Post by djm16 on Sept 21, 2017 13:55:41 GMT
Poured naptha / shellite, kerosene, Magical Mystery Oil, brake fluid, ATF, B12 or Sea Foam down their spark plus holes?
"WTF would you do that for?" I hear people ask me.
Progressively over the last few months, the 3 litre has been more difficult to start and firing initially on 4 or 5 cylinders, and running rough even on 6 cylinders. When it got to the stage that I was 1/2 mile down the road before firing on all 6 I decided it was time to investigate.
I won't bore you with bit about fixing the chafed Pertronix wires inside the distributor, which made no difference.
Plugs 3 and 4 were wet with oil, and cylinder 4 was low on compression (120 compared to 145-150 on the rest). Yes it could have been a burned exhaust valve, but then it could also be stuck rings.
I was sceptical that just pouring stuff down a bore would fix this, so I read around on the internet for a few hours. Some people were just pouring stuff into their oil sump, but this sounded like a good way to damage rubber seals. Of the fluids that had more claims to fame than the others were kerosene and naptha (shellite in Oz).
The idea here is that petrol and oil gums build up on the piston skirts and in the ring valleys causing the rings to stick. Sticking scraper rings causing oil burning (I had some of that) and sticking compression rings - loss of compression - had that too!
So I just poured a few cc of naptha down each bore, concentrating on 3 and 4. Turned the engine over a few times by hand, left and hour or so and repeated. A 50 / 50 mix of ethanol and naptha is supposed to be an even more potent solvent / stripper.
I now have compression back in 4, much reduced oil burning smell and a smooth, easy to start engine again.
"WTF would you do that for?" I hear people ask me.
Progressively over the last few months, the 3 litre has been more difficult to start and firing initially on 4 or 5 cylinders, and running rough even on 6 cylinders. When it got to the stage that I was 1/2 mile down the road before firing on all 6 I decided it was time to investigate.
I won't bore you with bit about fixing the chafed Pertronix wires inside the distributor, which made no difference.
Plugs 3 and 4 were wet with oil, and cylinder 4 was low on compression (120 compared to 145-150 on the rest). Yes it could have been a burned exhaust valve, but then it could also be stuck rings.
I was sceptical that just pouring stuff down a bore would fix this, so I read around on the internet for a few hours. Some people were just pouring stuff into their oil sump, but this sounded like a good way to damage rubber seals. Of the fluids that had more claims to fame than the others were kerosene and naptha (shellite in Oz).
The idea here is that petrol and oil gums build up on the piston skirts and in the ring valleys causing the rings to stick. Sticking scraper rings causing oil burning (I had some of that) and sticking compression rings - loss of compression - had that too!
So I just poured a few cc of naptha down each bore, concentrating on 3 and 4. Turned the engine over a few times by hand, left and hour or so and repeated. A 50 / 50 mix of ethanol and naptha is supposed to be an even more potent solvent / stripper.
I now have compression back in 4, much reduced oil burning smell and a smooth, easy to start engine again.
