Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

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ReijerLincoln
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Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by ReijerLincoln »

Here's what happened yesterday to Tom, my latest fellow slabside owner in Holland, when he was test driving his recently acquired '64:

Image
:|

I had warned him about this but he nor I expected it to happen on the first outing.

So.... to everyone concerned: MEL 430 & MEL 462 motors were originally equipped with a cam timing gear that has nylon teeth and aluminium centre. They used these for quiet engine operation. The concern was quality off assembly, not longevity once out of warranty. It should have been replaced decades ago. If yours hasn't... do it now. If you're uncertain whether it has... do it now. Age alone will have caused the nylon teeth to become brittle and subject to breaking off, ending up in the oil pan and clogging the oil pickup screen, thereby choking off the oil pump (a fatal blow to any engine).

Also, replace your original oil pump drive shaft with this billet drive shaft from Precision Oil Pumps in Ca, (559)325-3553. The original is literally as thin as a pencil and really isn't up to the job. This replacement works for the MEL engines. It is an FE drive that is +.0375" Longer for Main Girdle Applications. This shaft is about .075 too long, but the MEL guys get them and grind that amount off the bottom (pump end) to make them fit. Just use a bench grinder. The shafts are $20.00 plus shipping.
Image
1964 Lincoln Continental sedan

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Sal
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by Sal »

Hi Reijer..

The oil pump drive shaft broke on his first drive? I understand that we all need to check and replace the timing gears.
Did these parts sieze the oil pump causing the shaft to twist and break? Would this have happened even if a heavy duty drive shaft
was used? Cheers, Sal
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by ReijerLincoln »

Sal, it was the first drive after the car sat for almost 5 years. I'm not certain the timing chain teeth fragments caused the snapped oil pump drive shaft by blocking the oil pickup screen and putting more strain on the pump than drive shaft could handle. But looking at that photo we could (should) assume they're related.

At any rate, the mechanic who rebuilt my 462 took one look at the original drive shaft and told me to find something beefier (he mentioned similar problems with FE desing engines).
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TonyC
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by TonyC »

Very good pictorial warning! TO ALL NEWBIES: Heed the warning!!!!

There are two things that I must clarify, however. Nylon, along with dacron, rayon, polyester, etc., etc., were still relatively new substances, and nobody back then could have known that there would be a limited life span on the gears. It's possible that they may have considered an alternative had they known. Nylon is very light but very strong; that's why they chose it as the material to make quieter timing gears--not necessarily because it was cheap and they deliberately tried to make their engines die after a certain time.

The 430 and 462 MELs were the first engines to utilize nylon gears, but they were NOT the only ones. Every Ford engine afterward, to include (but not limited to) every beloved 460, along with some GM engines and maybe even a few Chrysler engines (though I don't have proof of Chrysler--who cares about them, anyway? :twisted: :D ) converted to nylon gears for the same reason that Lincoln did. That means that many other non-MEL engines will follow suit when they reach the general threshhold--some already have.

The '61 Continental was a pioneer in many small engineering standards for the industry; it's just that nobody cares to notice a perceived "grampsy" vehicle like Lincoln. It's only in retrospect that we have discovered the down side of nylon gears; even Baker didn't know about it until the early '90s.

---Tony
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by Dan Szwarc »

People have been warned. But there are those who have found some plastic teeth to be OK and assumed that they were the exception and it was OK to stick with plastic.

Put in a true double-roller timing chain (460s, not available for MELs) and be happy for another 40 years!
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by ReijerLincoln »

TonyC, I took the liberty of copying your post to a similar thread on the MEL engine forum. I hope this is okay with you.

Cheers,
Reijer
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by TonyC »

It's quite all right, Reijer. :smt023

---Tony
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by ReijerLincoln »

Thanks. :smt024
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by norgale »

Seems to me that if the timing gear flew apart the engine would quit long before it was starved for oil and burned up. I also don't see how the broken teeth on the timing gear could stop the oil pump up to the point of snapping the drive rod. There is a screen over the oil pump intake that could get stopped up but the pieces can't get into the pump to jam it up.I think there is something besides the timing gear problem with Rijer's friends car. How many miles on tha car Rijer? Pete
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by Rick Crunelle »

The engine CAN continue to run if the teeth fall apart... I know, because mine did! When the nylon teeth come off, the metal part in the middle still has a sproket shape. So the change still engages it, and turns the cam. The problem is that now the chain is REALLY sloppy and your timing is all over the place. I pulled my engine from my parts car for my convertible, but before I did, I probably put a hundred miles on the parts car.
It makes me wonder how long the old woman who owned it before me drove it with the nylon teeth in the oil pan...
Rick

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ReijerLincoln
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by ReijerLincoln »

Pete, I'll ask him. He hasn't posted on a Dutch Lincoln club forum since the incident. I think he has to catch his breath (I know I would).
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by TonyC »

Correct on the sprocket; valve timing will not suffer immediately, although it eventually would.

The nylon fragments have nowhere else to go. Maybe some of the smaller ones will circulate around the engine (bigger pieces could get lodged in oil passages and clog them as well), but eventually they will go to the oil pump's pickup screen and clog it, starving the engine of oil. No engine can survive oil starvation, no matter how tough it is. In all honesty, if the only thing wasted was the drive shaft to the oil pump, he was lucky--along with all the others who suffered the same thing. Where any lesser engine is concerned, that would have been what went with the whole engine.

---Tony
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by FOG »

Hi

Does anyone knows where I can find a tutorial of how to change the timing set for 65 lincoln?? I ve been using the search tool on this forum and cant find much..

Thanks guys
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TonyC
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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by TonyC »

The shop manual for your year is the best resource. If you don't have one (get one if you don't), then here's the essence of it. The two sprockets have reference marks that look like dots punched into them. The dots have to be facing each other--the cam dot exactly down, the crank dot exactly up. They must be exactly aligned that way. The best way to maintain that alignment is to hand-turn the engine until the dots line up, then don't move anything during the job. Of course, you have to remove the pumps and the front cover to do that line-up first.

---Tony
"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, just because there is a picture with a quote next to it." (Abraham Lincoln, 1866)
"Question Authority!"

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Re: Photographic reminder to replace your timing set

Post by FOG »

TonyC wrote:The shop manual for your year is the best resource. If you don't have one (get one if you don't), then here's the essence of it. The two sprockets have reference marks that look like dots punched into them. The dots have to be facing each other--the cam dot exactly down, the crank dot exactly up. They must be exactly aligned that way. The best way to maintain that alignment is to hand-turn the engine until the dots line up, then don't move anything during the job. Of course, you have to remove the pumps and the front cover to do that line-up first.

---Tony
Thanks f your response

Any suggestion where I can buy the shop manual??
Christian Niebla

Sinaloa, Mexico
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