Daughter's 300D not only lives, but also purrs!

I FINALLY got done with the 300D engine.

I had run into some crazy SNAFU's along the way, but all's well with the engine now.

The biggest problem I ran into was mismatchec prechambers and pistons. When you replace pistons in one of these engines MAKE SURE you put in the right ones. If you have early pistons and late prechambers, they will contact. I ended up changing the prechambers because the cylinders had already been honed to fit the new pistons and the new rod bolts were already stretched, so I left the shortblock intact and went through all sorts of crazy gyrations getting everything I needed and getting the machine shop to get the prechambers in.

In the middle of the project I had to go to Europe on business for a couple of weeks which drug everything out even further.

Once I started up the fresh engine on Wednesday I had another scare, it had a dead miss on one cylinder. I checked the compression and found 370 PSI all the way across. What a relief that was. I found number one not hitting at all, tried a little of everything and thought I might have to replace/repair the expensive injection pump. I took everything I could out of number one hole of the pump this morning, cleaned everything and put it back together and VOILA!, the miss disappeared.

At that point the engine was not grabbing RPM's very fast and was smoking like a grassfire. Good fortune again, I ran it some and evidently finally burned the assembly oil out of the cylinders. It no longer smokes and runs really good.

Now to fix one last knucklehead problem. In the course of parts scattered out along the shop wall, I stepped on the vacuum line and broke the fitting for the transmission vacuum mechanism feed. So now the transmission won't shift past second. I will get a fitting, replace that, then run it a hundred miles or so and change oil.

I am very pleased with how it came out, and really glad to have that shop stall back.

I hope I don't hurt my arm while patting myself on the back.

Have a great day,