So removing the engine and trans revealed some more information. For starters, once the engine was removed and placed on the work bench it became obvious that the clutch slipping was due to the oil leaking past the rear main seal. This would leak down and coat the clutch plate thus no friction for the clutch plate to hold on to the flywheel. In hindsight this buggy had been sitting for a long time it appears, at least from all of the similar signs or neglect. So it makes sense that the seals and gaskets would start failing and allowing leak-by after attempting to resurrect this beast.
In addition to the rear main seal, I also found the cylinders missing some cooling fins, from impact with something I’d guess. I pulled the heads of each side and found similar conditions. On the #3 cylinder exhaust valve stem shoulder was cracked, though from what I could tell the crack was superficial and I did not see any signs that it would be a failure point, at least in the near term. I’m going to send it as it is. This is going to be a budget build; I will freshen these heads up and run them.
Pulling heads off each side showed pushrods still in good shape. Since I don’t plan on changing to a significantly different cam and rocker arms I think I should be good using the stock pushrods. The lifters show signs of wear, I’m trashing those. Cam, its trash also, along with cam gear. Rocker arms still appear in good shape, will reuse those. Valves show signs of wear, but the stems look okay. I will attempt clean these valves with a brass brush and do a closer inspection, I’d like to reuse them just to keep cost down.
A benefit of working at a motorcycle shop (maybe you can guess which one….:-)) is having access to a hot tank to clean large parts. So I took the heads apart and brought them into work with me over the winter, it was very slow over the winter so during some down time I threw the heads, rockers, pushrods, tubes, all of that stuff into the hot tanks to clean them. After that, not pictured, I took them to the small parts cleaner station to do a final brush and rinse prior to drying them. I was pleased with how clean all of that stuff came out. Once I split that engine case and disassemble I will hot tank the block halves and the crank.
