The Bridge Classic Cars team have wasted no time at all getting stuck into the 1955 Ford Thunderbird which arrived at our HQ a couple of days ago. The stunning classic American coupe arrived with an engine issue which the team began to look into nearly immediately, with our technician Greg heading up the project.
As with all of our engine diagnostics, the first thing we always check is the timing. Greg noticed that the timing mark on the engine itself had worn but after finishing TDC and getting the engine adjusted, the car ran beautifully – for about 10 minutes.
After that, Greg found the engines behavior started to change in the valvetrain. With the rocker cover off, Greg could begin to inspect the cylinder head and the valve gear. He found quite large traces of paint and debris in the galleys of the head, along with that he found that a pushrod had jumped out of a rocker that ultimately led him to finding out the true issue. Greg discovered one of the valves for cylinder 5 had become stuck, it could be freed off but then would become stuck once again.
The team removed the cylinderhead from the car (and all associated parts that led to it being extracted) in order to take a closer look and work out a game plan. The cylinder head will have to cleaned out and new valve guides installed into it, whilst everything is apart, the team can also clean up the paint which has found itself inside and on many of the components. Then, it will be reinstalled on top of the small block V8 ready for its owner to enjoy once again.
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