More Shake Downs and Modifications

In my last post I wrote about how on one side of my engine one of the cylinders became loose and was moving up and down with each stroke. At the time I thought I could possibly fix it with the engine in the car ---WRONG! I had to take it out to access all of the bolts to get at the loose flat head screws. I fixed that side and put it all back together. Did another steam up - and LOW AND BEHOLD the other side became loose. What a dummy for me not to go ahead and proactively tighten everything up. Below is a movie of the cylinder moving up and down.

So once again I had to take the engine out, but this time it didn't take me as long -- getting good at taking this car apart! I believe the issue that is causing the flat head screws to become loose is because I painted the bracket without taping off the countersink holes. I believe the paint is degrading and becomes soft and then will ooze out causing a looseness of the fit to occur. Once this happens the screw will continue to loosen up. So next time I won't paint the screw holes (if there is a next time). Below you can see the paint is all chewed up and actually is like powder.

Below I sand blasted all the paint away so now I will have a metal to metal fit.

The engine is all put together again, and this time I took my time to realign the valve bushings/cross bar for a much smoother sliding action too. The following picture shows the cross bar I realigned - the picture is from the first time I aligned the bar.

While I had everything apart, I decided to change my stop light switch from a Hydraulic switch to a simple mechanical switch. I was finding that the hydraulic switch was not always working. I've had enough issues with bleeding the system, that I decided a good old mechanical switch would be most reliable. I found a normally closed switch at our local building supply and fashioned a bracket out of some flat stock steel. Below details what it looks like:

I have done a little modification of the Hackworth Valving System. I have not tested it yet, but if it works out that will be my next posting. Supposedly the modification was suggested during the Series 1 Lykamobile build or possibly the Modelworks build, however our engine design is slightly different from the earlier build, so a modification was necessary on our linkages. The modification is suppose to provide a stronger forward and possibly a bit smoother. It will be a couple of weeks before I can post it. I am going out of town on business.