Ayuh, It's a Hemi
The teardown continued last Friday on this four cylinder hemi. Because of the valve angle in the hemispherical combustion chambers, we have to wire the cam followers in place to clear them from the cylinder block, but the manufacturer provided for that.
Regrettably, there’s no sound chip to document the amount of piston slap which must have been present in this engine. I was “shocked”, to quote Claude Rains in “Casablanca” to discover that you could rock the pistons back & forth at the top of the bores, which look a little bit like the Grand Canyon. This is an 1800 cc engine. Read along a bit farther and we’ll show you it’s 2 1/2 litre big brother at the end of the post.
The Auto Shoppe in South Burlington, Vt
Wednesday morning found our new Trailex trailer steaming up the Interstate with an E-type recovered from “Vermont’s Premier Automotive Restoration Shop” where it had gone to repair a rust hole in the left hand rocker panel, and from which we retrieved it in the condition seen here, but with the rust hole still intact.
Click on the picture for Auto Shoppe contact info and also to see the main bonnet panel in the back of the truck which features the new state of the art ‘bondo over rust’ technique. This was quite a nice car before the rough carpenters got a hold of it (see the SCS homepage), what a pity.
Now (note gauge washer)
Then (pre-powdercoat)
I worked late last night (which is also why this post is late) finishing up the reinstallation of the powdercoated metal dash into this early MGB. Hopefully, these before & after pictures will give you a good sense of what an improvement it is, and if you’re going to do it yourself at home this particular finish is known as “Harley Davidson Air Cleaner Black”. However, what I’d really like to draw your attention to is the leather washer on the back of the oil/water gauge, it’s surprising how many times cars show up here with it missing. The field repair for this seems to be to crank the tube nut up even tighter, which sometimes splits the tube nut. The repair for this, of course, is a new oil pipe… and a new set of carpets. Here’s the part number for the leather washer: 2K 4936.
Recently found, and just the right patina: The 2 1/2 litre
