Freeing a seized engine

[vreihen]

My 1600 Solo Vee has been sitting under tarps in my driveway since the end of 2006. I decided to fire it up today, in anticipation of running it at an event in July. The crank pulley would turn maybe one degree whenever I hit the starter, and would bounce right back when I let go of the start button. Long story short, I put a socket on the crank pulley, and soon discovered that I had enough leverage to both tighten and loosen the big bolt because the crank wouldn't budge. Three of the four spark plugs needed PB Blaster to break them free, and all three of those plugs had scaly rust on the inside once removed. The fourth one came out easy, and still looked fine. I sprayed a good dose of PB Blaster into the three bad spark plug holes, and put the plugs back loosely. Even after several hours of soaking, I still can't turn the crank by the pulley bolt.

Because I saw the pulley end of the crank move ever so slightly whenever I hit the starter, I'm assuming that whatever seized was outside of the crankcase. I've resigned myself that I will have to tear down the top end to see what the damage is. After consulting with my 4 service manuals, yanking the cylinders seems no more difficult than the motorcycle engines that I rebuilt many times in my younger days. As a matter of fact, if I had read the manuals before I cleaned up for the evening, I probably would have yanked the rockers to look for stuck valves by now.

Anyway, on to my questions:

1) Is the crank pulley bolt normal thread or reverse thread? Neither direction seems to tighten it.

2) Assuming that the pistons are stuck to the cylinders by rust, is there any secret to breaking them loose...either with or without the head on? Filling the cylinders with ATF or something through the spark plug hole? Heat the cylinder and ice the piston with the head off?

Just trying to figure out what my options are to break things loose, other than venting my frustration with a big 'ol hammer and a block of wood on the piston crowns.....

[problemchild]

I don't know if this applies ..... but wrecking yard engines have this problem. I take off the heads and bash the cylinders with a sledge hammer until they break apart. I would probably try liquid wrench in the spark plug holes to start with.

[ultimate42]

The best way I have found is to use the lower bolts that hold the bell housing to the transmission as a fulcrum, and prying the teeth on the flywheel. You will need to do this to get to all of the wrist pins anyway. At least this way, you can pull the engine intact, and maybe even get it running without a teardown.
You didn't say, but have you drained the oil yet? What does it look like? There should be enough oil coating the metal parts to prevent most rust from formiing, so there is also a problem there too. My guess is that condensation got into your oil and turned it to muck thus exposing the interior parts to rust.

[vreihen]

You didn't say, but have you drained the oil yet? What does it look like? There should be enough oil coating the metal parts to prevent most rust from forming, so there is also a problem there too. My guess is that condensation got into your oil and turned it to muck thus exposing the interior parts to rust.

I honestly haven't gotten that far with it yet. I'll certainly be draining the oil before I yank the valve covers, and if what comes out doesn't look like Mobil-1 with 20 minutes of run time on it, I'll at least know what caused the problem...and it isn't a leaking radiator! I'm actually now looking forward to tearing the heads off, because some local Vee guys are in disbelief that it's really a 1600 because it pulled so strong when they drove it.

Another thing that amazed me is that the master battery switch would not complete the power circuit when I turned it on. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that this Vee was under water since the last time it ran.....

[DanRemmers]

The main problem with solo vee engines is that the oil usually doesn't get hot. Water doesn't get a chance to evaporate. I see drops of water in my valve covers every time I adjust the valves.

And I'm sure that more water got in somehow. If you've had as much rain as we've had this season, tarps wouldn't have kept it very dry. In fact, water probably condensed inside the tarp and got everywhere.

[vreihen]

Yeah, it's been raining just about every day for months now, and I'll strangle the first weather forecaster who says the word drought. I'm inside right now because it just started to drizzle while I was tearing things apart.

I started by removing the intake manifold, which was emotionally difficult because it took two days to get the thing to seat and seal properly at the intake ports the last time that I had it off. The front two cylinders' intake ports were puddled with rusty water, and crud resembling dirty wet sand was essentially plugging all four intake ports. My first thought was that someone had intentionally shoveled a load of dirt into the carburetor in an act of vandalism, but I quickly discovered that the crud was all magnetic. The only thing containing iron in the intake tract is the custom intake manifold, and I'm guessing that two year's worth of condensation and evaporation cycles must have seriously eroded the inside of the intake manifold.

Obviously, the heads needed to come off, so I started by pulling 3/4. There was no water in the cylinders, but #4 had a pile of that same crud laying on it's bottom right in front of the piston...despite the intake valve being closed. There's no way that I could have turned the engine past TDC without snapping a rod trying to compress that rusty crud. Remarkably, the cylinders and pistons appear clean after a quick spray with PB Blaster, but it just started raining as I was about to yank the 3/4 cylinders to have a look at the ring grooves and gaps. I still haven't yanked the other head yet, but expect to see more of the same since the intake ports were crudded up on that side too.

I'm going to flush the intake ports with lots of brake cleaner to clean them up, check the valves for crud, and put everything back together assuming that the rings are clean and the crankshaft rotates. I'm thinking about painting the inside of the intake manifold with that rust-eater stuff after using the old cable and power drill trick to clean it out, so that this hopefully will not happen again. I'll also have to figure out the trick to the spring-loaded pushrod tubes, since they all fell apart and into my oil drain pan when I started to remove the head from the cylinders.

The sun just came back out, so I guess it's time to yank the cylinders.....

[FV55inSpokane]

Sounds like it's time for a rebuild to me...
The PR tubes are easy to figure out. But with all of the gunk in your engine from sitting it's going to be more work than just cleaning the gunk out.
Good luck,
Lawrence

[vreihen]

Sounds like it's time for a rebuild to me...

As I was staring at the engine case after the heads and manifolds were off, I was thinking to myself that I'm only a few bell housing bolts away from yanking what's left of the engine and splitting the cases. After years of cars becoming more complex, it was a joy to spend the weekend getting "old school" with the Vee engine.

Between waves of rain yesterday, I pulled the 1/2 head. There were a few flakes of rust sitting at the bottom of #2 cylinder (from the spark plug?), but the valves were closed and the heads spotlessly clean inside and out. I blasted the intake ports with air from my compressor, hit them with some brake cleaner, and they seemed to be clean. Once I determined that the pistons were free on that side, I oiled the cylinders and put everything on that side back together. I managed to salvage enough intact push rod tube seals to do this side. I also found the likely cause of a few oil leaks in the process. The previous owner used JC Whitney spring-loaded tubes, put them on backwards, used dry-rotted seals in the middle of the tubes, and lost a washer. (They are the cheaper aluminum spring tubes that fly apart when you remove the head, and use a third tube end seal at the joint in the middle instead of internal o-rings.) I'm going to have to buy one replacement tube and a round of seals to finish the other side.

Other than the crud holding the intake valve on #4 open, the heads are spotless after cleaning up. They were Mexico production circa 1998 per the factory's engraving, and probably have only a few hours of run time on them. I figure that I can yank that one valve, clean it up, and that head should be good to go as well. I managed to free the piston in #4 with lots of PB Blaster, a rubber mallet, and a sledge hammer. The top of that cylinder still has a huge rust spot dangling down from the top wall, so I have some cleaning left to do before putting that side back together.

I have not seen anything yet that would lead me to believe that there's any damage inside the engine cases, so I'll drain the oil, flush it with ATF to clean out any latent moisture, clean the screen and filter, and put in new oil before I try to fire it up. At this point, what to do to prevent the intake manifold from rusting itself inside-out is probably going to be the only problem left to solve, because I'm not putting it back on until I know for sure that this isn't going to happen again.....

[smsazzy]

Don't forget that when you put the heads back on, you need to tq them partially and go back and forth side to side. I recommend tq'ing them to 80% of their tq spec, then add another 5% going side to side and from side to side until you are up to 100%.

As for the rusting manifold. Let it rust until it is at minimum weight, then clean it out and laquer it. It might improve flow.

[vreihen]

If I let it rust to minimum weight under the Solo rules, I'd come out one day to find the carburetor dangling in mid-air hanging by the fuel line and throttle cable! Is that enough of a flow improvement?

Seriously, I'm pretty sure that this manifold was fabricated in someone's garage as a one-off, and the steel tubing that they used is practically thin enough to see light through even without the rust's help.....

[FV55inSpokane]

I had an engine that sat about the same amount of time as yours. I was going to trade it off in a deal I made and decided to split the case just to be sure everything was okay. What I found inside surprised me: ALL of the main and rod bearings had huge pits in them from the acidic reactions from the oil/condensation/ and aftermath of running it in a whole 20 minutes prior to storing it. The intake did have holes in it too from setting so long. Obviously it was very thin also.
Just my experience. Hope your luckier than I.
As far as torquing the heads, I've always taken them up to 7 #' (bottom row of studs first then the top) and then up to the rated torque ( start in the middle then: top/bottom/ side to side in a criss-cross pattern) and have had no issues - ever. Just followed the Haynes manual.
Lawrence