Dismantling The Engines (Part 2)

With the DX engine dismantled, I strapped it up and suspended it from my crane. Freeing it from the engine stand I lowered it  - still upside down - onto a couple of blocks on a work bench.

Using a block of wood and hammer I was able to remove the liners from three of the cylinders. Theses came out reluctantly and with the gift of large amounts of rust. 

Piston Liner Released

The fourth liner came out with the stuck piston still attached. With the piston and con rod still in place, there was no scope to push out the piston from the bottom of the liner. Working from the top end meant hammering on to the crown of the piston itself and meant that the piston might not be usable afterwards. it would all depend on how readily it yielded......

I placed the liner over the jaws of an open vice so that the con rod hound free below. As my hammer blows on the piston got more and more forceful I split several blocks of wood. The piston wouldn't budge. Taking a tip, I bought a plastic fence post driver from my local DIY store. And had soon smashed that into splinters. I bought ANOTHER fence post block from my local DIY store. Splinters. I tried heat. I tried freezing. I tried heat AND freezing. I tried going away for half and hour and then suddenly coming back to tackle it. Nothing worked.

That Troublesome Piston Soaking - December 2015

What finally worked was giving up for the time being. I put the piston/ liner combination in my appropriately numbered tub (that felt good), and tried not to think about them anymore. I moved the engine block to a bench in the other garage and turned my attention to the DX2 engine I had pulled from my DS.

The procedure for stripping the DX2 was pretty much as before, except that this time I had to remove the clutch and flywheel before I could fit the engine to the stand. The clutch was straightforward. The flywheel was more stubborn: I had to replace the clutch assembly bolts back into the flywheel and then use a bar to brace between them to stop the flywheel revolving. With that done it was placed on the engine stand for stripping. 

DX2 Engine - Preparing to Remove The Oil Pump - 18 November 2016

As before,  once stripped the engine was placed on blocks on a bench and the liners removed.

On Blocks - Removing The Liners - 18 November 2016

With this being my second engine strip, I didn't take anywhere near as many reference photos. I was, however, equally careful to put the parts I removed into labelled pots and tubs. 

Pots and Tubs

A few surprises along the way:

• the tappets were badly worn and pitted
• The bottom end of the engine was very glued-up with burnt engine oil.
• The sump was similarly full of sticky tar. 
• The main and big end bearing shells showed significant pitting and wear tracks
• There were linear marks on the bearing shells where contaminents had gone through the oil ways and onto the bearing surfaces. 
• Pushing the pistons through the liners revealed that there were broken top piston rings on two of the pistons (!)
• There was some pitting on the engine block top surface

Water damage - Pitting In The Block Surface

The next step would be to clean everything up.........