Swapping crankcases

["Slack Alice" Simon]

That's great, thank you.

I take it that the front mountings are at the same height as each other?

So High frame to Low frame the angle of the engine relative to the top of the chassis rails changed.


Which accounts for the trouble one has with the nose going through the hole in the rad shell.

Which means that using a spacer under the rear mountings should bring nose back into line with the original hole.

Which I is what Mr. Rat, amongst others, said.    I am just double checking I have it right.

[Reckless Rat]

Simon there are no packing pieces or spacers on my car although the engine mounting bolts have been changed for the sake of expedience. The front ones now screw out upwards. At the rear they come up from underneath with a 'D' shaped washer welded to the head to stop them rotating. I did this just to make engine removal/ replacement easier as the bottom rubbers just sit between the chassis rail and the foot they can be slid into place easily. Looking at the front of the car the nosepiece is slightly below centre relative to the rad surround hole but not noticeably so. A thick washer under the foot rubber would probably solve that, but there is very little clearance between the nosepiece and the underside of the rad so I decided to leave it as is. The main issue as previously stated is getting the flywheel to pass under the bulkhead. Some surgery is necessary.

[Rory Nicol]

To clarify whether they are the same at the front I mounted the two crankcases side by side on their own 'chassis' set at the same level. As before the one on the left is the low frame crankcase. The steel bar across the top confirms that at the front end they are essentially at the same level.

For completeness I also show the rear view, again with the low frame crankcase on the left. The steel bar shows that the low frame crankcase sits 7-8mm above the high frame one when measured across the top of the bell housing. It's surprising that it makes so much difference but now I know why the nosecone hole in my radiator shell was damaged on its upper aspect by the nosecone.

(I should have anticipated the opportunity for 'product placement' sponsorship from the paint suppliers.)

[squeak]

A good follow up with informative pictures Rory, thanks

[Bob Culver]

Tahnks Rory. A novel presentation. Unfortunately the Willaims book on Specials, on which many relied for decades, fails to mention the difference. and pronounces all the same. i suspect there are many more mixed than realised. High frame van engines continued into the Ruby period, so numbers can be confusing..

["Slack Alice" Simon]

Thanks, Rory.

Reckers, I missed out the word "think".  A minor inconvenience when posting is that, if you return to the forum to check what you thought you read earlier in the thread, you then lose the post you have spent so much time labourously typing out, and have to start again.

[Bob Culver]

Hi Slack Alice
Ha ha. I have unthinkingly done that a myriad times. If you do not check back someone gets offended.
Most topics are repetitive and I can now type an answer srtright off whereas it used to take very many minutes and loss was a disaster. Or someone else replied whilst still labouring . I often used to darft out elsewhere.

[Tony Press]

Always post your draft so you don't lose it then edit after checking- if someone queries the first draft just ask them to re-read 

[Nick Lettington]

I often select all the text in my response and copy it before I exit to check something,  then open the reply box and post my draft back in. I have also discovered that the simplest way to get low resolution images for loading on the forum is to screen shot the image on my phone and trim and post the screen shot then select that image...

["Slack Alice" Simon]

  P1090040.JPG (Size: 144 KB / Downloads: 161)


8mm (ish - my turning isn't good) spacers.

We will see if they work, when lockdown is over.