Rebuilding the 318



Works in progress. Or, whose progress has been completed!
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Ron Keij
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Rebuilding the 318

Post by Ron Keij »

On a beautiful sunny day in June we were on our way to a car show when I heard a couple of really loud bangs under the hood :?: I pulled over and so did Matthew who was following in the convertible and our friends with their 55 Oldsmobile. When we opened the hood we saw cooling fluid coming at the intake manifold. We called AAA and waited for a while and when he arrived he couldn't really find anything wrong with the engine but it was running a little rough. He told us to drive it home and he would follow us for the first 20 miles. The car ran but not as strong as I was used to but we made it home. We already had plans for a rebuild this winter as it was smoking and using a lot of oil and we decided to move our plans forward a few months.
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Last edited by Ron Keij on Sat Oct 08, 2016 12:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ron Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Ron Keij »

Matthew started looking for the needed parts and in September he started taking a lot of parts of the engine.

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Then we decided to take of the bumper and front valance to make it easier to remove the engine. The front support had to go too as it was rusted through but luckily we had a spare one that we got from John Fowlie about 10 years ago. Never got to replacing it!
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On September 27th we were ready to pull the engine.
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Ron Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Ron Keij »

We found a lot of dirt in the engine but otherwise it was OK. We found that the timing chain and pistons were still originals and not much has been done to the engine in the past 57 years! Two valves were not really OK and the number one piston was the reason for the oil usage. But everything came out well and the block is ready to go to the machine shop next week.
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Matthew works so fast that he is always a little blurry in pictures
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Ron Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Ron Keij »

We had a lot of loose parts in the garage that needed a clean up and some fresh paint. A couple of months ago Matthew had a workshop for powder coating and told me that I should powder coat the parts. Yesterday we looked for all the "black" parts and this afternoon we went to a place were you can sand blast and powder coat yourself. Fun to do and in the end a lot cheaper than paint. We spend about 4 hours and $100 for sand blasting and powder coating all parts in the last picture.

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Blasted
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Blow away the dirt
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Put a coin in the machine
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Spraying the primer powder


After 20 minutes in the oven we had to let the parts cool for a while before we put on the black powder. We used matt black for the front support and gloss black for the other parts.

Spraying the powder on
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And in the oven it goes
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Close the doors and another 20 minute wait
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The final result!
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Faulkner
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Faulkner »

Amazing, Ron! I just now looked for DIY powder coating places in Philly, I haven't found one. What a neat trick! It's great that you have a shop like that near you.

Dan
"If it's new, Plymouth's got it!"
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Ron Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Ron Keij »

Faulkner wrote:Amazing, Ron! I just now looked for DIY powder coating places in Philly, I haven't found one. What a neat trick! It's great that you have a shop like that near you.

Dan
As far as I know it is the only place in The Netherlands with the DIY system, fortunately it is only about 5 miles away for us :)
Send over your parts and we can do it for you, it is fun to do it and it goes really fast!
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Matthew Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Matthew Keij »

Yup! Powder coating is fun and the results are fantastic!!!

I'll be going back next week! Still have some parts that need to be coated in red and some in black
July 14th 2019 “the soul crusher”
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Faulkner
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Faulkner »

Ron and I keep trying to catch up with each other via Skype, but six hours of time difference keeps getting in the way. Either I'm busy, or he is. Today was no exception - when I tried to reach him, he was out in the garage with Matthew, working on Chrissie. Not exactly sure what they are up to, but he messaged these pix and reports great progress.
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Matthew Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Matthew Keij »

Inner fenders are rusted so we are using the ones from the old Fury.
I removed the front fender and inner fender on the passenger side, we cleaned up the frame and painted it black. That's what happened :mrgreen:
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big m
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by big m »

Did you ever find what caused the loud bangs in the engine?
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Ron Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

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We can only guess what caused the loud bangs as we did not find something really wrong with the engine. It is Obvious that it needed the rebuild as a lot of parts were in there since new. My best guess is that it happened because the original timing chain slipped but I was cruising with a steady speed and normally the would happen when accelerating. But the engine came home from the machine shop this week and now we can start rebuilding it.

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Machine shop is done.jpg


In November we went to Florida to escape the cold weather here. Dick Koch has been receiving some :lol: packages for us that we had to take home with us. Had a great day with Dick and Yvonne and came back to our Florida villa with a lot of boxes :o

Some parts Dick had waiting for us.jpg
and some more.....jpg


Got all the new parts in the garage now except for the cam shaft. The NOS one is in on it's way to the Netherlands!
Inner fender in primer.jpg
All waiting to be installed.jpg


Today I will start to get the old paint off the block :)
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Faulkner
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Faulkner »

Great pix and flix, Ron! I love the scenes of boring and honing.

I notice that you powder coated your valve covers red, just like the air cleaner. Is that because you like the look, or is silver on Faulkner's covers wrong? :o :shock:
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Dick Koch
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Dick Koch »

So much for being factory or politically correct. I think I'm going to turn my swivel seat levers in the other direction.
Dick.
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Matthew Keij
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Matthew Keij »

The original brochure shows red valve covers.

I have received pics from Raymond with his all original 59 Sport Fury and it has red valve covers. I think it all depends on where the car was build.
So far what I have seen on survivors the block was silver, valve covers silver or red and the air cleaner red.
I like the look of the red valve covers more as the engine has more color
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Faulkner
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Re: Rebuilding the 318

Post by Faulkner »

I'm gonna paint my red!
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