The culprit.
M: “But why would engine oil not make it to the top of the engine?”
W: “??? I have an idea but we need to find out what path the oil takes to get there…”
Looking thru the books that my friend Gilles-Étienne graciously lended to me;
I get lucky and find the oil route takes to the rocker shaft in one of the manuals.
W: “The only thing I see is that a cam shaft bearing was improperly installed. These need to be installed so that the two holes in them line up with the holes in the block because oil travels from the oil pump thru those bearings to make it to the head and rock shaft. We have good oil pressure, right? So oil leaves the oil pump normally then lubricates the main bearings and then it’s on its way to the cam shaft bearings and then thru the bearings, it is pressured upwards thru the head and into the rocker shaft. We know the rocker shaft holes are not blocked. We have oil pressure. So the only thing I see is the holes in the bearing and block probably don’t line up.”
M: “So how can we know for sure?”
W: “There are three tests we can perform.”
First, we pour oil into the hole in the head where pressurized oil is supposed to come from. It flows down normally. This means the top hole in the bearing and block is lining up.
Next, Wayne feeds oil into the engine thru the vaccum pump oil feed hole using a pressurized tank: No oil is making it up. This probably indicates the second hole is NOT lining up.
Next, I crank the engine using the starter to simulate normal oil pump function: No oil…
M: “So what now?”
W: “We need to take the cam shaft out to look at the bearings”.
M: ” ….. Tab…..What are we looking at as far as time frame?”
W: “Couple of days… How much of this are you willing/able to do yourself?”
M: “I’ll do as much as I can.”
Wayne sets me up with a nice canopy…
A couple of days sure go by fast… At last we are ready to take the cam shaft out so I request Waynes help.
Of course it’s not going to be that easy and the tall gear at the end of the shaft will not clear the winch. So we need to take it off but, of course, it’s press fit on the shaft… So Wayne gets busy with his persuader.
TING, TING, TING, as gently as he can on the cast iron gear…TING, TING, TING, and with every TING I hear, another drop of sweat falls off the end of MY nose…
And finally, it comes off! Relief.
Then comes a very tense moment for three reasons:
1o: Is the bearing correctly installed?
2o: Is the cam shaft still OK? (If I’m not mistaking, you cannot buy a new one for a 2H engine anymore and 4Wheel auto doesn’t have a used one).
3o: Are the other three cam shaft bearings lining up correctly? ‘Cause if they aren’t, we need to take the engine out of the truck to replace them…
YIKES!
Well, luck finally is with us. OOOUF!
1o: The first bearing really was NOT installed properly.
20: The cam shaft is still in good shape.
30: The three other bearings are in the right position.
So all we need to do now, is remove the old bearing, replace it with one that is the same, only installed correctly and put everything back together.
Here’s Wayne gently tapping in the new bearing.
And out of my whole tool kit, these are all the tools I didn’t use.
Finally, we get to fire her up and see if we are back to normal.
“Yup, we have oil coming up here!”
We wrap it up a little late for a test run so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
I guess you could say we had more good fortune then bad luck in this case. Out of the whole rebuilding of this engine the only thing we didn’t do was to install those cam bearings. We had them installed by a professionnal shop in Québec city. And they failed. But it happened somewhere where it could be fixed relatively easily. Dan from 4Wheel auto had the parts, they let me work on the truck and supplied help as needed, even on a saturday and sunday. And we could stay in the truck the whole time, so it could have been much worst!
Comes saturday, No4 purrs all the way to West Edmonton Mall and everything is good again.
Until we walk out of the mall and see No4 has a flat tire!
No problem, I thought, I’ll just re-inflate it…
Of course not! I need to put on a spare! Good thing I have a lending hand!
Between fixing that flat and fine tuning a couple of more things on NO4, it’s worth it to go back to 4Wheel auto and spend the night there.
At about 2:00 am Minnie goes balistic:
“Wouah wouah wouah wouah wouah wouah! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Wouf wouf wouf wouf wouf!”
Which translates into:
“What the hell are you doing here? Stay away from this CARRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Get the hell out of here!”
Some guy was on the prowl and lurking around the truck.
Boy, if you think we were surprised by Minnies barking, he almost fell off his bike!
He goes: “Euh, OK, I’m sorry.” And pedals off into the night.
Minnie: 1. Prowler: 0
Thanks Minnie, we love you!
We go back to sleep and dream of the rest of the trip.
Soon, Dawson Creek and the beginning of the Alaska Highway.
All in all, we’ve been in Edmonton a whole week. 7 days. Forever.