When last we left you, Project Isolation Restoration had been torn down and we were pleased to find that there were no real Boogey men waiting for us inside the engine. As an early teaser for the next installment, we made a discovery as to why this engine had quit running on the previous owner and we’ll go into that next time.

After taking the whole thing apart we wanted to get the block cleaned up as we’re planning on making this thing as pretty as it can be when we are done and while squirt bottles of degreaser and brushes do a good job, the good ol’ machine shop hot tank can scarcely be beat. I loaded the block and head into a little box and cruised on over the Weymouth, Massachusetts which is the hometown of Custom Auto Machine. Dana Hard who has operated the business for decades gave the green light to wash this sucker down, so while maintaining social distance, the grime covered block went into the hot tank.

When it came out, were were able to make some more discoveries about the engine. It is amazing what carbon, gunk, and old caked up garbage can hide, right? The first thing we noticed as the fact that Tecumseh painted these engines a color really similar to the metallic blue that Pontiac used in the 1960s on their engines. This engine was used in a garden tractor, likely a Sears or a Suburban brand back then so it appears the red paint was applied after the fact. There’s a sticker on the engine that would have claimed this as a “Craftsman” engine so we’re going with the Sears branded tractor. Interesting that Tecumseh did not just paint them their end color to start with.

The aluminum finned head came out great and the topside cleaned up nicely. The bottom? The bottom had some stories to tell us.

Something passed through this engine at one point. See the marks here on the head. Jon Wall was guessing maybe a spark plug electrode or something of that nature. It clearly did not spend much time in the head and if you remember from previous installments, the generally perfect nature of the piston was leading us to believe it may have been swapped at one point. Can you have the head showing these marks and the piston be perfect?

As you can see, it was a small object and it got out of Dodge quickly. It isn’t like there’s a lot of compression in this engine and that the valves are within a half mile of the head when the engine is running so there was not a lot of hold up whatever was in there departing.

Now, here’s the next discovery.

At some point in this engine’s life, it seems that a previous owner had an exhaust seat replaced. It is on the exhaust side and it’s in great shape. In performing some simple internet searches I have found photos of identical engines and it’s clear that there was some machine work done at some point. Is it possible that whatever marked up the head also managed to jack up the exhaust seat on the way out? The intake side is factory original appearing.

As I have not yet measured the bore, we’re going to handle that in the next installment to see if the cylinder was enlarged when this valve seat was replaced. With the way the rest of the engine was, it seems that the long block was left together and this valve job was done with the rest of the guts of the engine still in it.

So just a quick installment here but an interesting one. Once I got the block home I wiped all the exposed surfaced down with some oil to prevent flash rusting and then it was time to start making some repairs and ordering some parts.

So far I have about $100 into this whole program. The only expenditure at this time is the purchase price of the engine. That will change when I begin ordering parts but this has been a fun budget minded project so far.

Next time we’ll get some more information on the block’s bore size and get into the process of fixing what ailed this old workhorse!