Damian headed off to fill up Booger Mobile and test how it went with stopping and starting again... Worked beautifully!! The replaced extractors (with the cast iron manifold) in conjunction with the heat spacer seem to have done the trick!!
He then went to visit Autobarn Caboolture to get some expert advice about the leaking head gasket, leaking radiator hose and engine pinging! John helped Damian to time the engine in the hope that it would sort out the pinging... it didn't!! It made it heaps worse...
After consulting with John further, the decision was made to recurve the distributor... Damian asked if swapping the springs from the previously recurved distributor (the one that was no good any more), and John said yes!!
It was easy, apparently... just punch the pin out of the bottom holding the spline on, then the whole assembly would simply fall out!!
Damian found this wasn't the case, so he took out the distributor from Booger Mobile and took them both back down to Autobarn, where John had agreed to help Damian out (on his lunch break no less!!)
John finished pulling apart the the distributor that the springs were going to be recovered from... it was quite a chore!!
Still going...
And finally the springs were accessable...
The assembly was removed from the new distributor (new to Damian, but it's second hand)...
This is the tiny spring being replaced... it's about a centimetre long... (There are two of them!)
Back in the shed, Damian took off the tappet cover to retension the head (with his shiny new Tension Wrench)...
He also put the distributor back in (after making several more phone calls to John at Autobarn for assistance). Turning the key, there was an almighty backfire!! Another phone call to John suggested that the distributor might be in 180 degrees around the wrong way... Damian popped the distributor cap off, and lo and behold, it was!! Even though Damian was certain it was facing the other way when he put it in, turns out the easiest thing was to switch the spark plug leads around...
A turn of the key, and vroom!! Booger Mobile sprang back into life...
Damian timed the engine and went for a test drive with Luke who had popped in for a visit... turns out it was Luke's first time in Booger Mobile!! It went quite well, but was still pinging under load...
Damian retimed it when it was back in the shed, and found that the timing was way further advanced than where he had set it... It might have moved slightly when the bolt was being done up...
Sadly though, retensioning the head didn't fix the head gasket leak... *sigh*
Stay tuned...
Still sounds like you need to lower the compression. Make the combustion chambers bigger by relieving them with a die grinder. Mesasure how many cc's of fluid the combustion chamber takes, grind out chamber and measure again, then do the same to all 6 to make them all the same.
ReplyDeleteOr put on a thicker copper head gasket.
Or put on 2 head gaskets and seal with Hylomar made by ACL.
Or fit a shim with 2 head gaskets and seal with Hylomar.
Make sure you have clean threads on your head bolts when you torque them down, and put oil on the threads and under the head of the bolts.
If using hylomar or other sealer,re- tourque.. run it to opperating temp, and let it cool overnight then back off bolts in order and put oil under heads of bolts and retourque in order.
lose some compression, and it'll lose some heat and be able to run more advance and better fuel mix and be a sweet runing engine.
WHEN WILL THE SAGA OF THE BOOGER MOBILE END
ReplyDeleteNo sooner has Damian sorted out another of the Boogers many problems,another one rears it ugly head, this time in the form of the head gasket.With the Camp Quality 2011 esCarpade only just around the corner,Damian has his work cut out for him,so he will need all the help and support from everyone who can give it to him,maybe what anonymous has commented can be the answer Damian needs, to resolve Booger Mobiles troubles,lets hope so,because Damian needs to be able to finish off the other tasks that need to be finished in time for the esCarpade.
Thank you for all the great pictures, as always you have out done yourself.
Looking forward to the next exciting blog,hopefully with good news that Booger Mobiles problems are solved and that its all go go go for the Camp Quality 2011 esCarpade.
Thank you for all your hard work Damian I know I ve said it before and this won t be the last time I say it,but you are so "AWESOME" always doing it for the kids