Hi everyone, I have decided to start a topic on the progress of the restoration of my McDonald CE diesel engine. Please feel free to comment and to give me some ideas.
6/8/2011 - Today my friend Greg lent me his engine crane to lift my engine on to a temporary transport so I could move the engine around my workshop. With this transport being the first one I had ever made, it didn't turn out very well and was very unstable. So.. the engine crane was put away in my shed with Greg kindly saying I could keep it for as long as I needed it.
13/8/2011 - Went to Moorabin Timber and Hardware and bought some hard wood posts to make another transport that would be more suitable.
20/8/2011 - Started bolting together the pieces of hard wood and put some caster wheels under neath it to move. I know casters wheels probably where not the best option but it was all I could afford at the time. Once the transport was finished, I used the engine crane to lift it on, marked holes to drill for bolt holes to secure engine. But once engine was on the transport and the bolts were in, the nuts would not screw down on to the bolt. By this time it was getting dark and I decided to clean up.
27/8/2011 - To my surprise a suitable set of wheels came up on ebay. I placed a bid thinking that the finishing bid would be twice as much as my maximum bid. But having a look the day after it had ended, I had one the auction!!! So I am now the owner of a matching set of 5 wheels with stub axles. The person who i had bought them off saw that one of the wheels had a large chip out of the hub and included another wheel exactly the same for free. I also managed to find a pipe of suitable diameter and length that I could use as an exhaust pipe. Thanks heaps Anthony for all your help.
3/9/2011 - I had asked Greg during the week to see if he could possibly come down the next saturday to come and have a look at the wheels and axles. I asked him to come seeing that this is my first transport and I had no idea how they attached to the transport and I also had a few other questions about things i needed to do on the engine. When Greg arrived he had a look at the wheels, 3 of the wheels were complete with no chips out of the hub but the bore was in pretty bad shape on them. One wheel had a large chip out of the hub and a badly worn bore. Having a look at the fifth wheel, it had a badly rusted rim on one side as if it had been sitting in water for a few years. It was decided that the 3 wheels with a bad bore but with good hubs and rims would be rebored to a suitable diameter and that we would attempt to replace the section of rim on the badly rusted wheel rather than using the one with a chip out of the hub. The one with a badly rusted rim had the best hub and bore out of the lot of the wheels. Well, with the wheels out of the way, we turned our attention to the 'inner parts' of the engine. First we had a quick look at the bore, which we have decided will need a lite hone, secondly we had a look at the governing mechanism. With both of us not knowing much about the governing system on the McDonald, we were not exactly sure if it was complete or not. After much looking around we thought that something was missing. The most obvious place that it would be would be the sump ( being an enclosed crank engine) So, in goes my hand in to the 50 year old sludge in the bottom of the engine. I had a bit of a feel around and.... I found a part which seemed to be part of the governer (sorry i have forgotten what it is called) so, still not knowing if the governer was complete or not I plunged my hand in to the engine again, this time retreiving a perfectly preserved LIZARD!!!!!!!!!! Well..... we were quite surprized and spent quite a few minutes looking at it. It was about 20 cm long. And finally looking at my hand which was now blacker than my black friends skin, I went in one last time, this time retrieving...... the missing welsh plug which I had already replaced. We didn't spend to much time on this item as we really didn't want to know how a welsh plug from the head of the engine had made its way into the sump!!! And at this point i put away my tools and went inside (cleaning my hands first before i went in of course!!)
10/9/2011 - Well today was a quite day as all I did was remove some of the oil lines which were inside the sump.