Bringing an 8BA back to Life

B

Bruce/Texas

Member
I have a stock '49 8BA in my '39 coupe that I rebuilt some 38 years ago. I have driven it off and on over the years and I estimate I have no more than 25-30K miles on the engine. I have some oil mist coming out of the oil fill breather to the point you can smell it in the cabin. I am concerned that maybe I have some stuck rings or something from sitting for periods of time through the years causing alot of blow by. The engine runs fine and is nice and quiet at idle and has excellent oil pressure.

Recent warm/open throttle compression check results ranged from 105psi to 115psi on the passenger bank and 115psi to 125psi on the drivers side bank. What compression numbers should i be getting?

The Champion H10 plugs are fairly sooty. Could I go up a heat range?

Any suggestions as to any oil treatments or other remedys to get the blow by under control?

Thanks, bruce
 
Hi Bruce; The first thing I would do is drive it every day for a week or two and see what that does. Good luck, Craig.
 
B/T,
Keep the oil changed and drive it....stick some duct tape over the extra holes
in the firewall.
Don't laugh too hard at this.....MARVEL MYSTERY OIL.....add it in the gas
tank. This stuff has been around for a zillion years but still amazes us old farts.
Charlie ny
 
Good idea and you might want to add a pvc valve ( close the road draft hole) to help with the fumes while driving. Which heads, 8ba or 59?
 
Thanks for the suggestions. Funny that you guys should mention it but I have pulled the engine to replace the pan with a rear sump version to cure a steering interference issue and I am in the process of filling the myriad of extra holes in the firewall with bondo. I also have the PCV system in work. Anything I need to look for when I pull the pan off? I have one of the one piece front seal to install. Any tricks relative to installing either the front or rear seals?

The heads are another story. The drivers head is an 8BA and the passenger head is an EAB. Back when I originally re-built this engine (I was 16), I did not know the difference between the heads, actually I didn't know the difference until fairly recently when I found this forum. I expected the EAB head to have better compression than the 8BA but the oppsite is true in my case.

Again, thanks for the comments. Bruce
 
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