After spending a good hour yesterday trying to fit my new starter cable (£10 +£10 delivery from Greiner-Oldtimerteile :-( and fettling a fastening device (that failed hopelessly) in the starter handle, I spent the rest of the day trying to start my engine. She fires, but wont run. Thats fine, its just a case of tuning everything to run in harmony.
I cant tell you how many times I had the carb and starter housing off.
The carb kept flooding. I cleaned and cleaned the float valve (it always worked correctly on the bench!) until she seemed to hold the fuel in as designed.
And I kept checking and fine tuning the timing and points (which means taking the starter case off.... and putting it back on to start the thing to see if you've got it right) - its a slow old process.
She would fire ok (I had yards of spark) but I was getting some backfire now and then, and my plug was always soaking. And after every firing (but not continuing to run) i felt like i was getting a smokey emission from places other than the end of the exhaust - was this simply oily surfaces burning off, or had I not tightened everything down enough?
I ended the day feeling a little disappointed at not having got her running, but hopeful for solving it tomorrow.
Tomorrow (thats today) came and sadly its been hopeless
I used to comfort myself that while I was feeling crap at my job, I was pretty good in the garage. Today I realise I'm not good at that either :-(
I made a fatal error today. A schoolboy error. An error that I dont think I've ever made before.
So embarrassed am I with myself, I wondered wether to avoid reporting the story in this blog - I reasoned eventually that I am not trying to prove anything here so I have to add the 'moment' as part of the ongoing story (which is getting a bit boring now isnt it).
As I say, every now and then, when the engine fired I thought I saw a puff of exhaust smoke emerge from around the engine. I tightened down the head nuts a little, and even put a little gun-gum around the exhaust pipe manifold. I had had the spark plug in an out numerous times (to check the spark, clean the fuel sodden electrode and to air some of the wet out of the barrel) - and it was as I replaced the plug for the umpteenth time, that I felt that dreaded sensation of not-quite-tightening-down. Bugger! (actually I think I said something far more appropriate for the moment) I had stripped the sodding head.
I have never stripped a cylinder head before, and I was well pissed off with myself that it should happen now.
On reflection, I have trying to work out why this happened. I am sure I am not an absolute idiot, so why did this strip? I never tighten a spark-plug harder than a 'nip', and this might well have been a reason for the exhaust leak that I was seeing (equally it might have contributed to poor compression and air-in leak), so I was certainly tightening the plug more than I had done previously - but even then it was only a 'hard-nip'. The head was also pretty damaged in the first place - cooling fins smashed and pitted mating surfaces so it could be that the plug thread was not at its best anyway. But the thing that really bothered me - and I hadn't noticed this before was that my spark-plug (which I believe is the correct spec, but I need to check now) only screwed in to about 66% of the head - ie the electrode was actually inside the threaded part of the head, and not the domed space, so there wasn't much thread to tighten up in the first place - is this how it was designed? surely not.
Whatever the reason - it really got me down.
On the upside though, it would appear that I am having a crisis of confidence in EVERYTHING, and not just work! so maybe work isn't that bad after-all ;-)
I gave the day up as a 'rubbish day' - but not before I pulled out the engine that I have from that old black manurhin basket case that I and a friend bought for spares. The head on that has been abused too, but at least it had a spark-plug thread - it might just get me out of trouble.The picture here shows my original head with my new spark-plug along side the spare head with the spark-plug that was in it (I am not suggesting that this is the correct spec either). You can see my plug on the right does not come all the way into the head void as it does in the assembly on the left.
Time to go and investigate spark plugs (again) and see what is right. However not before I go to a cocktail making class this evening - maybe this will be one thing in my day I can do well. And if not...... I shall simply regain all confidence in myself by getting terribly drunk ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment