I'm stripping an 8BA I bought recently. I think it must have been run on river water its entire life. Something to think about if you are contemplating putting new plugs and oil in an engine that "ran when parked"... All this would be circulating in the cooling system. And this is just what I could pull out with a finger from the water pump holes.

 

YES YES YES!!

A LOT of old engines have a LOT of rust (and other debris if a marine engine) in the water jacket!

If they were run without anti-freeze for long the water jackets could also be fairly thin and risk being cracked etc. (so be careful using rust "remover")


Before I took my 292 to the machine shop, I removed all the block "core plugs" (mistakenly called "freeze" plugs) and thoroughly flushed out as much rust as I could! I even poked around in there with a piece of wire! (A LOT of rust came out!!)



Radiators will contribute to running hot for the same reason.......... because a LOT of that rust may have been pumped into the radiator clogging tubes AND if the radiator hasn't been cleaned EXTERNALLY........that is, pressure wash the bugs, and other debris out of the fins etc......You will not be able to move sufficient air through it!



Cheers,


Rick

 

Why Ross, whatever do you mean?! Surely you don't believe these old blocks are not as clean as a whistle inside.

The dirt rolled out when I removed the water pump on my latest project yesterday.





And the Sahara Desert rolled out of the water jacket when I spun the block around on the stand.

 

Seen it many times. One time while working on a Model A Engine (that had been sitting in a barn for years) I removed the head I found a rattlesnake skin in the water passage. After pulling it out it measured almost 6 feet.

Paul

 

i dont think they did the best job of removing the casting sand back in the day

 

Instead of packing peanuts, my F1's 8BA came with packing corn.