The meatball mechanic: Low Compression fix.

Follow up on the valve rescue.
This bike fought me 7 ways from Sunday on things that needed repairs and replacements , but....... SHE RUNS.
Good if not spectacular compression on both sides, 132-140 no smoke, sounds healthy, idles and revs smooth. Need to derust the tank and other details yet. I still might make it to slimey crud run Sunday on this bike. Which is kind of a rare bird, It's a 1979 standard. All stock except for mufflers. Not too many were made and that was the end of the line for the standards (in the US). Not perfect but it's cleaning up decent, 16K miles on it.

Three years ago, a buddy and I resurrected a Ford 351 Windsor for a 24 Hours of LeMons race. The engine had been sitting in a shipping container for ~15 years, when we turned it over we had no compression on #1 cylinder. We removed the valve cover and found the exhaust valve was stuck open about .250 or so and wouldn't close due to rust. So we pulled the spark plug (another story there), removed the rocker arm and soaked everything in PB Blaster. I have a huge brass drift, we took turns hitting the top of the valve stem till it started to move. We kept spraying PB then hitting until finally it closed, we put the rocker arm back on and kept spinning the motor until the valve did what it was supposed to do. A picture of me during this process:



We put the motor in the car (1986 Thunderbird) and went racing. It ran GREAT and was clocked at ~105 MPH at the end of a fairly short straight; fast enough for the race organizers to black flag us to discuss how we obviously had way more motor than brakes. It continued to run great until the fourth or fifth time we overheated it by throwing belts.

A further follow up on carbon on the valve seat. After running this bike around the country block a few times I now have 150 pounds on both sides, the motor makes NO smoke, and is running good. As I have learned to do, I retorqued the head bolts before I started the engine and replaced the leaking clutch rod seal. She is looking leak free now. The bike is starting to look pretty decent. After double checking I realized this is a 79 standard the last year of the standards.

Edit; I have now rescued a second engine showing very low compression on one side using this technique.

my dad taught me this trick... but he used a flathead screwdriver that he shoved in there and slammed around for a while... made it run better though...

gggGary,

I have a Harbor Freight leak down tester and it works just fine. The thing is that there is a missing valve between the gauge manifold and the spark plug adapter so you have to actually disconnect the line to the spark plug adapter as you calibrate the gauge manifold, then very quickly reconnect the line to get your reading. If you have a small compressor, you have to work very fast because the compressor and tank may not be able to keep up with the loss of air.



1. With the compressor connected to the manifold and the line to the spark plug adapter disconnected, adjust the pressure regulator on the manifold for a reading of zero percent on the cylinder leakage gauge. This corresponds to a perfect cylinder with no leakage.
2. Very quickly connect the outlet hose from the manifold to the spark plug adapter hose going to the spark plug hole.
3. Read the % leakage on the cylinder leakage gauge.

The regulated pressure on the manifold is constantly trying to maintain a zero reading on the cylinder leakage gauge but cannot due to the leakage in the cylinder. If the cylinder had zero % leakage, then of course the constant pressure would be able to restore the gauge to a zero reading.

If you have a compressor of sufficient capacity, then the gauge on the left would continuously show the pressure that you had when you calibrated the gauge on the right. There is a calibrated orifice between the gauges so the regulated pressure on the left gauge is maintained as the leakage through the cylinder causes the right side gauge to show a decrease.

650Skull said:

True, but what happens when the light doesn't go on when you flick the switch

I used light the woodrange, cook my bacon and eggs boil the billy for a cuppa and to wash up, and all that within 1/2 an hour, + it would heat up the room and the oven would be hot enough to cook a batch of scons. Unless you have been there it is hard to believe. mind you i did chop the kindling and have it by the stove from the night before.

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What did he just say?

Hey I would just like to say thanks for the idea. The engine I currently have on my bench had 85/90 on the cylinders when I first checked it. After some pb buster and a bit of scrubing with brass barrel brush I ended up with a more 117 on each side.

Shovel Jockey said:

What did he just say?

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I left out the word "to". Stick that word between the words "used" and "light", and used should have been use

650Skull said:

I left out the word "to". Stick that word between the words "used" and "light", and used should have been use

Click to expand...

Let me throw in a translation of terms and test my knowledge of the vernacular......
Billy - a pot for boiling water
Cuppa - as in 'a cup of' coffee , tea or what have you
Scones - biscuit should suffice here for us yanks
LOL

nj1639 said:

Let me throw in a translation of terms and test my knowledge of the vernacular......
Billy - a pot for boiling water
Cuppa - as in 'a cup of' coffee , tea or what have you
Scones - biscuit should suffice here for us yanks
LOL

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lol, yea your right nj. Except for the scones, they are not biscuits by any means. Made with flour and when it is got right, (temp is very important), they can't be beat. Fresh scones, whipped cream and jam, mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Wood range is a coal range using wood instead. lol

Thought yous were picking on my grammer

On wood burning, cut all you want, sell it to pay the heating bill. This keeps all the crap from hauling wood in and ashes out, out of your house and in someone else's.
Leo

My son and a son-in-law both heat with wood. A tree removal outfit brings them all the wood they can use for free, happy to have a place to get rid of it. The municipal dump charges them. You can't find that deal just anywhere. Zero heating bill, just the log splitter and chain saw.

All interesting.!..H.F. leak down tester...ditto , anyone want mine? I ended up on another (car) engine using a software formula to get me to the compression ratio I wanted with the correct compressed thickness Cometic head gasket...I measured the cylinder volume at a know level, hemi-dome combustion chamber cc's, bore diameter (yikes: was > .60thou over std.) and the software spread sheet spit out different CR's per the gasket thickness as the variable. I need to go find that. Ended up running the car at 10.3:1 CR on 93 octane unleaded. Balanced the three SU carb needles with Dremel and sand paper to have pretty prefect volumetric efficiency year round only moving the carb needles up/down about 0.1" to varry summer to winter. Since i'm not intending to flip off this resto to someone else, I'm just taking it all apart.

I put several thousand miles on this motor before it eventually died of a twisted crank (still with good compression) and was replaced with a used motor. This is the bike that became known as restomod and after several rallies and many more thousands of miles it now lives in a friend's collection.

Tomterrific said:

Gary and everyone bring back a junk engine, please squirt some oil in the cylinders and kick her over with the plugs out to splash out the excess oil. This will get oil on the sealing rings and valves and eliminate a dry start. Sometimes, and pray it never happens, a perfectly good old engine will hang a valve open on the first dry start and the piston will bend it. I'd say about one in fifty, which is enough for preventative care.

Tom Graham

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I have taken this to heart and it's a regular part of every wake up I do for um nearly 10 years now!

Back to the wood stove for a moment. Been heating my 1200sf home with wood for 35 years, pretty easy in south Georgia. I've found that fall is a little too late to cut. I cut in the spring and by November the wood is well seasoned. I stack it off the ground and keep the rain off it. One cord is always enough.

I go through 15-18 chord a winter up here in N. Michigan. Not because I have to, but I just like the radiant heat from woodand it is nice to save on gas expense. Also have a wood boiler in garage in parralel with my propane boiler for nights where it dips below zero. A lot of guys use outdoor wood boilers but they'll go through 30 chord a season. No thanks.