<VV> Obstinate 180 (somewhat long)

[RoboMan91324@aol.com]

Hello Gang,

Some of you may recall my posting a while back about my seized 180.  Some of 
you even made suggestions.  While the suggestions were probably all valid and 
workable under certain conditions, my engine was so firmly seized that I had 
to take more drastic measures than those suggested.  I always appreciate it 
when people post the ultimate solutions to their problems, so here goes.

First a description of the problem ....  My problem started when I bought an 
engine sight-unseen and trusted the seller when he said the engine wasn't 
running but turned freely.  Not so.  The engine had apparently been sitting out in 
the weather for quite some time.  Worse, it had been sitting with no spark 
plugs installed.  The engine didn't appear to have been sitting out when I 
received it but when I eventually pulled the heads off, there were enough pieces of 
leaves, etc. that I could have mulched a small garden with it.  Of course, 
that would be inadvisable after using PT Blaster, etc.

Anyway, I tried the PT Blaster routine for weeks and nothing budged even with 
a very long breaker bar on the harmonic balancer bolt.  Once I figured that 
wasn't going to work, off came the heads, oil pan, upper cover and everything 
else possible.  The oil pan showed the expected buildup of lead infused sludge 
but no noticeable metal shavings.  For fun, I will cut the filter apart but I 
don't think I will find anything serious.

What I hoped to do was to unbolt the con rod caps and remove the cylinders 
with the piston assemblies intact and handle their disassembly as separate 
units.  Apparently, Murphy had other ideas.  What I found was that pistons 5 and 6 
were almost exactly at bottom dead center and the other rod journals were at 
approximately 1:30 and 10:30 up top and 4:30 and 7:30 down low on the imaginary 
clock face on the harmonic balancer.  What this meant is that I was able to 
get to the pair of nuts on the con rod cap of only the two journals that were 
at 1:30 and 10:30 which were for pistons one and four.  All others would only 
allow access to the upper nuts which didn't help.  Unfortunately, I couldn't 
remove the two piston/rod/cylinder assemblies that I had removed the cap nuts 
from because the rod journals were exactly at the points where they kept the big 
ends of the rods from passing between the side of the crankcase and the 
journal.  I hoped that with two rods loose, I could force the crankshaft to turn 
but no such luck.  That is how seized the engine was.  The good news was that 
the two journals that I could see looked very nice.  Of course, the next step 
was to unbolt the engine case bolts to try to loosen up the main journals.  That 
was great in theory but still didn't help.  Apparently, the four remaining 
seized rod journals, wrist pins and pistons were enough to keep the crankcase 
halves clamped together.  

I hate to butcher things up but I was getting to the point where I felt I 
might need to take a reciprocating saw to the remaining con rods.  That's when it 
struck me that I still might be able to remove piston/rod/cylinder assemblies 
one and four if I could remove the upper cap bolts.  If I could do this, I 
could get to the bottom cap nuts of assemblies two and three through the open 
crankcase holes for one and four.  The cap bolts on one and four were hitting on 
the journal and side of the crankcase when I tried to remove the assemblies.  
Even with the con rod on its journal, the head of the cap bolts would not 
clear the side of the crankcase.  I decided to cut the bolts out and was able to 
do this with the judicious use of an abrasive disk.  I protected the exposed 
journals from the hot grindings with a wet cloth.  With the bolts gone, the 
bottoms of the con rods were just barely able to clear between the journals and 
the crankcase side and I removed those two assemblies.  I then had access to 
the bottom cap bolts on assemblies two and three and with those loose, I was 
eventually able to work the crankshaft back and forth and remove all 
piston/rod/cylinder assemblies.  I am amazed that all of the journals look good and I will 
probably be able to get by with just a polish.  I wanted to avoid grinding a 
nitrided crankshaft if at all possible.

This afternoon, I pressed the pistons out of the cylinders.  This taxed my 12 
ton press to its limit on a couple of the assemblies but they did come apart 
and the cylinders will need to be bored but aren't scrap by any means.  Of 
course, the wrist pins are stuck but I will see how bad they are when I press 
them out some time this week.  After I had the pistons out, I grabbed a cold beer 
and watched some football.  (Yes Alan, the barbarians over here drink our 
beer cold and our football uses an oddly shaped ball.  To add insult to injury, 
the beer was made on your side of the pond.)

To sum up, this has been a real PITA but it seems worth it now that I know 
that the crankcase halves, crankshaft, con rods, cylinders, heads and camshaft 
are all in decent shape.  With how seized the engine was, I feared that most of 
it would be scrap.  I am very pleased at this point.  Was it worth it?  
Considering the purchase price, the shipping cost and the amount of time invested 
to date, sort of.  Of course, if I had gone right to the drastic measures 
instead of trying to be gentle, I would have cut my time and effort considerably.  
Next time, I will try to assure the condition of the engine better and I will 
just assume the worst of a seized engine and not waste time with gentle 
measures.

I already had the gaskets, forged pistons, valves, etc. delivered to the Belt 
Toss .... thanks Lon.  Now, I need to have the cylinders bored, heads done, 
con rods resized and the turbo and carb rebuilt.  We will see what further 
adventures await.

Doc