Rebuild setback

YTSupport

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We got the engine into the D14 yesterday and were hopeful we'd be able to start it today. My son was torquing the manifold bolts and at 25 ft lbs, it cracked. My parts tractor has one but it's in very poor shape at the outlet. Can buy one, but no matter what, no starting tests today. It was quite a letdown.

I just received some "EZ-Weld" TIG rod that is suppose to weld cast without preheating. "Mr. Tig" and one of the other TIG experts did videos on it showing it's success. I may try welding this (though I'm a beginner at TIG). There isn't much to lose to try. Even if that were successful, the movement of the cast might leave it warped. I suppose that since it cracked so easily, it may also just crack elsewhere.

The crack goes all the way through, but not to an edge.


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If your manifold or head surface isn't true within .003-.004 it can snap the manifold ear. The first thing I would check is to put a straight edge on your manifold & head to see if it is flat. I am not familiar with the D14 gaskets ,but the Wd & Wd45 I thought had a metal ring in the gasket set to go over the manifold ports. My experience has been if the gasket set is too soft you have to start in the middle and draw down to 10 lbs of torque, then go back to the middle and repeat until you get the required torque. In welding manifolds I have always used a spray torch using cast nickel powder.
 
I haven't seen metal rings on G-149 gaskets. There is a possibility my son didn't take it down gradually enough because I didn't warn him. But he would have graduated the torque, I've stressed that several times in the past. Still may not have snuck up on it enough. Now that you mention it though, I didn't check for warpage. Back when the block had cracked, before I knew that, I had replaced the head gasket and had milled the surface at that point before reassembly. Since the manifold was only on for a few hours, I didn't think to re-check. It's been sitting on the table for 12 years. Bad assumption, I'll check it today.

Do you preheat?
 
Yes, I do preheat if its in the middle of a casting. I have used EZ weld stick rod. On a surface it leaves a hard line where it bonds to the casting. Tig might be the fix. With the new milling tooling it's not a problem to machine now. I use to see a gentleman post on YT that specialized on cast iron welding . Help ? Maybe George from east coast.
 
I never tighten those that tight. I use a open/box end short wrench and tighten the outside studs with my wrist only. Never had one leak from being loose. I never broke one off but bought several little Allis tractors that were broke and was fearful of breaking them. 25 foot pounds has more down pressure than it sounds like on an open end tab.
 
Before I tore into it, I decided to call a fellow who has done welding I didn't want to trust to my own skills. He knew a fellow locally (only 50 miles away) that will guarantee the work and do it for less than a third of the cost of a new manifold. I figured I'd give him a try.

I bought the EZ-Weld to see about welding some of the extra G-149 blocks I have and I will try that.
 
That's good to know. I have always tightened them to spec, but looking at that tab hanging out there, I'm surprised I haven't had a problem before, even on this engine. I don't think the farmall headers are that way from memory, but the BE/CE may be. It's been a lot of years since my last rebuild. I also talked to my son about it, and he didn't tighten gradually from the inside out as I thought he would have (I assumed and I shouldn't have, I'd stressed the importance with heads, but not manifolds), that may have played a part in why it broke and I may have weakened it in the past.
 
After sending off the other manifold, my son took after my other D14's manifold with a vengeance. I thought there was no way it was salvageable. He ended up cutting off 3 of the bolts and then dug out inches of rust scale, finally sand blasted what was left. Surprisingly, there are no spots where daylight can be seen. He fortunately plugged the intake portion pretty well and there was no visible sand in it. He's going to try to get the two muffler mount bolts out of there tomorrow. If he's successful, I'll see about how to clean the exhaust thoroughly enough to use it (sand tends to get everywhere). If nothing else, I should be able to use it while I wait for the other, and get the engine going.

I was shocked how good it looks. There is a 2x6 inch pile of scale that came out of it, and one of the exhaust valves broke in half from rust when he pulled them out the head this was on. I'm still skeptical that there can be enough metal to stay together.


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Those two flat washers are THICK. You might have to double stack something of todays hardware to be close to correct and keep the squeeze on things.
 
Thanks to both of you for that tip. The washers that were on it were normal thin washers and I was digging around unsuccessfully in my hardware to find some thicker ones. When we get to having one of the manifolds ready, I will use two. Right now we are seeing about drilling the muffler mount bolts out of this second manifold (not my favorite tractor job) and if that works, we can start determining if the rebuild was successful. Otherwise I'm a couple of weeks out on putting it on. I don't think I want to run it without a muffler on it, I know it's a wives tale about running open headers burning valves, but I'm not sure I want to take any chances given what I have into this engine.
 

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