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[VintageLambo] Re: lambo engine work

wspohn4@aol.com

In a message dated 10/04/03 7:31:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time, arobinson@hfmus.com writes: As someone that has just "wakened up" an Islero from a decades long hibernation, I"ll add a few comments. As to nyloc nuts, might there be a compatibility issue with heat, oil, and oil additives? Don"t know. The lock washers should have helped hold everything in place if it was properly torqued. I don"t use locktabs on the con rod nuts in my race car as they will crush and give uncertain torque - just the bare nuts torqued properly will stay put (even if it makes you nervous). Nylocs are fine anywhere in an engine except for the exhaust. You can always use Loctite on a Nyloc with a lockwasher and then drill the stud for a splitpin, and then........ Take my advice, REBUILD THE WATER PUMP! It costs $60-something for the kit. You will highly regret not doing it later. Agree completely - cheap insurance and the consequence of failure can ruin your whole day/year. One of the first things I ordered. Do be careful and don"t snap bits off the flanges when disassembling it. I would definitely *check* cylinder head torques but I wouldn"t replace unless there"s a compelling reason to remove it. The studs can only stand so many re-torques and if you"ve got good compression (sounds like you do) then you"re probably okay. Especially if you"re planning to pull the heads at some future date. I"m not so sure about the studs being limited in life. Many of my British engines have main and head studs that will outlast the rest of the car and take any amount of use. Only the rod bolts need changing, and only then if you are fussy and/or going to race it. I"d suspect that the head studs are similar in the Lambo, especially as alloy head torque specs are lighter than for cast iron, although I don"t recall the precise figure on the Lambo (heck - after building the same sort of engines on some of my other cars for 30 years, I STILL look up the torques EVERY time I do it, just so the one time I don"t won"t result in a failure and me with egg on face). Better to seal the cam covers properly (I used Loctite 518 and stat-o-seal washers on the cam covers and she"s been oil free--at least from that seam--for several years). The Stat-o-seal "O" ring squished into an alloy washer are very useful. One of my race cars has cam covers that I chromed, simply to cut down on upkeep as you need to be polishing the alloy all the time, and when I get it out for the odd race, I always have lots of more important things to be doing. Problem is that the chrome makes leaking past the nuts that hold the covers on even worse - they normally used copper washers, which leak, so people tighten them, and then they leak, so they get tightened a bit more, and as there isn"t any support underneath at the centre bolt, almost all of them end up cracked. The Stat-o-seals work very nicely without leaking or cracking the covers (and I also stack flatwashers on the stud _just_ up to where the cover will compress to when tight but not over-tight. You can see what I am talking about at Chrome Cam if you"d like (the page of car pics is here). Bill is a fairly-priced, one-stop shopping point for old Lambo owners. My feeling is that he deserves to get the "easier" pick-and-pack business (points, caps, seals) to help make up for all of our inane requests ("Say Bill, can you go digging into the pile and see if there"s one of those spring-purchase washers, the smaller one, not the bigger one, out of the brake master cylinder. Mine"s looking a little tired.") Agree completely on this as well. These guys supply Ferrari parts at Fiat prices when just about anyone else (an Oregon outlet comes to mind) try to rip you sideways for bits that THEY know they can get cheap from some other application but YOU don"t know it, so they can get away with charging triple. The least they could do is send a free T sh