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I finally started my ’35 845 for the first time yesterday. It lit off on the second turn. I believe the last time it was run was briefly in 1965 after sitting since 1948.
It wasn’t perfect, I have some issues to sort out -leaks and one tappet started tapping again when the oil warmed up but after they first pumped up and smoothed out. The oil pump pumped and the generator genned.
Now I have to get enough stuff mounted to drive it.
Jim
Congrats, always a good feeling to hear a long dormant engine come to life!
Hooray !! Glad to read that the engine is alive again.. How did you like the sound of your exhaust system since we had another thread regarding exhausts. ?
Let the engine run a few more times, there might be a small bit of dirt stopping one of the hydraulic lifters from sealing the check ball, it might migrate away, and stay quiet.
Greg Long
As many of you know, a few years back I found a 1936 club sedan on a farm in Virginia, about an hour and a half south of Winchester, off I-81. I bought the car, put new tires on it so it was mobile, then a friend of mine and his father took the car to get it running. It had been in the shed since the early 1950’s.
They not only got it running (after cleaning the pan and servicing other things), but I drove it on to the Hershey Red field and sold it, next to the PAS booth.
I could not believe how well it ran and drove, they said it smoked a little and made a little noise at first, but after a few minutes the lifters settled down and even the original mufflers were OK. As one woman said as I drove it on the fields at Hershey, “wow, that car doesn’t look like it should run!”
Great engines and drivetrain. I was incredulous at the way the car ran and drove, after being in hibernation for 60 or so years. The car referenced above now lives in a nice collection of cars owned by a friend of many of us in the PAS.
I should dig out the pics of a ’36 Club sedan I seriously considered buying in 1980 in North Carolina – wonder if it could be the same car?
Greg, the exhaust sounds great -very smooth and negligible pulsation, but there is a bit of a cheat since it had a long tailpipe extension several feet out the garage door. Without the blowby pipe and aircleaner assembly installed it blew lots of fumes into the garage – fortunately I have a big swamp cooler/heater system that can force outside air in then out so no one passed out.
At the moment I am wondering if the tapping could actually be the fuel pump lever. I installed a fuel pressure gauge at the carb inlet to adjust the electric pump regulator pressure. The mechanical pump bounces the gauge pressure dramatically every cam revolution so I am wondering if I have a big leak in one of the pumps check valves. I’ve never actually installed a fuel pressure gauge before, so maybe this is normal, but I would have expected a lot less oscillation with low fuel flow at idle.
Jim
Hi Jim, you can use a piece of wood dowel as a ‘stethoscope’ to listen to the fuel pump for noise. If the ticking was not there until the oil thinned from heat, then is probably is a lifter. I had several lifters in my ’33 836 that got noisy when the engine was fully warmed up.. it really annoyed me. I took the valve covers off, and ran the engine with them removed, and used my handy 4-foot long wood dowel rod to locate which lifers were the noisy ones. The lifters had excess clearance between the check ball and the cross wire. After cleaning, I used a small drift to tap on the cross wire to reduce the clearance to less than .020″ One lifter had several pits on the check ball, and I found another lifter to replace it.
Greg Long
Greg, I actually have a mechanics stethoscope and tried to listen along the outside, but as you say I will need to take the lifter covers off and listen directly to each one. I am worried of course that it is the lifter that I had to make a new seat for. The fuel pump lever has me wondering a bit because the sheet metal lever arm just bears against the cam without a great looking bearing surface and I wasn’t sure at first that I wasn’t missing a part or that my insulator block is correct thickness. The stethoscope should tell the tale.
I am going to resist doing much more idle running and diagnosis until I get the steering, brakes, floor boards and orange crate in so I can drive it and get the initial break-in throttle slams done to start seating the rings.
Thanks!
Jim