Restoring a Pre-war Riley Special » Engine, gearbox and drive train http://vintagerileyspecial.com a restoration diary Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:38:43 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 Good news! http://vintagerileyspecial.com/good-news/ http://vintagerileyspecial.com/good-news/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:09:28 +0000 pdsmith http://vintagerileyspecial.com/?p=41 I couldn`t wait any longer. I had to see what was causing the engine to be seized-up. I imagined that the piston rings could be stuck to rusty bores, or valves & valve gear rusted up, or many other horrors. ….. I removed the cylinder head, (undoing head nuts in the correct sequence), with trepidation.  I had sqirted some oil into the plug holes a few days ago to help free up rusted piston rings, without much hope.

I`m delighted to say that the engine was being stopped from turning by a large amount of oil sitting on top of the pistons. Pistons unable to travel up the cylinders because the oil wouldn`t compress, (hydraulic-lock). …. The cylinder bores are perfect. They have been sleeved back to standard and a new set of standard pistons fitted. … The cylinder head has new valves, guides & springs.  It is not a big valve head, but I have a big valve head amongst the spares which may be a performance improvement mod later. …. I havn`t yet had the sump off to look at big end & main bearings but I am convinced that the whole engine is rebuilt from what I have seen so far.

Looks better with a coat of engine enamel

Looks better with a coat of engine enamel

Cylinder head

Cylinder head

Lovely bores & new pistons

Lovely bores & new pistons

Clean up & coat with engine enamel

Clean up & coat with engine enamel

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