Case 310B taredown/rebuild

[NH Mike]

You make it look easy...

Be prepared for frozen bolts and such. It only took about four hours to have the engine removed.

 

[NH Mike]

Remove any remaining linkage, bolt up an engine hoist and pull the engine mounting bolts. The engine will slide right out.

 

[NH Mike]

The inside of my bell-housing was a mess. It looks like an animal got in here at some point and had a very bad day! My pressure plate and and clutch looked just as bad. My throw-out bearing is junk and will need to be replaced.

 

[NH Mike]

I cleaned the parts up a little to get a better look at the condition of the components. The ring gear on the flywheel is a little beat up and the clutch disk is pretty worn.

 

[NH Mike]

Then it was time to start the engine tare down. The pulleys, pumps, valve train and head came off, the piston tops looked pretty good. Then the pan came off and there it was!! The broken crankshaft. Broken in two. After a closer look I found that someone had replaced the bearings and put the caps back in the wrong locations and some were backwards.
NOT GOOD!!!

 

[NH Mike]

The center journal was junk. The bearing had spun and the broken crank had done a bunch of damage. Time to talk to my engine shop.

 

[NH Mike]

Here are some other pics. The head gasket had burned out. And I went through the pistons to look for wear. I Had one piston pin that was a little stiff

 

[NH Mike]

So I spoke to Jim Driscoll at Lawrence Crankshaft in Massachusetts, about 20 min. from home. This shop works on everything, from Cat's, to Detroit's, Chevy, Ford, you name it. He builds the pro stock race engines for my neighbor, any way.... I brought the Case 148 engine to him to take a look. We ended up shaving the main caps down and line boring the block. Unfortunately the damage to the center journal was too bad for this repair. I had one more option, Jim can pin a shim into the journal and then line bore it again. He has done this for some big diesel engines and he has never had a problem, but it's a $500 repair.

So I decided to look for a used engine for parts. I ended up getting lucky, I found a complete engine, same G1000 block for $500 bucks. Thanks google! I had picked up a new crank, cam, and rebuild kit so away we go. This is the replacement engine that was pulled down at the engine shop.

 

[NH Mike]

Here is the engine being decked in the big grinder

 

[NH Mike]

The next issue I ran into is the Case 148 oil pump. The pump was worn. I looked for replacements but a new pump is over $600 bucks! That's not happening!! So Jim at Lawrence Crankshaft tried a rebuild. He sleeved the housing and made a new bushing, the repair worked great for less than half the cost of a new one.