By: Jeff Vanderhoff
Everyone in the club knows that the club owned fire truck has had an indescribable noise in the engine
area. It took some time to even try to figure out where to start the repair. While walking around at the Hershey fall
meet, I asked a few people as to what they thought the noise would be. It was supposed that the noise was some-
where in the valve area of the engine. I asked Ed Saniewski if we could bring the truck to his barn and take it
apart. Ed said yes. So the next nicer December day, John Hunter and I moved the fire truck to Ed’s barn and the
following day, we started to work on the repair. We found that the valves needed to be adjusted. While adjusting
the valves, we found a problem with an adjustable tappet that we could not adjust. We decided to pull the head
and after that struggle, we found that the valve seat in the block came loose. See the picture below.
After a few phone calls about how to repair it, the decision was made to try a stock valve seat. A new valve seat was ordered and installed by the crew. We put the engine back together and the noise went away. Thanks to all that were there….Ed, John, Fred and Scott.
The valve seat seems to be holding in after about 20 miles of driving. We had a distributor issue while test driving the fire truck so that is next on the repair list. I think we can address that at the next upcoming garage clinic in the spring.
