1956 Series One Rebuild Project

[ANDYD]

While chatting about new engine parts with "engine people" I was recommended to change out the core (freeze) plugs while getting this deep into the engine rebuild, after 63 years they could start to rust away on the inside. I was surprised how solid they actually still were, just a thin layer of rust on the back side. They took a fair bit of 'tapping" to get them out. I was told to whack them on the lower half of the plug inwards until the top half flipped outwards... but of course it wasn't that easy. The old core plugs just wanted to dome inwards until a hole was punctured through them. I was resigned to getting a bigger hammer and to knock them right through until they were inside the block, then grab them with some pliars on the edge and yank them back out of the hole I just knocked them through.

[ANDYD]

To take a break from the engine rebuild I thought I would work on a dry fit of the transmission. The reason I needed a dryfit was because I have a new later Series removable gearbox cross-member fitted to the chassis so I wanted to change up to the better designed (IMO) later series gearbox brackets and mounts. The Series 1 gearbox mounts consist of multiple parts including rubber, tubes and washers where as the later mounts are just a moulded piece of rubber with a stud sticking out of each side. The later ones are readily available and fit very nicely onto my later gearbox cross-member.
The dry fit went well, everything lined up well. The later brackets bolted right onto the gearbox without any modification.

[ANDYD]

Back to the engine rebuild, I turned my attention to the pistons. After lots of measuring I was surprised to find everything was still within the tolerances given in the work shop manual and all parts are still "standard" size. I had purchased new piston rings and bearings so I spent some time cleaning, removing the old rings and fitting the new rings. My pistons have 4 rings, apparently some have 3 rings. I found the best way to get the rings on and off without scratching the piston or dropping the ring into the wrong groove was to wrap tape over the piston grooves I needed to cross over, then just slide the new ring down the piston to the one open groove that you wanted to install it into. Some rings have "Top" or "T" marked on them, its important to have that side upwards. The new rings all went on smoothly with no broken rings.

[ANDYD]

I also spent some time taking the oil sump pick-up apart to clean inspect and measure. Which was a good thing as I found someone had assembled it incorrectly in the past and some parts needed to be reversed! The oil filter was in rough shape and had some extra holes drilled in it. The previous owner had sourced a replacement filter which was one piece compared to the old one which was made up from several parts. Has anyone tried or have experience of using the newer one piece filter?

[Herman maire]

Nice rebuild
Did you ever look into if it’s possible to put a
Inline oil filter or something better than just a screen

[ANDYD]

Thanks Herman,

It does have the main oil filter further down the line so the pick up filter in the sump is just really a pre-screen.
My plan to keep it as simple and original as possible, but I am always open to some hidden upgrades if it was done on the Series 2 & 3's.

Cheers,
Andy

[mjc_seattle]

Andy-

Great work. Your journey brings back a lot of memories of a rebuild I did of a 107 Station Wagon. It was so much fun and taught me about a lot of things in life.

Have you been in touch with Ike Goss down at Pangolin 4x4 in Salem, Oregon? I'm sure you have, but he's a wealth of info. Here's a glimpse at my truck. You see it here with the Duke, another 107. The Duke is on the right.

Looking forward to seeing more progress.

Matthew Clark
PCRC • Seattle
1973 88" Hardtop

[ANDYD]

Hi Mathew, thanks for you comments, those two Land Rovers in your photo look like beauties!

Well, I'm a bit behind on my progress and photos here so I will attempt to catch up over the next week.
I had one bad piston and had a hard job finding a matching one. I learnt a lot about all the subtle differences that the S1's pistons had.
I finally bit the bullet and ordered one from Cox & Turner who always has everything and anything you could possibly need but with the shipping it doesn't come cheap! The photo below shows just some of the differences in just a few years.

I have the engine totally stripped down now and I am prepping (washing and degreasing) it for some new paint.

[ANDYD]

Before starting the engine painting I thought it made sense to install the 4 new core plugs. First I put the pressure washer through all the water ways and made sure everything was flushed out and clean. Turning the engine on the engine stand to help flush. I then used compressed air to clear any remaining water.

I used a smear of Hylomar Aerograde sealant in the engine openings and then tapped in the new core plugs using a large washer bolted to socket (see photo). They tapped in fairly easily although it was challenging to keep them square as they tapped into position. There is 3 core plugs along one side and 1 core plug on the back end.

[ANDYD]

Now the engine is totally degreased, clean and ready for paint, the long arduous task of masking has to be done. The masking takes about 5 times longer than the actual painting but its worth spending the time on it. My Engine is 1955-1956 which the books say should be a silver / grey. I found a locally supplied engine paint that was very close to the colour I needed, and then painting began!

[ANDYD]

Ticking one job off at a time I have moved onto fitting the new exhaust valves into the existing valve seats. The existing valve seats were in good condition but had a few tiny lines (see circled photo) so I wanted to remove the lines and also to match the new valve profile on the old valve seats. I started off by marking each new valve (1 to 4) so I didn't mix them up, then added a layer of grinding paste between the two surfaces and attached a cordless drill on the end of the new valve (I taped the new valve end so the drill jaws wouldn't scratch it) then slowly spun the new valve with the drill while applying a little pressure, rotating clockwise then counterclockwise. It didn't take long until i had a nice smooth clean valve seat and all the tiny lines had gone. I repeated this on each on the four valves until they all were seated nice and snugly.

[bsa_m21]

Hey Andy,

Looking good!!

If you haven’t done the intakes yet, you can replace and upgrade the guides to “modern” ones with real oil seals.

2.25 valve guides and seals are cheaper than the original type and have a much better seal arrangement. You don't really need any seals on the exhaust guides due to the orientation and positive pressure that they are under when valves open. The inlet guides can be fitted unmodified, but the exhaust ones, if you want to change them, need to be cut down a bit. See below:

[ANDYD]

Hi Martin, thanks for the valve info. I have already completed the valves, all new parts from England. I believe the later Series 1 seals are already a better design than the early valve seals. Time will tell!

Moved onto giving the cylinder bores I wanted to do a light honing. They are still standard size bores but were quite polished with a few small piston scratches, so a light honing should be all it needs. Keeping it simple I just used a sprung honing tool on a cordless drill with lots of clean engine oil. A few minutes in each bore took off the polished mirror finish and left me with a nice hazy finish

[ANDYD]

I had read that because of the sloped top on the Spreadbore engine, its hard to get the pistons in from the top because the ring compressor cant sit flush on the surface when sliding the pistons in. So its a great opportunity while the Crankshaft is out to slide the pistons in from the bottom.
So flipped the engine upside down and slid the pistons with new rings, slowly and carefully with lots of oil rubbed into the bores.

[ANDYD]

Next was fitting the new shell bearings to the crankshaft, again with lots of clean oil. The old ones were showing a little wear.
The new ones clicked in place easily and then it was time to drop the crankshaft into position. Following the specs in the workshop manual to check gaps and torques for bolting everything into place.

[ANDYD]

The end cap and seal is notorious for being a pain as the cork seal "cross" is tough to get into place without tearing it.
New main end seal was installed first, then the cork "cross" is installed. It protrudes about 1/16th so the challenge is to slide it into place without slicing the extra 1/16th of cork off as it slides in.
At first I tried the sacrificing a couple of feeler gauges (see photo) which seemed to work at first but then as the feeler gauges slid in with the part I realized that there was no way to get them out again. Ummm couldn't leave them in there so off it came again. Good job I did as the cork cross was pretty chewed up.
The next idea was two polished plates with a "c" clamp, the idea was to clamp the cork cross as flush as possible while gently tapping the end cap down into its slot. This method seemed to go fairly smoothly and the end cap slid down into position. There wasn't any pieces of torn cork left laying around afterwards so I'm fairly optimistic that it went into place intact. You really have no way of telling as you can not see it once its all in place.

[ANDYD]

Next on the list was the new camshaft and bearings.
I found the only way I could get all the bearings in the right place was slide in the new cam shaft in to about 2" from its final location. Then assemble each bearing (comes in two halves) onto the camshaft, then once the bearing are clicked together, slide the camshaft the rest of the way into its final location. It was a bit fiddly but not to bad. Once everything is in the right spot there are a couple of locating / securing screws t keep everything locked in the right place.

[ANDYD]

Moving onto the exhaust valve rocker shafts, another bunch of new parts from Cox and Turner. You can see some wear on the old shafts.
The shaft comes in two pieces, its like a puzzle figuring which rocker goes where and which way around. The springs and washer all have to be in the correct spots or else nothing will line up correctly. Once it is all in the right order a couple of special screws hold it all in place.

[ANDYD]

The Series 1 engine has some strange metal water "pipes" running through the block. I cleaned them up a little and slid them back into place.
The cover received a quick coat of matching new paint and then installed with a new cork gasket.

[ANDYD]

Moving my attention over to the cylinder head, although the head surface was nice and flat it did have some fine lines from the old gasket and a few scratches, likely from storage. My original plan to get the surface skimmed in a machine shop but an old wise friend convinced me to give his "old school" method a try. It was basically getting a nice thick flat piece of glass or marble counter top, apply some fine sand paper (with adhesive backing) and using the weight of the head for downwards pressure, move the head around in a figure of eight shape. I had to change the sand paper a few times but after about 2 hours I was able to remove most of the fine scratches and old gasket marks. My thoughts after trying this method is its a good method for fine scratches & marks but for any thing more than that or for any type of warping it would take days and days to do, so better to take to a machine shop.
After a good cleaning and some thorough de-greasing it was ready to masking before painting.

[ANDYD]

The original Inlet valves were in great shape so they just needed a clean up and new valve seals. The valve guides also looked to be in great shape with very little excess movement. I wanted to re-seat the valves so it was back to the valve grinding paste, hand held drill in forward / reverse on the drill until I had a nice clean "grey" ring around the valve and around the seat to get a really good seal when the valve is closed.

[ANDYD]

Before fitting the valves I wanted to get the rockers and shaft installed. I had picked up a new shaft, the rockers were in good shape so just a clean up was required. I carefully laid the parts in a line as they came off the old shaft to make it easy to refit them onto the new shaft. It was quite fiddly to get all the mounting posts and rockers correctly orientated, but with a few swear words and some patience I had the assembly installed onto the cylinder head.

[ANDYD]

Then back onto fitting the inlet valves, I had earlier dry fitted them with some Vasaline, marked them 1-2-3-4 because they have been individually custom fit onto each valve seat. They still needed the valve seals installed, I had a pack of new original seals, so it was just a case of carefully placing each new O-ring seal into the recess at the top end of the valve guide and sliding in the valve. Once the valve is installed, it shouldn't be removed again as this can rip the O-ring. (the valve shape allows the valve to be inserted through the o-ring but the shape doesn't allow easy valve removal with out seal damage).

[ANDYD]

The final step was to reinstall the valve springs & special retaining washers, the spring needed to be compressed with a valve spring compressor ($20 of Craigslist) and then the tiny split cone in two halves are held in place while slowly releasing the spring compressor. The split cones are retained inside the special washer and everything is held together nicely... time for another cuppa tea!

[mepham55]

Looks great Andy, she’s going to prrr nicely once your done with it!

Matt

[Rambler]

Thanks very much for sharing the rebuild. I picked up a series 1 2.0 spreadbore engine recently with the idea to strip and restore as a good one. This post is most insightful. Good luck with everything.
Cheers
Ian

[ANDYD]

Thanks Matt & Ian, I'm actually enjoying it (when its all going right!)

So with the head now complete, it was time to refit it to the block. I had purchased a new copper head gasket as recommended by Cox and Turner and also a light spread of jointing compound . It's often said that the jointing compound is not needed with the copper gaskets but there seems to be mixed feelings on this so I thought it wouldnt hurt to put some on. I used the Hylomar Aerograde mainly because I had some handy.
Head was installed, the bolts torqued up to the required spec and tightened in the order as listed in the WS manual.
I had to remove the Valve Rockers assembly that I had previously installed onto the head because the 4 long Tappet push rods (inlet) needed to be slid in before, but only a 20 minute set back, so live and learn I guess!
The valve rockers were then adjusted to position each rod between the Cam followers and the valve rockers.
Finally it is starting to look like an engine again!

[rayhyland]

Looking fantastic!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ANDYD]

Thanks Ray. Your trip half way around the world in a Series 1 did add some extra inspiration to keep this project moving along ...

The front cover seal was next on the list, the old one didnt want to come out, so I had to basically break it apart, taking care not to damage the soft aluminum cover.
Eventually it was all out and then I added a little sealant and tapped the new seal in place with a suitably sized "washer" that I had laying around. The aluminum cover was quite dull even after cleaning so I buffed it up a little with a wire wheel in a cordless drill.

[ANDYD]

The pile of engine parts is getting smaller so I know i'm making progress!
I cleaned up the engine mounts with cleaner and degreaser and painted with POR 15 and bolted onto the engine with new locking tabs.
Then onto installing the oil filter mount with new gasket.