Some Progress!
I have the timing side plug out. The ½” drive large screwdriver arrived in the post yesterday and I ground it to a good fit in the plug slot after pushing some putty in the slot to see the right shape. With the crank in my woodwork bench vice which was just wide enough to hold the Blade and stop it jumping out of the slot on a large torque wrench, a couple of bangs with the palm of my hand on the end of the wrench and the plug started moving.
I can see now the pinned hole (see photo) was redrilled to open out the oilway, but why this had to be done is still not clear, if someone realised the plug was too far in and blocking the oilway why drill all the way through the crankweb to create a wide hole, why not just remove the plug and reposition it, that would be much easier. Perhaps Jules suggestion that they thought they were being cleaver reducing the sludge trap, people do stupid things, it is April fools day after all. I just watched the A G Engineering guy on Youtube have all kinds of trouble cutting out a very hard magnet that had been expoxied into the hole instead of a normal sludge plug.
OK so now on to the plug on the drive side which was an Allen key hole already damaged and then rounded out completely by me with an impact wrench. See photo, I have some short socket drive easyouts so I knocked one in and it took a lot of torque and I could have applied more as it seemed to be winding in OK but I chickened out, these easyouts feel like they apply as much expanding force as they do turning force, it just didn’t feel like it was going anywhere and might snap off.
So I have started drilling out the drive side plug and actually it is so far in that I could probably wind the new plug in flush on top of it, but it would be nice to get it out so I can clean the oilway properly. But therein lies the problem I have stopped because I think the plug is wound all the way up against the crank so I can’t see where the plug ends and the crank starts in the drilled hole, I have been avoiding breaking all the way through to minimise the amount of swarf I get in the oilway. I need to go back to a small drill and drill through the middle to indicate the depth of the plug, I think the Allen key plugs are deeper. I’ll have a go tomorrow.
I am not happy about the new plugs at £17 for two (from Feked) I expected them to be exactly the same as the originals with a nice wide slot that is dished deeper in the middle but they have a very narrow shallow slot (more visible in the drive side photo) which might be fine to put them in but once the loctite is set they are never going to come out with these weak slots. I don’t plan to be around when these plugs need to come out again but I am very tempted to have a go at them with a disc on my Dremel and make them wider deeper and dished in the middle. I decided not to go for allen keyed plugs as that is the one that is giving me trouble.
Swarfcut, Chaterlea25 and all, I am really interested in your comments on the engine its mods and getting it back together, but I think I should start another thread on this and at the moment I am fixated on sorting out the sludge plugs and I hope they will be sorted in the next few days. By the way Chaterlea25 yes it is a ball race on the drive side and I will do some photos on the timing cover mods.
Cheers all
Degsy