How to save this engine after a shower

[caproader]

Guys,

I was storing the original numbers 73T coupe engine in the basement (on an engine stand without the air cleaner cover but with paper towels stufffed in the stacks).

Unfortunately we had a severe water leak in the laundry room above the basement storage area. By the time I got home, 2 cyclinders were completely filled with water. A pair of goldfish could have been very confortable in the resulting pond.

I prefer not to rebuild the engine, just keep it in good storage condition to keep things from going downhill internally.

So far I have removed the spark plugs, alternator, MFI pump, stacks, throttle bodies, air shroud and valve covers. Then I rotated the engine to drain the water and sprayed copius quantities of WD-40 into each cylinder followed by blasts of compressed air into the spark plug holes. (If only I could motorize the engine stand and spin it at 1500 rpm!)

Have I done enough of the right things to get the water out or does the engine need to be completely disassembled? What are the chances of water in the main bearings or rod bearings corroding the crank?

If I do not need to split the case and if I can be confident that all of the water is out, what should I do to continue to preserve/store the engine (besides storing it with the air cleaner cover installed and a sheet of plastic over the engine in the future)?

Should I spray something like white lithium grease inside? Fill ever hole with 30 wt oil? Up until yesterday I was squirting some oil in each spark plug hole and rotating the crank every 2 weeks or so.

Thanks for the thoughts and advice

John

73 T coupe with 2.7 MFI engine (original engine just back from a swimming excursion in the basement)
73 S coupe with sporto

[chiroracer]

Run it on a dyno or in the car up to operating temp to boil out the water and condensation asap. Sounds like what you did was fine though,but I would be reluctant to leave it sit again for any length of time with the posibility of corrosion.S

[evilfij]

Agreed. Heat is the only thing that will fully remove water. I would change the oil at a minimum.

[304065]

Tough question. Water finds its way into everything. Hard to think of a way to displace it from, for example, the ring grooves in the pistons.

I lost one crankshaft to WD-40, I haven't used the stuff since. Every part that is not assembled gets sprayed with LPS-IV, which dries to a waxy film.

I would get a child plastic play pool and IMMERSE the engine in diesel fuel. Why diesel fuel? Well, not quite as volatile as gasoline, and given that you're going to need a lot of it, it's a substance that can be put through a filter and used productively after the immersion is done. Let it sit in there for a couple days, you could even rotate the engine with it immersed. Obviously you should use all precautions appropriate to having a few hundred thousand BTUs of energy in an open container.

Once it's out, pickle the engine internally with about five gallons of the cheapest motor oil you can find. You want to fill the thing up.

Only this way will you know that the water is displaced for sure. If this happened to me I would tear the engine down, takes only a few hours, and coat everything with LPS-3 http://www.lpslabs.com/product_pg/co...n_pg/LPS3.html and seal it up in a couple plastic tubs.

[RSTarga]

That sounds like a lot of work! He seems to have caught it early. If you can put it on a dyne to heat up, that would be option 1.
Option 2 would be to pull the plugs and pour marvel mystery oil in and rotate the engine until it covers everything in the cylinder. Drain the crank and put fresh oil in. You've got to get oil into the bearing surfaces to displace the water if you are going to store it again.
The dyno run sure sounds simpler than tearing it all apart.

[ejboyd5]

All the above are fine ideas, but I wouldn't be happy until I had turned the engine upside down to assure complete drainage. Gravity is your friend!

[YTNUKLR]

Disassemble the motor ? Let Dry and Lube the parts and put into bins,..

[caproader]

Guys,

Thanks for all of the thoughts and good advice. I'm not trying to take the easy way out, but:

This engine probably will not go back into the car during my life time. Although it is the orignal number engine for the car, I am too addicted to the 220 hp of the 2.7 motor currently in the car to ever put it back in.

If I take it apart and wrap up each piece, well you know how a dissassembled engine looses parts. It will be easier for my kid to move the assembled engine rather than boxes of parts when I am too old to drive.

If it ever goes back into the car, it will need to be rebuilt anyway (assuming there will even be someone who knows how to rebuild an MFI pump in 50 years).

But I guess that I could take it apart and reassemble it after a good coating on all the parts. But that would distract me from my current Honda CB160 rebuild project

So Right now I am halfway between ambivalent and undecided. And hoping that I can do something to get the engine back to the status quo until I can make up my mind.

Thanks again to everyone.

John

73 T with 2.7 MFI
73 S with Sporto
73.5 Targa
69 912
65 Honda CB 160