I just removed the cylinders from my Thirty and discovered some nasty rust damage on the head gasket face of all of them plus one cylinder has freeze cracks, my initial thought was to get a Engine Shop to very lightly machine the head gasket face first and after cleaning those rust pockets fill them with JB Weld and hand file that smooth, and to use JB Weld with possibly a thin stainless steel patch on the freeze cracks, what do you Experts think? Or can I safely get the Engine Shop to machine 10 or 15 thou off the head gasket face to clean that rust damage away, I assume then I'll need a thicker gasket in the radiator neck to bring it down to the slightly lowered cylinders, also would need to shorten those head gasket "protector" sleeves I assume?
Thanks
Mike

Hi Mike,
seeing you have been over run with answers here's my take on it.
I suggest you remove the engine side covers and assess the engine lower end condition before spending any hard earned on just some cylinders.
From memory the mains can be accessed thru the side covers for checking, not sure if the oil pump can be removed thru there also but I would think so.
If the mains and cam lobes and followers look OK you may be lucky enough to just tissy up the cyls. A patch would fix the what I suspect to be rust jacking damage to that cyl. pictured--might pay to drill a hole that would be under the patch to see if rust is evident.
If you skim the cyls. then all would need to be same height/length or the cyl. head will be damaged/bent/cracked. Then those cyls can only be used with others the same length or shims fitted to account for the differences.

Seeing the unit came from Banana Bending Land I would be suspicious of the entire machine due to humidity condensation getting at all parts not covered in oil film.
The old drain plug loosening trick would tell if water was in the Trans. and F/D's etc.
Unit may have even been for a swim in one of their many floods.

Sorry if this upsets you but "them's the hard facts of life" of anything metal or otherwise from any high humidity areas, I am sure you recall your D2 steer clutch saga with much pain.

Keep Smiling,
Eddie B.

Morning Eddie, Thanks for the sound advice, challenges I can handle, curve balls even experts can't fix can provide a few sleepless nights but they give me a reason to get up in the morning and keep at it, not sure of the history of this tractor but it has definitely been fairly well looked after over the years and it's last resting spot the past 30 of more years was under cover, it came out of a shed in southern banana bending land but there is no guarantee the actual previous owner operator was up there, it's painted a orange colour a bit like a Chamberlain so I'm wondering if it was a Roads Board tractor, it might have come from NSW or even SA to Queensland, the last owner did not farm with it, he simply removed the head, cylinders, conrods and pistons then rested everything back on the tractor, he said it only need a piston pin bearing fitted to get the tractor running but it needs more than that.

The crankshaft looks OK, no obvious dings or scrapes, when the tractor came down 4 or 5 years ago I smothered the exposed bigend journals with grease and they still look clean, I haven't tried the 6 foot crowbar on the main bearings yet but will, I have tried a 3 foot floor board I found in the shed on them and couldn't see any movement but that was only a quick look see, I agree with your advice on rushing slowly, I have plenty of other things to do on other Cats before getting heavily invested in this 30 as you know, I just wanted to see what obvious parts were needed for the 30 looking ahead 12 months and grab any parts I could in the USA and get them into a 40 foot container Wombat is loading in Oregon this week along with all my John Matta parts which have been sitting there for 3 years now, as you know it can take years to line up the parts needed to save a old Cat properly so I'm just prepping and forward planning really.

My Therapist thinks I'll possibly recover from the D2 saga if given enough 2 Buck Chuck red wine and time for my last few brain cells to reconnect.
regards
Mike

Hi Mike,
pleased to hear the bottom end may be sound.
Also hope the head may have escaped the rust disease.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

"edb" wrote:

Hi Mike,
pleased to hear the bottom end may be sound.
Also hope the head may have escaped the rust disease.
Cheers,
Eddie B.

Hello Eddie, got your email, apology for the Steam Rally noted, sorry you can't make it but understand completely.

The head on the 30 looks good, no rust and the valve heads have some meat on them still so hopefully a valve grind will be all that's needed up top, and a new set of rings on the pistons, just need to square away some barrels, Droptube over in Oregon said he has 4 cylinders and pistons for me to go into Wombats container this week so that will give more options to compare when they arrive in 6 or 8 weeks, hopefully.
regards
Mike

Don't machine the cylinders it is a problem to get everything to sit right. If the cam looks good don't look to hard for problems. I have not seen many good cams down under