1962 Mercury Monterey Project

It was more like one apathetic and one stubborn and 6 who just needed to be told what to do. The OCPOTI* gave me LOTS of good advice about why the motor was stuck. Some of it I was even able to follow. pistons are rusted to the cylinder walls, why not check the rod bearings, and that timing chain looks rusty. So I pulled a couple of rod caps and looked at the crank journal. Not only do the crank and bearings look pretty good - I think it is so cool that they stamp the "FoMoCo" logo and a registered trademark symbol on the underside of a piece of metal almost no one is ever going to see. A nice show of pride there. Mid-week, Other_Doug dropped by to look at the machine. I told him I was having trouble removing the crank bolt - and so he asked if he could borrow my breaker bar, put it on the bolt and threw his shoulder at it like he was doing the shot put. It turned right out. That seemed to ignite a flurry of activity - and so while the engine still world not turn, we removed ...

Now that the engine is on a stand, I can do a better job of figuring out why it won't turn. So, I took a coffee break today and opened up the bottom of the engine. The deconstruction probably took 30 minutes. I turned off the umpteen oil pan bolts and managed to lower it without spilling the sump. Actually - it looks pretty good. A lot less sludgy than I was expecting after 60 years. I did drop a wrench in there by accident - and gladly it neither splashed everywhere nor did it completely swallow the tool before I grabbed it. I had to remove the oil pump in the process. This weird thing has an oil pump outside the engine. You can see it in the upper left corner of the picture above. It seems to turn - so that is positive. I also removed the fuel pump. It is mechanical - with a lever that slides into the front cover and is pushed up and down by an eccentric wheel somewhere in there. I don't have the front cover off yet - but the pump and fuel filter came off without incident. I ...

 This past week I bought materials to make adapter arms for the engine stand. I got some 1-inch steel square tube for the arms, some 7/16 grade-8 bolts to attach from the arm to the engine, and some washers to make a bushing for the bolts and so everything was steady in place. I was going to buy a cutoff wheel for the grinder Dave loaned me, but it turned out that Dave had some so he dropped a few off on my front porch late one night. On Saturday I went over to Doug's to borrow his drill press to put some holes in the square stock. It turned out that Doug also had a bandsaw, so I used that to cut the square tube into 6 inch pieces instead of the cutoff wheels. Then we went to Doug's drill press. As these things go, he only had the 7/16 drill bit I needed. He did not have the bit I needed for the other side. So I ran over to the ACE hardware store near his house and eyeballed a good 9/16 bit for the larger bolts. I drilled one of the 7/16 and sized up the hole to make sure it wa...

I took some measurements and designed a "Dancing Chic Productions" custom knob for the valve on the engine hoist. The first draft took about 15 minutes to design in TinkerCad and an hour to print. It was a little tight and because I built it just to size. It broke in half as I tried to remove it. I expanded the center hole by 0.1mm which seemed to be the only dimension that needed fixing. I reprinted with 4 perimeter shells and 40% fill density which is a combination that makes for good strength with a reasonable amount of material cost. I used PLA - PET, ABS or Nylon would be 'tougher', but I have very good results with PLA and it is so easy to print. Plus it was what was in the printer when I went to run it. Since it broke on the shank the first time, I reenforced the part where it actually torques the screw by making it oval instead of round. Just putting more material structure to back the turning force. The finished product took about 2 hours to print and used ab...