Early December wife and daughters went shopping leaving me with a day to myself. Just the chance I need to get Goldie finished! Engine and box need degreasing underneath, especially at the rear, change oil switch, no lights in the rear door grab handles, cut-polish-wax-done. Three hours max! Yeah right
Started her up to get her warm as it eases the degreasing, couple of axle stands underneath and cracked on. Noticed whilst I was under there a small oil leak from the rear of the sump. Cleaned it down and waited to see what happened. Damn thing was obvious and as I want this car spot on I couldn't leave it. So sump off and gasket ordered. When I dropped the sump it was obvious the gasket hadn't been changed in years. It was brittle in places but stuck solid in others. It took an age to remove. But that wasn't the worst of it. The oil in the sump was in an awful condition. This car is treated like all my cars and receives an oil change every six months regardless of mileage but the oil in this was thick and gooey. It looked and felt like treacle. The oil pick up was a mess, coated in the same stuff, so off that came. I couldn't see the holes inside the pick up even after a blast of carb cleaner so pick up and sump off to the guy who has done all the vapour blasting. He has an industrial cleaner which is a real beast at work. The pick up top was seperated from the bottom to reveal a thick black coating and a gasket/o-ring that just disintegrated. Both pick up and sump had two rounds in the industrial cleaner and then one in the parts cleaner to reveal what they should look like
What a difference. I decided to get the sump vapour blasted whilst there
A few coats of paint and it looks a different sump
With the oil pick up in such a sad state it seemed wise to check the state of the journals so I removed the bottom of the conrod on the fourth piston, and then the shells to reveal a very nice surprise. I removed the other three to find I had an engine in bloody good condition, especially at 30 years old
New gasket and sump back on, fresh oil in, ran for about 30 minutes, the last 10 with a cup of diesel in to flush out, and dropped the oil again. This time it looked like it had done about 20k miles. New oil and filter and I'll change it again in February just before the test.
So a three hour job turned into a three week one but at least I've saved myself a whole load of problems as this engine would have seized, no doubt about that. It just shows that even with regular oil changes these old engines need a lot more tlc than at first sight.
Still got to do the oil switch, door lights, cut-polish-wax though with the intention of a test in February and on the road for March.