Follow along as I build a 79 Spider

[whitehause]

This is the custom oil pump I just took out.......custom cause it draws oil from multiple places

[friedman]

Strange, from the photo of the motor on the hoist, the pan looked to be in good order. Cant' wait to see what the main bearings look like with the crack in that pump.

[whitehause]

I'll post a pic of the pan at some point.....it's crushed in the front pretty good. The rod bearings didn't look bad, haven't got the main caps off yet.

[whitehause]

The Good, the Bad, and the UGLY


The Good, the rod and main bearings look good, so the oil pump issue didn't seem to hurt much.

The Bad, the aux shaft developed a small flat spot where the fuel pump lever rides, maybe this is common?

The UGLY.....I know why the oil pump shaft broke. Apparently at some point the cross member broke and was welded back together. That's an expense I wasn't expecting. Looks like a good weld, but I'm not trusting it for a second, so new cross member it is

[fp55scca]

--Tim,
(1) The good: yes, those bearings look remarkably good considering the condition of the oil pump.

(2) The bad: Not bad at all. What you appear to have is an Aux shaft, maybe P/N 4192035, which does not have a mechanical fuel pump lobe. They aren't needed with electric fuel pumps. I think they were modified at the factory. Most racers just cut that lobe and some of the shaft off anyway, then tap the exposed oil gallery for a 1/8 NTP plug. Yours should have a large welch plug in the end of the shaft like the pic below.

(3) The ugly: Yes, not good. A replacement would be in order. You may also want to modify the replacement crossmember with longer control arm bolts in order to achieve more negative front wheel camber. At the same time, you can reinforce the crossmember in its vulnerable spots. I can post pics of the modifications.

Aux Shaft.jpg (90.6 KiB) Viewed 165 times

[friedman]

JIm, if that shaft was lobeless then what was it rubbing or hitting on to create that wear?
I have never seen a cross-member damaged there and need a weld repair, wonder what caused it.

[fp55scca]

--Carl, I had the same question....unless someone tried to install a mechanical fuel pump? Without a lobe it would only rotate on the actuating arm of the pump?

--Same question I had on the crossmember. There doesn't appear to be a lot of distortion in the area of the crack that might be expected from crash damage? I have no idea!

[whitehause]

This car has a mechanical fuel pump, it's a carb car, not injected. The lobe is on the exact opposite side of the picture, that's why it looks like it has none. I think the shiny band just to the side of the flat spot is where the fuel pump lever rode, so I'm not even sure that's what caused it. Maybe a belt broke at some point and it got hit by a some moving part?

As far as the crossmember, I have no idea. Maybe it was just a crack that the PO noticed at some point and decided to weld it? The PO was a the boyfriend of one of my wife's friends, and was a mechanic with a bunch of cars. We had seen it in his garage 6 months before we bought it and expressed interest if he ever decided to sell it. The motor was out at that time. He called one night 6 months later and sold us the car for $400.00 to get some money to go to bike week in Daytona, even drove it over to us in a snow storm cause he was leaving the next day.....lol.

And YES....if you have pics of the crossmember mods that would be great!!

[andy]

Another possibility is that at one point the aux shaft got out of sync with a timing belt change.

The 2L engine is non-interference except for the fuel pump lobe if the aux shaft is not indexed correctly. It can contact the rod cap bolts on the #2 con rod (if I recall correctly). Typically that results in a nice window in the block to view the aux shaft.

Perhaps this one was out just "right" to barely make contact and simply wore down the lobe?

Just a theory,

[whitehause]

I'll have to take a look at the #2 rod and see if there are any marks.