A busy week end so far. Friday night saw us out on the pop again, we had been invited to a friends 60th birthday party at a club in Rugeley town and I must say the buffet was good (helped soak up the Guinness) and so was the disco. Saturday morning I went down Minnow and took my sore head with me. As the previous week end I had fitted a new string gasket to the hot bulb but had not tried the engine, I had decided to run the Bolinder up later on today. I started by rubbing down the back end boards and giving them a coat of red oxide just to freshen them up. I had intended to give the cabin top a second coat of varnish but the skies were grey and threatening so I gave that a miss and decided to start the engine, or at least I thought I would. I wanted a film of the engine being started which showed each of the various stages of starting and so I had taken my flip cam with me which I proceeded to film the pre-start checks while the lamp was on warming the engine. As I had to wait ten minutes while the hot bulb warmed up, I switched the camcorder off. I then decided to start the engine first, run it until it was hot, then stop it, and then film starting it. I never got that far though, after a couple of kicks it started and I ran it for a couple of minutes, and then stopped it. I then set the flip cam up on top of the tunnel lamp to film the starting. I gave the flywheel a kick expecting it to fire up straight away, but it didn’t, in fact it took several more kicks before the Bolinder responded, at which point it started in what I call ‘washing machine mode’ where it fires as it comes up to top dead centre at each side of the cycle ending up with the flywheel; going half a cycle in each direction, back and forth like the old top loader washing machines. After several further attempts to start, all resulting in the same action, I decided to leave it and let it cool down. Although after an hours cooling it would have cooled enough for me to be was able to work on the engine, I decided to leave it until the next day. This ‘washing machine mode’ is the result of not a powerful enough ‘bang’ to send the piston over top dead centre and it can be the result of at least one of two things. Not enough fuel injected in or not enough compression. As I has messed with the spindle last weekend, that’s where I started on Sunday morning, stripping the spindle out and checking the ‘spray’ by manually pumping fuel through it. The spray seemed to be coming off slightly one sided so I cleaned the nozzle out again until all was well and the spray was perfect. After re-assembly of the engine I again put the lamp on as I knew the fuel input was right. All you ever need for a Bolinder to run is heat, fuel and compression and they are guaranteed to start and run. After ten minutes pre-heating I kicked on the flywheel and again the engine started in washing machine mode, as it also did for the next several failed starts. So that was the start of the rest of the weekends work for being as the fuel was right I took it to be a problem with the compression, in other words the piston rings were probably gummed in again and so I set about stripping the engine down and removing the piston. When once I had the piston out it was obvious that was what was wrong with it as the piston rings were all stuck in.
PISTON RINGS ALL GUMMED IN
With the piston suitably bagged up, I headed off home as my daughter, son in law and new grand daughter were coming over after four.
Monday Spent most of the day in the shed working on the piston with paraffin, old kitchen knife and some 200 wet and dry. By tea time all the crap had been removed and the rings all moved freely within their grooves.
ALL CLEANED AND MUCK REMOVED WITH RINGS FREELY MOVING WITHIN THEIR GROOVES.
Dawn is back at work tomorrow but I have the day off so I will be re-fitting the piston etc. and hopefully starting the engine in correct mode so until then, as always
Don’t bang ‘em about
Blossom.
No comments:
Post a Comment