Headless

I was able to get all 21 head bolts out without an impact wrench and without breaking any of them.  The only tricky part was the bulb for the temperature gauge was stuck in the head.  I had to remove the soft plug above the bulb so I could push it out.  The head was too heavy to lift off by myself so I waited for my brother-in-law to come over for Christmas eve.  We took a short break from the festivities and lifted it out.  I was expecting an animal nest of some sort to be inside so was pleasantly surprised to see that it looks so good.  I think the piston and cylinder bores look great - there is no rust and no ridges at the top of the bores, indicating that there are few miles on the rebuild. 

Because the spark plugs are above the valves rather than the cylinders, the valves are in the worst shape.  Two look particularly bad, one of which appears to be affixed to its seat with corrosion.  The other has rust on its face but is not stuck to the seat and the seat itself looks fine.  My guess is that water dropped on the face of that one and then down the stem into the guide, causing who-knows-what kind of trouble down there.  I put a few tablespoons of oil in each piston bore and have sprayed the valves a couple times with PB-Blaster and the ATF/acetone mix.  I'm also occasionally rapping lightly on the frozen valve with a rubber mallet.  I still can't turn it over by hand and plan to finally buy a large socket this weekend so I can try with a ratchet.

I made the bonehead mistake of removing the head without first draining the block.  I had it in my head that removing the radiator would lower the fluid level below the surface of the block.  But the inlet and outlet of the radiator connect to the water pump which is high on the block.  This means that some fluid probably went into the valves and cylinder bores.  A few days later I removed the block drain plug and was able to get it to drain after digging around in there a bit with a wire. 

The only other thing I've done is remove the water pump, which I am starting to doubt is rebuildable because of all the corrosion.  An oddity of this motor is that there are two large passages in the front of the block which would appear to connect to passages in the water pump.  The water pump, however, has a backing plate that blocks one of the passages.  I can't figure out why Chrysler would put the passage in the block and then cover it up with a plate.

Preparing to Remove the Head

Changing the direction of the webbing did not do the trick (although it did shake loose parts from other areas of the car), so I decided to remove the cylinder head.  To accomplish this, I asked for an impact wrench for Christmas and started removing other parts that are in the way, including the coil and spark plug wires, the accelerator linkage, and the cylinder water outlet elbow.  The accelerator linkage has some corrosion and was hard to remove from the pivot that it sits on.  I might try the molasses rust removal technique on those parts.  The water outlet elbow came off surprisingly easy.  It was pretty nasty underneath it, as you can see from the photo below.  As bad as it looks, the debris mostly vacuumed out and does not appear to extend beyond the immediate vicinity of the opening.  It must be debris from the rusted hole in the radiator inlet and perhaps the remains of the thermostat which was not present.

I put a socket on a couple of head bolts and they wouldn't turn.  I did not use too much force because I don't want to snap them off and will wait for the impact wrench and soak them with ATF/acetone in the meantime.  I also still need to figure out how to remove two wires that connect to the carburetor and do not appear to have easily removable connections.  They cross over the head and will be in the way when I try to lift it off.

Climbing gear to turn the engine?

Loathe to buy a huge socket for a single use, I came up with an alternative method today during a cold, wet, and windy run.  For some reason I was thinking about crevasse rescue and the use of slings, ropes, and pulleys to gain mechanical advantage.  I've not yet rigged up a double-pulley system in my garage, but I did wrap a piece of webbing around the pulley a few times and was able to pull as hard as I could without it slipping off.  The whole car was rocking back and forth so I think I was able to apply quite a bit of rotational force to the pulley.  The engine, unfortunately, did not turn over.  Tomorrow I'll unwrap it and try the other direction.

I've recently traded emails with a car buff from Texas who has advised that I rethink my plans for restoring this thing.  Rather than focus on the mechanical aspects first, as I have planned, he thinks I should pull the engine, interior, trim, etc., and get all the rust out and all the metal primed.  The main reason is that it will continue to degrade until I remove the rust and get the metal sealed back up.  If I spend four years working on the other things first, I will have that much more work to do when I finally get around to the body.

He makes a good point and I'll have to seriously consider it.  It seems kind of overwhelming to do it that way though.  My plan was to sort of dabble at it over the years rather than going all in right at the beginning.  I wonder if there is a middle ground?  Perhaps the rust can be halted without stripping it to bare bones and sand blasting the entire thing.  His advice also seems to conflict with some of his other advice that seems pretty solid: "The big thing with getting into the hobby is not to make your wife feel like you just brought an old girlfriend home to live with you, and making sure you are prudent with what you spend on the car and when you spend it."

Radiator Removed

My wife and I lifted the radiator out last night to finally gain access to the crankshaft pulley.  That gave me a good view into the cylinder water outlet elbow.  What a mess.  It looks like there is about a quarter inch of debris in the bottom of it, much of it probably from the corroded inlet to the radiator.  Tonight I vacuumed up all the debris that had accumulated below the radiator and finally tried to turn the crankshaft pulley.  Alas, it wouldn't budge.  I wasn't really surprised but a bit disappointed.  Now I have to decide whether to buy a big socket and try to turn it that way or to hook up the battery and try to goose it with the starter.  I noticed that much of the oil that I poured into the cylinders is now on the garage floor.  I can't tell for sure, but it looks like it it made its way to the exhaust system and then out.

Enough of the grim news.  Here are some pictures of what a Traveler can look like.  I don't know much about this one, only that it was featured at a May 2009 exhibition at the Four States Auto Museum in Texarkana, Arkansas.

One thing leads to another . . .

Today I removed the battery tray to get access to bolts holding the generator so I can remove the fan belt so I can turn the fan so I can lift out the radiator so I can access the crankshaft pulley so I can see if the engine is seized!

I had a fun time working on it today. Jake, my seven-year old son has been asking to help out. Today he got to turn the bolts holding the battery pan to the inner fender while I held a wrench on the nuts inside the wheel well. His buddy helped by holding a flashlight in the wheel well. I actually needed both of them to get the job done. Good times.

Spark Plug Update #1

After multiple trips to the hardware store to acquire torches, chemicals, nitrile gloves, goggles, and two sizes of "easy-out," I am pleased to report that I now have access to all cylinders and have poured Marvel Mystery Oil into all six.  On the downside, the threads of four of the plugs are still in the head.  I tried to use the easy-out but could not get the tool to seat firmly enough to turn the threads.  I may have been able to strike it harder with a hammer to get it seated, but my first principle is to avoid doing any damage.  If I pound too hard, I will damage the threads in the head.  Because my goal was to get oil into the cylinders in order to determine if the engine is seized, I have to consider the current situation a minor success.  If the engine does turn over, I will probably pull the head and make further efforts to remove the threads.

I also drained the radiator, disconnected the hoses, and removed the bolts holding it to its cradle.  That all went comparatively smoothly.  It is too heavy to lift out on my own so hopefully this weekend I can find someone to help me lift it out.  The purpose of removing the radiator is to gain access to the front of the engine so I can try to manually turn the engine over.  The radiator inlet (I think its the inlet) is rusted through as shown below.  I'm not sure if that means the radiator is toast or not.

I'll do another post on this, but I had a great visit with Byron Richardson of Tillamook, Oregon last weekend.  He owns five incredible Mopars including a 1948 Windsor and a 1948 Imperial and an amazing 1956 Chrysler with a big hemi.  He let me take a ton of pictures and answered a hundred dumb questions.  He took me for a drive in the Windsor even though the weather was terrible.  After gassing up, he shocked me by making me drive the thing!  It was pretty nerve-wracking but a great experience I'll probably never forget.  It was raining cats and dogs, the windshield was steaming up, the road was rutted, and the car has bias-ply tires!  It was rocking all over the road, and I was terrified I was going to wreck his beautiful car.  I got the hand of it after a while and now have at least a basic understanding of how the transmission on my Traveler should eventually operate.