If you rebuilt an engine and have water in the Vee, beside the obvious, the water pump or the manifold not sitting properly, take a look at your thermostat and it's cover.
Here is some history: I have never run this engine as I got it from someone with 1 head off the engine. The previous owner bought the complete car from a car repair shop. it was never picked up by the original owner and the car repair shop sold it. I bought the engine out of this car.
I assumed since the head was off, it had a blown gasket. I had both heads worked on.
Even though I had this engine for many years, I only just realized it has an early manifold. On various trips to UK, I would get spare parts from Tony White. I reached out to to him for a later manifold and had planned for a friend to pick it up and hold on to it for my next trip. For the interim I would get the engine running with the early manifold.
Fast forward, the rebuilt engine is in Stag no. 2. A few weeks back I was able to start the engine but water was pouring out to Vee at an alarming rate. I got an inspection mirror out and saw water dripping from the base of the inlet manifold. So I started thinking that the engine overheated do due to loss of water from the manifold.
Well I I'm not going to get the later manifold from Tony anytime soon, I was on the hunt for a later type manifold and fortunately found one on Ebay US. It arrived yesterday and I started to dismantle the manifold from the engine. With manifold off, I inverted it looking for the leak. On closer inspection, I noticed the thermostat had dropped out of its housing and got clamped between manifold body and thermostat cover, ( or should I say water elbow) I filled up the manifold on my bench and noticed water leaking out of the small gap. The trail of water instead of falling straight down onto the water pump cover, followed the contours of the manifold and started to drip right next to the core plug at the bottom of the manifold.
I placed the manifold back in the Vee, and there would have been no way would I have noticed the cover not sitting straight. The gap between thermostat cover and the water pumps cover is so small that even an inspection mirror wont fit.
Lessons learnt. I've got this off my shoulder and can now have a good night's sleep
Sujit
Here is some history: I have never run this engine as I got it from someone with 1 head off the engine. The previous owner bought the complete car from a car repair shop. it was never picked up by the original owner and the car repair shop sold it. I bought the engine out of this car.
I assumed since the head was off, it had a blown gasket. I had both heads worked on.
Even though I had this engine for many years, I only just realized it has an early manifold. On various trips to UK, I would get spare parts from Tony White. I reached out to to him for a later manifold and had planned for a friend to pick it up and hold on to it for my next trip. For the interim I would get the engine running with the early manifold.
Fast forward, the rebuilt engine is in Stag no. 2. A few weeks back I was able to start the engine but water was pouring out to Vee at an alarming rate. I got an inspection mirror out and saw water dripping from the base of the inlet manifold. So I started thinking that the engine overheated do due to loss of water from the manifold.
Well I I'm not going to get the later manifold from Tony anytime soon, I was on the hunt for a later type manifold and fortunately found one on Ebay US. It arrived yesterday and I started to dismantle the manifold from the engine. With manifold off, I inverted it looking for the leak. On closer inspection, I noticed the thermostat had dropped out of its housing and got clamped between manifold body and thermostat cover, ( or should I say water elbow) I filled up the manifold on my bench and noticed water leaking out of the small gap. The trail of water instead of falling straight down onto the water pump cover, followed the contours of the manifold and started to drip right next to the core plug at the bottom of the manifold.
I placed the manifold back in the Vee, and there would have been no way would I have noticed the cover not sitting straight. The gap between thermostat cover and the water pumps cover is so small that even an inspection mirror wont fit.
Lessons learnt. I've got this off my shoulder and can now have a good night's sleep
Sujit
Comment