bit of material here so they can withdraw it without having to fight these really heavy pins on all four sides there so next up i want to take this distributor drive gear out it has a gear and a shaft and a driving dog but before i do anything i want to make sure that it's going to go back in the same position so i put the motor back to top dead center on one and six made sure it's firing on number one and just looked at that dog drive gear down in that shaft noted the angle so i can get it right when it goes back together so there's a bit of a process to getting this gear off the end of the shaft and it needs to come off because i'll show you another angle it's nestled right in with this last main bearing cap this gear needs to come out before that cap lifts off okay i don't want to put any stress on the gear when i crank off this nut so i'm going to withdraw all this stuff off the crankshaft so this distance piece this is usually always a change item that gets changed because the front seal this is the seal surface and it's nice to renew okay i could try a puller because this uh these gears are not moving with a light tap so look at that it's just sliding off by hand um so it must be that distributor drive that's really stuck on there see you moving okay it's off let's see if this will just come off of here that's pretty good i got a bit of torque on there it's on there no just a little heat here okay got it hot not really that hot let's try this again [Music] oh come on okay so i'm gonna try my best here with the impact what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go i'm gonna hold the 7 8 nut put the extension on there go from three to a half and this fits nicely at 15 mil socket so i'm gonna crank on that and see how it does this should be it really this isn't it i'm done cut it off or something send a prayer there it is look at that [Music] holy okay we're off finally holy smokes you just tap this in and out the aluminum punch here it's gonna end up on the ground there we are look at that so now we have clearance we can take the main cap off okay let's have a look at piston number one though we're here at the bottom the big end of piston number one has these old-school slotted nuts on here and one of the cotter pins disappeared where'd that end up probably somewhere in the oil pan filter system there good job rich okay moment of truth looks pretty good actually holy clean it up here and have another look pistons all came out and we'll go to the bench i'll show you what they look like but really the crankshaft here it looks pretty good i mean there's some staining here what i'll need to do is take some accurate measurements with a mic and just make sure that these are within spec and then we can just fit some standard connecting rod bearings in there the big ends now go to the bench here we can see the pistons and i was right piston number one was changed how do i know that well it's a different piston from the others it has these grooves cut out in it and you know a g piston and a g hole that's kind of was a tell-tale sign so what i think about these pistons well they look like the original pistons because they were graded correctly the split type piston which is a later design but they've been knurled this is kind of an old-school way to get around reusing the pistons for in a rebuild so we're going to need new pistons for sure probably going to go 20 thou over because i think these are the original pistons really the only thing we're going to save here are the connecting rods and caps the bolts were over tightened they're regularly changed anyhow see that's the plan i just got to strip these down save the connecting rods they've corroded quite a bit see that so i'm going to get them walnut blasted get them looking nice and move on all right next up i want to take off the number one main bearing cap here and there's a scroll and a seal here so i think this is a pretty interesting area i'll start with the main bearing cap itself okay these main bolts should be 80 foot-pounds let's see i got this torque wrench to 100. i think they were torqued correctly okay let's ease this off right here it's on with some dowels so he kind of wiggles back and forth to get it off one person in my last engine rebuild video said you can actually put the bolt back in and wiggle it as you pull it up which is a great idea going back and forth here just gently getting it off okay here's the first look at a main journal okay so i'm gonna clean this up and have a look let's give it a wipe that's all very normal very good wear nice let's have a look at the crank has the same staining a bit of a ridge actually here again it'll be measured and we'll see i think it's supposed to be 2.75 inches i have to go look at the manual okay next we'll take this off okay i got those two screws out take this housing off oh come on off of there again we're fighting dowels i can use my non-marking pliers here to take this off oh there it goes we got a wiggler okay so here it is this is the scroll there's no seal and what happens here is that the i don't know you can see it yeah you guys can see this so the scroll brings back the oil onto this slinger which will then drop down into the bottom of the engine kind of down into this area here of this retainer so it's important that it goes on the right way if this goes on the other way which is totally possible it's going to leak down onto the floor so uh definitely gotta make sure this side is towards the inside of the motor now as the bearings wear this scroll can be worn down and loses its effectiveness so the modern solution to that is to grind it down to 75 mil and put a neoprene seal and get a new housing here that houses the modern seal and i think that's a good way to go especially if this scroll shows where so i have an interesting development to share with everybody here i took off the center main bearing cap but notice the thrust washer was completely worn down that's where that tenth out end float came from and just have to look at the crank here i think it'll come through the thrust washer surface is all pitted rust pitted and what that's done is it's prematurely worn the thrush washer down it's the same on both sides i'll show you what the other side looks like too so there's two approaches to solving this issue one is to find a new crankshaft this one has to be ground down on all the bearing surfaces anyhow the other is to try to find some obscure like 10 10 thou over thrust washers and then cut this surface down on the crankshaft so if anybody knows if ten thou thrust washers available please let me know otherwise i think we're on the hunt for a new crank all right down to the very last few steps on this engine block before i can get hot tank dipped and really cleaned out and in preparation for that i want to take out these plugs these core plugs frost plugs welsh plugs whatever you call them and maybe even this one if it's looking bad now i think we're going to find a lot of corrosion in there i know that because looking from the top of the block i see a lot of corrosion down in there so we're likely to find a lot of corrosion down near the bottom i suspect and i got to talk about these apertures they send the cooling to the cylinder head this one in particular let's look at a close-up here it's getting really small on the ceiling surface but i think it's just barely enough we're just going to barely squeak by with this block i mean the other fix would be trying to weld on the top of the deck i've never i don't have any experience doing that and it's pretty risky from what i understand you can crack the block when you weld it so on the other side here took out some of these plugs that open up the oil way that's really good practice um to get that all opened up before it gets hot tank dipped i think these were actually plugs that um the the factory used to plug up a drilling that sent the oil away to the other side of the block now these frost plugs they don't look like they were installed that well see a lot little bashing and whatnot on them but they actually look like they held i don't see any leaks down the side of the block so um they did their job they're kind of an old-school welsh type plug and i'll show you my method for taking them out let's give it a try okay this is the lowest plug right above the oil filter housing and the jaguar symbol here so uh let's see what we find behind it see the rust already falling out there it is oh i see some crusty rust in there look at that this is all blocked material here look at this all oh man it's really dry holy just full of powder and cake in there holy good thing to get that out of there it's all material lost are they inside of the block good thing good thing these blocks are cast so thick wow okay well that does it for this episode of the xk motor thanks for watching everybody and here you can see a different phase now where i've cleaned the motor clean the head ready for the machine shop and uh i like to get these things really cleaned up as best i can before they go to the machine shop this cylinder head it's been walnut blasted after i went through the parts washer mild phosphoric acid cleans it all up cleans that valley out this thing isn't painted so i really want to get that aluminum shining bright at me even before it goes to the machine shop and oh boy do i hope we can save this one it's definitely been warped and decked so it'll be a bit of a challenge to get this one back in the car but i think we can do it keep the car matching numbers keep the block and the head together after what 70 years so what did i do the block well it's been um hot tank dip that got rid of all the oil but to get rid of the rust i actually give it a mild acid wash and definitely have to after the acids on there got to wash that rinse that out of there can't leave acid on a block that's for sure and now i don't know if you can see it just poking to the right there but that's the xk 150 project everybody wants to see so please let me know if you want me to follow up on this xk motor see how we do on that cylinder head go through the parts ordering process maybe see what we order in maybe a little bit of the build and seeing it running if you're interested in that please let me know because that xk 150 and behind there is taking up all my time so yeah this cylinder is looking pretty nice there then we got those core plugs i was contemplating taking them out but i didn't and i think that's a good thing not to mess with those and yeah i guess that's it that's the end of this episode as always if you have any tips tricks comments or trade secrets i'd love to hear from you guys in the comments below all right that's it thanks for watching everybody see you later bye-bye you

Channel: Richard Michael Owen

Views: 386,504

Rating: 4.849432 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Qo96pQZ5Y78

Length: 53min 45sec (3225 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021