Lots of torque, still no action
THE FORD ‘SHOEBOX’ saga continues. When last visited, in Octane 163, the overheating Ford was standing idle, awaiting the arrival of new head gaskets from the States. My gasket set arrived but my man that fits ’em was snowed under with work, so the Ford continued to languish, frustratingly.
Now, as I kept reminding myself, fitting head gaskets to a flathead engine doesn’t require a degree in engineering; just a decent torque wrench. Finally, I could wait no longer and decided to engage in a touch of alfresco torqueing, and whizzed the heads off myself.
‘Whizz’ almost described the ease with which the first of the V8’s cylinder heads was liberated and, buoyed with confidence, I eagerly approached the other side of the vee, only to discover that this was going to be a muscle-fatiguing struggle, with every bolt tenaciously resisting. And then the much-feared inevitable happened. With a loud ‘ping’, a bolt sheared. Time for a cuppa and a curse.
Of course, if impatience had not got the better of me and I had waited for ‘my man’, it would be down to him to remove the bolt from the block – but now it’s down to me. Well, not quite. Reluctant to do any more damage I have engaged the services of The Thread Doctor, a sort of flying surgery service for incompetents like me. The doc claims to be able to sort out on site just about any threadrelated problem. At the time of writing I am moving up the queue – more next time.
Curiously, one gasket was of the fibre variety while the other was made of copper – signs of past troubles, perhaps? Also, perhaps more worryingly, there were no thermostats in their housings.
After a day spent laboriously scraping gasket residue off the heads, I finally decided to have them skimmed to remove some tiny spots of corrosion. Scraping time wasted, but better to be safe than sorry.