Saving Old Seagulls

Can the crankshaft take it?

I would go for the thermal shock method. Hot air gun works well.

Porta power is a good idea, if the ports are closed. Also weld a grease nipple onto a sparkplug, pump it up with a grease gun.

As it a twin you will need to take more care, apply equal pressure to both cylinders.

H-A

If you do it this way with a pusher tool, you run the risk of bending & damaging the treads on the cylinder retaining studs, which if I remember right are 9/32 BSF, & a die for them will be far rarer than rocking horse poo.

I've been looking for a tap this size for 2 years, can anyone help?

Cast bronze conrods with offset little ends don't grow on trees either.

Ah - I do have spacers on the other side to avoid bending the studs.

Incidentally I've just had a quick look at my BSF sets and have a 9/32 die. Can't find a matching tap though. I'll look at them all when I have a chance. Do you need to borrow it?

Just had a quick look - there are lots of 9/32 BSF taps for sale on Ebay, the cheapest being £5.99.

Or have a look here - I use them all the time.

http://www.rdgtools.co.uk/acatalog/bsf_ ... _DIES.html

So the final solution of filling the cylinder with propane, screwing in a spark plug and firing her off's a no-no then.

Bathing in diesel...still stuck though.

Thought you'd like to see the next step. When in doubt - get a bigger hammer! In this case a hydraulic one. Here's Mrs Stubble on the Porta-Pack The fitting into the cylinder. This has shifted it but only as far as the exhaust port. I think I'm going top make some blanking plates for the exhaust ports then use the same method to move it further.

Didn't have to resort to propane in the end.

Pistons finally out by using the hydraulic method. This was a bit convoluted because the the exhaust port needed to be blocked off. Once this was done there was enough clearance to get some cranked spanners in (I had to make those) and undo the big end off the crankshaft. This enabled me to get the cylinders off with the pistons inside. Back to the hydraulics but then, of course once the inlet port (and the slot in the piston) appeared, all the oil ran out.

Pushed the piston back down using a fly press, then used hydraulic again. After 3 goes of this the piston could be twisted around to avoid the inlet port and it popped out of the end. Everything was in pretty good shape really except that one of the piston rings is broken. Currently puzzling around that.
Any ideas on replacing the piston rings?

Try these, you will need to have the dimensions of the rings required. I'm wondering if these pistons are "off the shelf" items also fitted to other engines such as Villiers etc?

http://www.coventryboringandmetalling.co.uk/index.htm

http://www.fwthornton.co.uk/

Interesting project Monty, hope it goes well. Keep posting the pics etc!

You break rings when you rotate the pistons during extraction, you also loosen the location pins, Cris P tells me you now got access to a Middy.

Yes - have a steerable Middy in Southampton when I can get down there to collect. Also bought a outboard Britannia off Ebay a few weeks ago. That should give me a few spares.

Chris wanted the remains of the steerable one once I've wrenched all the bits I want off it.

The rings didn't break until I tried freeing them off. Now they're broken I can see why. A thick and very hard layer of gluey ex-oil underneath them. I had bathed them in diesel for a fortnight and heated them in boiling water but to no avail.

Now I see the state of them underneath. There is no option but to get new rings.

Chris