Nope - they would be much closer to the gasket mating surface (have to have the seats fly-cut to get them suckers in. But given that the seals are still present and the hushers are still there (oh, and that box of valves) - my guess is that someone did this head "recently".

Well it's going to have to get done again if I plan on using it. I'm betting the faces of at least 3 valves are rusty from sitting open for so long. Two cylinders leak pretty badly out the exhaust, one leaks pretty badly out the intake, etc. It doesn't smoke and makes pretty good oil pressure (though I don't know what oil's in the crankcase right now...) so I think the engine's pretty healthy otherwise. Maybe the ring gaps need to be cleaned out, but other than some seals and gaskets, and a bit of time with the lapping compound (or at worst, have the seats ground), it should run pretty sweet. I'd probably use this engine for a couple years, though I do have access to both a B20E and a B20B. The E is a known quantity (was in Dale's red 122 for a while - it smokes from the guides so needs a head rebuild) and the B is a question mark (came out of a 144 Dale scooped from eBay - it barely ran for us, but it was a carb issue. No idea what the engine's like inside.)

The seal on top of the retainer is OE for B18 with the 11/32 stems- that was all they got.
There was never an in-the-valve-spring (aka positive, aka on-the-guide valve stem seal OE on b18's.
Are you saying it has "both"?

I'm not sure what Craig was saying, Ian. I think this engine has only the top seal, nothing on the guide or down inside the spring.

Here's more progress:

After removing the front brakes and cleaning things up a bit with the bead blaster, I separated the hub and rotor by driving out the studs:



I did a bit of searching and came up with what might be a suitable rotor/caliper replacement:











The rotor will take some machining to make work, but after opening up the bore, the stud holes, and carving in the register so the rotor has something that centers on the hub, it should work out pretty well!

As for the caliper, it should look familiar to anyone with a 240:



I needed to pull the drums for various reasons, and rather than calling in a favour or ponying up the $125 or so for a puller from IPD, I built my own (I need the TIG experience):













Works okay...



Those drums are tacked on and are located by the studs, unlike the front rotors where the studs are loose in the rotor holes. This is going to be a bit trickier...

Meanwhile, Dale was pulling apart the interior. I wanted to see what the floor looked like - kind of rusty, but only one hole found so far:













The inside of the rocker panels look not too bad. I'm going to have to take a page from the Book of Brad once all the welding's done:





Home depot wiring, circa 1970. Wonder what caused the burning/melting on the kick panel?:

Oh, and in other news, I spoke with the guy on the car's registration on Sunday. He said it was raced during the time he was driving it, and that he never trailered it. That means it was last DRIVEN in 1974. He also said he never had the engine apart to do the head or to install a beefier cam or anything.

He's also going to look through his garages for some stuff for this car. Ahem*Webers*cough.

Lucky bastard...welds look good and the rust doesn't look all that bad. Spraying a little POR is just the ticket for the inner fenders. Something that would work better than Brad's technique (as I understand it) would be to get a cheap schutz gun and extend the front so that it can be inserted. Brute force, but dead easy.

As for the valves...as Ian and I were saying - there is NO seal on the stem of the valve of any sort. Just those thingies on the top of the valve. I installed a set of Chev square O-rings on my B18 to act as some form of seal. It was the best I could come up with as the guide has no provision for a seal.

Those brakes look fabulous by the way.

Keep on updating...I'm soo pooped I'm not going to post for a bit.

They're looking fabulous-er.









^^^ All in the stock 15" wheel ^^^

And also in the 14" ers!







You can't really tell, but there's about .040" between the wheel and the caliper at this point. The caliper is shoved all the way in towards the center of the rotor, and that's where the trouble is (right up against the hub of the wheel) so I think all's well. I'm not ordering rubber yet, but lets just say I'm thinking about it.

Hmmm, performance 15" tires...cheap. Now there's something you don't find every day. Good work.

They're 14s, which might make it a bit tougher. However, maybe not. There are lots of sticky R-compound autocross tires in the sizes I'm looking for, I believe...

Anyway, I haven't updated for a while, so I've got some pictures to show.

Brake drum innards before:





And after:







Racing's hard on your nuts!



Those were holding the steering lever onto the upright, sort of. I put them back on the car just to hold things together, and I could only hand tighten them or else I couldn't get the wrench off!

Here's what $100 buys you at Stu Welchuk's place:





Oh, wait. That's not right.







The studded tires are Semperit 185 SR 14 on Dodge 14" steelies, the Rikens are... Rikens, wearing Rikens, size 225/50 VR 15. He swore up and down that he had those tires on the GT during the summer, which didn't fit with the timeline I thought I had nailed down, and the tires didn't look like they'd fit on the car anyway. They don't. The rims are 5x100, not 5x114.3. Oh well, they're in beautiful shape and should net a profit. The assorted other stuff are 3 boxes of studs in various lengths, a carb synchronizer, and a Marchal Iode headlight in rather cruddy shape. That junk was thrown in with the rest.

On to this weekend's progress. I was getting a little frustrated over the direction of progress on the car - the brakes were all getting blasted and cleaned, but were getting bolted back on to parts that were all gross and cruddy. I was trying to deal with the brakes in order to figure out what we could build for the public, but that was leading to lots of effort happening in areas that didn't need the effort right now. I'll go back to working on the brakes, since I've got to get a model to our machinist, but for now I decided to get the engine swapped over.

The engine in the car is coming out, possibly for now, possibly forever. The B23 on my stand is going into the car for a while, so that I might mock up parts that are destined for Dale's car. More on that later (heh, I said moron).

WTF?



For real? How long is your air hose, if this is your idea of supercharging?



Engine's out:



I knew there was a transmission under all that crud. This was after about an hour with a scraper, knife, and wire brush:



After a trip to the car wash:



More carnage pix:







I think the engine looks better here than in Dale's car anyway...





The intake manifold needs some clearancing, or we need to change that rag joint to be a u-joint (or both):

you mean its evil twin?

That's good looking progress by any standards. The u-joint is the way to go...anyone got a 240 steering column that could donate some parts? That M41 sure does look familiar with the inch of crud on it...so nasty. How many nuts were cracked like that...crazy.

Is that the 16v head that I had?

No, it's one I had for a million years.