B_Reparaties - B_Repairs (24.05.2008 )

Probleem: B(30) Crankshaft pulley oil seal replacement.

Geen speciale problemen: oliekeerring gevonden bij AKN (zie adressen) 

RINGSEAL afdichtingen 41.27x63.5x93AS aan 177-Fr + BTW (Jef Neefs)

Probleem: B Vriespastilles - Core plugs

Juiste maat 41,6 mm dikte 9.5 mm schijnt courant te zijn, gevonden bij BBC.
Er zijn er drie, met dezelfde maat, twee links opzij en één achteraan, inscriptie (bij Jacques): "Dornam 555 0.30". (Jef Neefs)

Problem: B Valve stem seals

For several years my Sabra was leaving a smoke-signal when I had just started.  Doesn't give a good impression when you start your engine and drive away, leaving the circumspectors coughing in the smoke.  It was only for a short time after I had started the engine, normally-later the outlet would show nice grey (after a ride) but after a 15min stop the engine gave the impression of being "total loss" - for a km or so, further on it hardly smoked.

Diagnosis was: bad valve stem seals.  Now the Sabra has "umbrella-seals", not easy to find. They work like an rrrrrrr-umbrella simply by moving the oil, leaking down, away from the valve stem guides.  So preventing it from leaking onto the inlet or outlet-pipes and/or into the combustion chamber.  They should be rubber-like (the seller said "Don't call this rubber, it's poly..something!"  The ones in my car were like bakelite (remember the Belgian inventor).

At last I found them with http://www.speedshop.be specialised in BIG American cars and boats.  I had "done" quite some shops and here (when I showed them the old bakelite-like seals) they didn't ask me "what's that" but "how many".  Intrigued when I said "nine".

The rest was quite easy: bought a fantastic tool with "Van der Raay" in Deurne (see Adresses). It hooks under the rocker shaft bolts so you have the strength to push down the valves.
Took this picture because at first it wasn't for sale. He just lended it to me for the job. So I took this picture to be able to make it for myself when needed. Later I bought it anyway.  

I ruined a good spark-plug, removing the insulator as far as possible and removing the inner conductor, then I soldered a small pipe on it so I could put air pressure above the pistons.
Do not, like I did, try to drill out the insulator of the spark plugs.  It's tremendously hard. You can only attack it with a cold-cisel designed for stone. (Ruined several widia-drills).

First removed the rocker cover and the rocker shaft, take care for the pipe that leads oil to the rocker shaft.:

Then one by one I screwed back in the rocker shaft retaining bolts:

While pushing up the valves (with air pressure (7.5kg/cm²)) I managed to compress, one after another, the valve springs, then removed the valve stem split taper cotters, the upper spring-seats and the valve stem seals.  Put in the new umbrella-seals, put on the valve-springs and valve spring seats and the split taper cotters after compressing the valve springs again against the air pressure that held the valves up. Didn't have enough hands (nor fans) to take pictures of every step.

When you do this, make sure every piston you're dealing with, is in upper position and the engine is in first or rear gear with handbrake fully locked (if not you'll push the car forward or backwards by putting air-pressure above the piston). When a valve opens when you push the valve-seat,  you could give the upper-spring-seat a tick with a hammer  to prevent it from locking together and/or you could poor some oil through the spark-plug-hole to prevent air from escaping along the cylinder walls (had to do this on my third cylinder).

The first pistons looked nice (silver-like) (looking through the spark-plug-hole) but the third was dark brown and there was this seal:

Clearly this "seal" (with one third of the upper side missing) was forcing oil to leak into the valve stem guides;  the difference between the third and the other pistons was prominent.

Afterwards I also renewed the seals of the oil-pressure-pipe.  the O-ring below (included in decoke-sets) didn't seem to be ready for the job anymore.

If you don't manage to compress the valve-springs with the tool, (piston in upper position) your engine could be worn too much because mine had done 80.000km when I did this repair and 80.000km is nice for sixties-cars.

Mail of bel mij als je tips, hints of kennis op dit gebied hebt... 03/236.00.84