I’ve known this car for a few years now and done a lot of work on it, but never really been able to get to nailing down its problems, usually down to pressure from employers who don’t understand the old cars, and want to just get it done and invoiced as quick as possible, without any care whatsoever for the car or its owner. When I first started working on it, I was told by a former service manager that all it needed was a quick carb balance and tune up, yea right !!!, but they forgot to mention that it had a problem with bad starting and intermittent overheating, and they also forgot to mention that three other mechanics had already had their hands on it trying to sort it out.
It’s so important when doing jobs like this to know the exact history and to relay all the proper and accurate information to the mechanic so that the costumer is not misinformed, after all we are not talking about a straight forward Audi or BMW. Anyway, to get down to it with this one we are going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat so to speak. We went through the usual things, cam timing, intake leaks, vacuum leaks, etc., etc., and yes the cam belts had been installed incorrectly with both exhaust cams one tooth out and yes various vacuum leaks, and having run it again after sorting these problems out and through past experience still came to the conclusion of head gasket failure.
We decided to stop messing about and try to put a stop to the owner having to shell out thousands of dollars for what seems to be not a lot. We took some time to run it and came up with some answers, some times compressions were good and even, sometimes two of the cylinders were not so good; Leakdown test showed a good seal from all the valve seats, so yes, suggestion is head gaskets. Especially adding in the factor of intermittent overheating problems.
So that’s it remove engine and gearbox assembly and yes here we go, a big can of worms, cylinder heads are both seized on, no movement whatsoever and a few other facts to mention, bad cam bearings as you can see from the pictures, one in particular has had it, bad dirty oil leading to me asking what’s the rest of the engine like and why is the oil so bad, after all the owner has looked after it with regular oil changes, the plot thickens. We sprayed WD40 down the head studs, most of it escaped down the threads but three studs on each head were blocked with rust, the exact same three bolts on each head. We will have to make a strong bracket to be able to jack the heads off and that’s where we are right now. All in all its not looking good. Here’s a few pictures to wet your appetite, better pictures and more information to follow!
Continuing on with the engine and gearbox, the gearbox was in reasonably good condition we just needed to replace the selector forks and carry out Calgary Italia’s modification to the gearchange rod, this making the gearchange slicker and more accurate. The diff only required both support bearings replacement.
Generally speaking the body work was in reasonable condition, although when we removed all the paint we found a big lump of filler in the front left fender. At some point in its life it had a light accident in the front left corner, when we measured the front left height compared to the right it was five millimeters lower, probably due to the heat that was applied when somebody tried to do some welding on the damage.
With this car being what it is, it is not possible just to fill the dents with plastic filler. The damage had to be cut out and a new panel will have to be fabricated and fitted and then finishing off and getting the correct shape will have to be done with lead.
Calgary Italian and Classics 