Is my wagon a wagon?

I went and fetched me a hemi 3-banger, bringing it hoam on Thursday.
The scrapyard wanted 300€ for it. The almost 200.000 kilometers claimed was saddening. But, they said, they had no others available.
To my pleasant surprise though, the valve train looked in much better shape than expected. After pulling the head, there were still hone scratches to be seen. I'm now wondering if this was that vehicle's second engine.
I pulled the flywheel and clutch assembly, to get the engine light enuff for exit. I wont need all that anyway, given that the block sitting in my car is hooked up to an automatic. The got it in with a forklift.
I only need the cylinder head for now and will tear down the block, at my convenience, getting it ready with a set of new bearings, just in case

 

In order to remove the camshaft from the damaged head, I needed to pull its gear, in order to remove the fasteners which hold its rear cover plate in place. Avoiding going out to find a proper tool for this job, I saved time and money, through exploiting a skateboard, using it's slightly thicker than 9 millimeter bolts protuding through the board's frame.
Its light-alloy was the main reason for exploitation choice, allowing use of a 25 millimeter wood drill for sloppilly blasting the required hole which allows socket-entry

 

The Speedometer in my Suzuki is now mostly reliable. Sometimes, it won't budge, depending on temperature. The colder it's, the longer it'll take to move. But generally, it now always takes when needed. Incase it decides to backslide, I went and ordered a GPS-oriented digital, for extra measure. Here, it shows my original as not being that far off, at present tire wear. A better accuracy check would need to be taken at higher speeds, though. When it went out of service, I ended up relying on reading the tachometer. Depending on which gear I was in, I could estimate my speed from my vehicle's engine revs

 

My Daihatsu's larger sibling. Those sold locally had a different front end

 

It seems to be inherent to this entire engine series. That recently-acquired engine posed this very same problem. I guess, this is one of those unpredictable glitches that can't get revelated during those million mile test runs. The result of siamesing both exhaust ports became evident with time. I ended up chasing its thread, using an ordinary tap. Thereafter, I'll screw in an undamaged bolt, to see if it'll reach far enough without slowing down in between. If it doesen't take, I'll end up having to find a bottoming tap

 

My request at the shop who supposely regrinds camshafts and presses bearings into line bored heads has never been answered. It seems that ignoring e-mails has become an epidemic, around here. I guess, they don’t need to be courteous, because they’re earning too much money?
In any event, the worn out head and camshaft isn’t taking up critical space. So, I'll put it into storage. Before I do that, I took a few detailed photographs of the trashed camshaft. The amount of wear doesen’t seem typical for an engine with this amount of service. The lobes closest to the engine’s front took most of the punishment, the first lobe even worn from behind. the second journal has all of its scoring on the same side as the most damaged lobe. This makes no sense, since one would expect the opposite to have taken the majority of thrust (second yellow arrow).
Both red arrows point to quite remarkable wear, contrasted by the sharp edges formed as if the camshaft was being forced rearwards



It’s difficult to arrive at any other conclusion for this dramatic scoring on this jounal’s surface would be anything else than the introduction of debris from outside of filtration channels. Either a previous oil filter was plugged full of contaminants, to the point where the by-pass valve allowed introduction of unfiltered oil, or the debris itself was deliberately introduced into the oil filter. Given how plugged what looked like the original air filter appeared to be, it’s highly possible that the dealership of whom this aging lady trusted had also refused replacing the oil filter, during maintenance schedules

 

I'm guessing, the scoring found on my cnnecting rod bearings was caused by a blocked oil filter, causing the by-pass valve to open, allowing un filtered oil to enter the gallery. Therefore, before starting my engine, I was planning on getting both oil pressure- and temperature guages. Both will need access to the oil gallery of which a sandwich plate placed between block and filter will be required. I first ordered a name brand (Mishimoto) plate which was designed for running an oil cooler. When I got it, its securing bolt which also screws onto the filter wasn't included:


Disappointingly, its Japanese name doesen't seem to hold up to its thread machining precision. But more like the usual sort of "precision" common to the opposite side of the Sea of Japan.
Without external plumbing for either a cooler or by-pass, this plate isn't going to work and I won't be hooking up any Parts Unknown cooler or plumbing to my engine:



I then placed it onto where it would belong, in order to determine where and if both switch and thermometer were to get hooked up, only to find out that there are quite narrow limits, either pointing left or right:



Pointing left seems to be the only possibility, because pointing it right would either not clear the combination catylitic converter/manifold or would run the plumbing too close to edit to be effective:



So what I did was to order a flow-through plate serving only to add both switch and thermometer which was specifically designed for a Subaru:


A better alternative wasn't available anymore. I didn't order it back then, because of suspecting Chinesium:


This is how the less expensive plate looks, when bolted on. I might need to have it shortened. But I can only accurately determine such, as soon as I temporarilly drop an assembled mule head onto the block:



If it'll even clear the exhaust, that'll surely be a close one:





I then played around with the possibility of sandwiching both stacked together:



That might be the best way out, if I get the round plate shaved down some 19 mm. That'll still give me enough room for both thermometer and switch to clear both that coolant return pipe and exhaust:





Here's what they look like stacked the other way. This would work, without shaving down the round plate. But, would force me to swap out the manifold for headers (not that I would mind, though ), if I could only get quality ones which aren't known to exist. I guess, I could try bending tubes myself, first packing them with sand as did a vintage Italian motorcycle manufacturer:

https://roccitycafe.blogspot.com/2013/08/sand-bending-cb750-exhaust.html

But that's a long way ahead of myself, for now: