Posted by Chris Davis - Centerville, UT on Monday, May 09, 2005 at 2:32PM :
Well, My 9 year old sons worked with me over the weekend (pre-Mother's day festivities) to get my WC-51 running. We cleaned up the carburetor, replaced the cap and rotor, filed and re-set the points, put on a new set of plug wires, cleaned and gapped the spark plugs, put a new coil in, rigged up a 5 gallon jerry can fuel supply, hooked up a fresh battery, and while it would turn over ok… it just wouldn’t run.
It sounded like the timing was way off, but I hadn’t moved the distributor. After checking my plug wire for the third time I remembered John Bizal’s advice from a week or so ago on the WWII Dodge form. He noted that the oil pump can be timed incorrectly, and that since the same shaft drives the distributor, the only way to know for sure is to find the compression stroke on the #1 cylinder and take a look at where the rotor is pointing.
I did this and found the distributor was 180 degrees off! So I re-sequenced the plug wires starting at the 1’oclock position rather than 7’oclock. It fired off this time, but didn’t want to continue running, it sounded like the starter was hung up and not disengaging.
I pulled the starter… man; it’s hard to reach that top bolt! The teeth on the starter gear where a little worn, but with some WD 40 the mechanics all seemed to be smooth. I turned the motor over by hand and inspected the flywheel… again, some worn teeth, but none cracked or missing. I put it back together, but found that the sound and drag on the motor didn’t go away.
So I removed the fan belt. This eliminated the noise/drag (must be a water pump or generator issue) and finally the motor started.
It ran with quite a “lope”, which I suspected from the earlier compression check showing a dead #5 cylinder, but it did quickly build 25 psi oil pressure at this low idle, so that was a good thing. It also wasn’t smoking from the exhaust pipe… another good thing. I shut it down quickly to top off the radiator. (I had checked oil before starting, but the radiator looked like an iffy proposition, so I hadn’t topped it off.)
I added a gallon of distilled water to the radiator… no leaks. I added a second gallon… I heard dripping… splashing really… big leak… but where? I looked underneath to see water running down well back of the radiator. The freeze plug closest to the firewall was bad! Why hadn’t I looked at it while I had the starter out?
The plug was lifted away from the block slightly at the lower edge. I pressed on it with a screwdriver and it fell out/apart. I cleaned out the remains and routed through my “spare” parts boxes. I lucked out with a plug that would fit. It wasn’t a perfect fit or perhaps it wasn’t a perfect clean up job, but it didn’t leak too bad, so I finished filling and started the motor again.
I could let it run longer now, and soon found that with a little choke it would idle just fine (although still with a major lope). The boys were delighted, but I soon noticed some blue smoke coming from the oil filler cap vents. I pulled the oil filler cap off and was rewarded with a steady, steam engine style puff of blue exhaust at every “lope”.
I’m afraid the problem is bigger than “stuck valve”… it has to be something more major doesn’t it? Like a hole in the cylinder head? I’m taking the motor out anyway, so I’ll pull the head and see what there is to see, but I could use some guidance in the rebuild department.
It has decent compression on the other cylinders, and the oil pressure is ok at idle. I could just replace the offending piston perhaps? I’m not sure I want to tackle a total rebuild. Then there’s the freeze plug issue… it looks like it froze, so who knows what internal damage might be done… I guess if the freeze plug did its job, perhaps none.
What are some ballpark costs for rebuild of one of these engines if I have someone else do it? When does it just make sense to buy another motor? The block is a T214 (correct for WWII) but not original per the engine number noted on the build tag, so replacing it with another T214 wouldn’t sacrifice any originality.
Advice welcome…
Chris Davis
Centerville, UT
’45 WC-51
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