Snail's pace Blitz rebuild

[Phil Waterman]

Hi Ryan

Here is one method I have used with success twice. In one case the engine had no compression on that side because of valve leaks on the other the engine was stuck with no compression. The engine is an Ford truck engine as used in `49 Lincoln and shares the use of studs instead bolts with earlier flathead V8s, later that year they went over to bolts which makes removing heads much easier.

I cut a number of wedges of different thickness and worked them in all the way around the head. First a bunch of thin ones giving them each a tap with hammer and working around the block. Then gradually thicker ones, trying to keep the pressure even as I went. What you see in the picture below is thick wedges pushing the head of the top of the studs.




The grease or oil approach should also work as long as you have compression on more than one cylinder.

One other obvious point use lots of penetration solution on all the studs I like acetone and ATF. Really let it soak in, there used to be very thing hole saws that were cut the corrosion out between the stud and the head. This was almost a given on the Flathead V8s with aluminum heads.

Cheers Phil