3b Act II

Well, here it is!




Got the 3b involved to move the engine around.

 

So whats the weight of an aluminum Detroit 3-53? Still uses an iron head? Maybe 100-200lb more than the F-134?
Years ago, a friend had an iron 3-53 in an M-715. That engine was over 1000 lb if I remember.
The 3 cyl blowers make a bit more noise than the other Detriots; straight vanes vs twisted vanes.
A Detroit sounds like nothing else!
-Donny

 

my grandpa has one of those engines in a shed, and a really roached out 3b sitting in the woods. i had a whole thread on here a few years back theorizing about doing basically the same thing. im excited to see this.

do you have the bellhousing for that engine? i didnt see it in any pics and if not its probably gonna be a bear to track down.

 

Yep I have a bell housing for it.

 

I was not at all familiar with this engine so I'm watching this video-

He said 3.5 gal of Oil!

 

Picked up an air horn, fan, and two spin on style fuel filter heads. Bought a NOS pressure plate and v belt tensioner from ebay. I'll be tearing into the SM420 shortly.

 

Yessir, the head is cast iron. I do believe it's around 1000 lb.

 

Took some time this weekend to crack open the 3-53. Now, I'm not an expert on the 2 stroke Detroits but I have done enough machine work on them to know a little about what I'm looking at.
I figured the injectors were all stuck from it sitting so long and they were. PO tried to start it but thankfully he didn't have much luck.
Anyhow, this mill has a spring rack which is pretty nice, so if an injector does stick it won't be an "uncontrollable" runaway.

After removing the valve cover I noticed a lot of crustyness so I plugged up all the holes and got after it with brake cleaner and the air blower.





Better than it was.



I took off all the fuel lines and started to work on freeing up the injectors.

https://imgur.com/pkzMODg

The injector is freed up and a good example of how a spring rack works.

https://imgur.com/HsyDTzl

And here they are all freed up and silky smooth.

https://imgur.com/mN01uYG

 

Started to tear into the SM420. Looks pretty good for 1961! Went ahead and ordered the Novak SM420/D20 adapter. The plan is to use my spare D20 and make a Super 18.





I put the valve cover, oil and fuel filter housings, and injector lines in the vat overnight. Steam cleaned the filter housings and valve cover this morning and gave them an hour long soak in Evapo Rust. This stuff is awesome. I left the valve cover and injector lines in there to soak overnight.

 

Dug out the D18 and D20 and managed to tear down the D20 this evening. Still waiting on a few things before I can try to start the 3-53.





I had pulled these gears out of the D18 probably two or three years ago and had to do some digging to find them. I had Mcruff machine the intermediate gear for tapered roller bearings a while back too. Just need a rebuild kit and a few other small parts.



Painted the valve cover.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I can't see any pictures.

 

It's working fine for me...

 

It's been a very long day.

Test fit the adapter to the SM420. Seems to go together just fine.



I spent the majority of the day working on the engine. I had a slew of work to do to it this afternoon but she runs!

The fuel pump is junk. Full of rust and crud. I cleaned it up but it doesn't seem to have the correct size square drive off the governor to run it anyhow.





Had to use the air blower to force fuel into the injectors. Not ideal but it worked.

https://imgur.com/wQdGLu3

 

That’s awesome

 

That’s awesome on so many levels!

 

Gave the transmission a rattle can rebuild. I honestly didn't see any reason to tear it apart. Just a wee bit of overspray to clean up because my masking tape is missing. Installed a new fuel pump and fuel pump drive coupler "fork".
So I decided to look at the clutch housing further and found that it won't work the goat 3-53 bell housing. It would bolt up but the pressure plate contacts the clutch fork/tube. No big deal, I've found a Gama Goat clutch housing. Another puzzle is the clutch pressure plate, disc, fork, and throwout bearing...best I can tell is a 60-66 GMC V6 truck clutch kit seems to be the same or very close to it. Now I have a NOS Goat pressure plate and it appears that the OE clutch disc is 11". The clutch/pressure plate I removed from the flywheel was a 12" unit. I'm going to clean it up some and try to find part numbers just for reference. Still need to acquire a D18 for the front output housing, twin sticks, and e brake parts.



Music to my ears.

 

Pile of parts showed up yesterday.

My Goat clutch housing. The clutch fork is a GM 60s-70s part. Looks just like a Goat clutch fork so maybe I'm onto something.



This is a Goat housing assembly picture I found online.


All the other goodies.
I'll be cutting out the dash and using the military style panel to make it easier to rewire everything.
Next up is ordering a clutch kit. Think I'll try to use a 12" clutch instead of the OE 11".

 

I finally got another D18 for parts. I had purchased two F134s around 2019 or so and completely forgot about one of them and my buddy gave me the T90/D18 that was bolted to it.
Have to order a few more parts for the "Super 18" but it's the last part of the puzzle and I can start tearing apart the 3b.

 

Got a few things done this week.





Took her on one last rip. Showed a couple of my coworkers how to properly drive the ol girl and what I mean by that was I held it to the floor and drifted around the back parking lot a few times. Managed to tote the front left in the turns Hopefully corporate doesn't review security footage. The stability and handling is better than I could've ever imagined.

I did slide down a hill and hit the passenger rear pretty hard on a tree. I honestly can't tell if the tub is any worse but my tail light is busted up.







I have some cleaning up to do. A large majority of the wiring is going into the garbage.



Telehandler makes everything easier.



Well now I don't know what to do with this thing. Still runs great. Guess I'll throw it in the corner somewhere for the time being.

 

Well it's in there! The oil filter housing causes issues with room on the frame rail but I might have a way around that. I have some remodeling to do for certain. I'll probably be redoing the brake mc and pedal. It works fine but it's kinda in the way of things now. Of course I'll be making changes to the crossbar. The biggest issue is the oil pan clearance. The F134 was fairly close but this is almost sitting on the oil pan. I'll try a set of new 6 leaf spring packs and *hopefully* that will give me more clearance. Oh and there's no way no how I'm fitting a mechanical fan under the hood.