Moving on up
Right well I ordered all the parts to replace the old oil seals on the Move engine, alas it does involve removing the engine, which in all respects was the last possible thing I wanted to do, but it leaks so much oil now I have have no choice. Luckily I did spot for sale a scrapped Daihatsu Cuore in Rugby which is the same mechanical car as a Move, just a different body shell and popped over to look. I am now the owner of a 850cc Cuore engine. Why? Because it was the right price and have given me all the spares I will ever need on the car (had new water pump, new engine mounts good alternator spare this and thats).
As the gaskets are coming from Malaysia and will take a week of so to arrive, I thought why not have a look inside this engine and this is the mess I found.
The head has some damage next to one of the valves, it was trapping one of the springs. That slice of alloy has now been removed, it will make no difference to the running of the engine. On the whole it was in very good condition and had the looks of a low milage engine, no rust in the block, very little muck in the water ways and clean valves. So I popped up to RetroPower and spent some time cleaning up the alloy head and get it in position to resemble when the gaskets arrive. Thanks as always to then suffering me, but I cannot be blamed for the floor mess no matter how hard they try.
First I did a quick test build of the head to check everything is fine (in terms of the spring movement and the chunk of alloy now removed. I may still use the head off the existing engine. Whichever one I do use I should give it a quick skim to make sure its flat and not warped (don’t imagine it is but better to be safe than sorry), I also need to re seat the valves and change the stem oil seals (when they arrive).
I painted the block quickly (as there isn’t exactly a lot to paint) and started the rebuild of the bottom end, most of this is oil seal and gasket free, so I was able to get a good amount done.
There rear + front crank oil seals will be changed once the parcel arrives, from there onward the main engine should go together fairly easily. Thats the plan anyway.
