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1937 k series Limousine
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Great job Mike

I had quite the ordeal with my recently purchased K series, and I have several of you here to thank for all your help,, I bought this car last fall from another member of this club,, He did not know much about the car and hadn't really run it since he bought it 20 years ago He took the oil pan off and inspected inside the pan,, For whatever reason he bolted it back up and listed it for sale only guaranteeing that it would spin,, He did tell me the first owner had major work done to the engine but had some troubles that he would not disclose? So I like a challenge. I took the heads off and found new valves that were coated in varnish.. I didn't want to try to start it, so I pulled the pan off it was clean inside.. I pulled out a piston out (It never dawned on me that the big end of the rod was too big to pass through the cylinder!) so I pulled some clips out and took the piston out the top and let the rod down the bottom.. The pistons were brand new but heavily coated in a clear varnish and the rings were completely stuck,, soaking them in carb clean loosened them up nicely I honed all the cyl walls just a little to freshen the cross-hatch and installed new rings and found I had 13 to 14 thousandths ring gaps Then I took all the brand new valves out of their guides and lapped them all back in and I got a GREAT running engine! BUT it soon started creeping out of the comfort zone on temp.. upwards of 180 just idling,, I found out how well the shutters worked! and they were starting to open just before 150 that part was great,, I was afraid the block was clogged. I was able to pull the front casting plugs out of the engine and fashioned up a 3000 psi pressure washer with a thin tube and a 90 degree on the end and slipped that rod all the way through the water jackets clear to the end of the block on both sides and got out a couple hand-fulls of crud,, Put it all back together.. still overheats!,,The temp in the top of the rad was 180 and it was 50 degrees in the bottom.. This is NOT good!.. Then I went to Napa auto parts and got a combustion leak tester.. Its real cheap and goes in on top of the radiator and blue liquid is in a vial and you pull steam out of the radiator..(If the fluid turns yellow, you have combustion in there, but NO presence of combustion found. I then pulled the timing chain cover back off and found that the chain tensioner was maxed out and the chain still loose.It was loose enough to be a half tooth off so I got a chain with "pointy segments" not rounded even though it was used, it took me clear to the second notch from new with perfect dot alignment.. I then took the radiator down to a specialist and found it easily flowed over 25 gpm and was deemed to be in perfect shape by the radiator company,, Basically it flowed out as much water as they could put into it (non pressurized) I knew these things would probably not fix my issue, so I pulled the water pump again.. At first, I only got the end-play real nice, but that was not all it needed. The vanes had over 40 thousandths wall clearance,, I got another set of vanes but the clearance was still 20k, so then I re-machined the "selective " thrust washers... Okay,, maybe they were not meant to be selective!, but I could not find any vanes that were a perfect height.. I adjusted the thickness until I had a little less than 10 thou clearance. Then I put this whole thing back together again and started the engine,, there was much more of a "torrent" at the top of the radiator,, very soon, I was seeing 80 then 90 then 110 in the bottom of the radiator and a little shy of 150 degrees at the top! FOR however long I wanted to idle it!!!! I was BESIDE myself! It is so sweet running 18 inches of vacuum perfectly steady on the gauge at 5 or 6 hundred rpms. It is the quietest engine I ever heard!!! Thanks for listening Mike

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