[SEL] Re: New Year's Crank Up

[Skip Cleveland]

I started my "M" which ran well enough but  a stuck discharge valve check 
ball put a stop to it. I'll blow it loose with air when I get the time.

Skip
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Culp" <johnculp at chartertn.net>
To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
Cc: "Old Engine" <stationary-engine at oldengine.org>
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 11:36 AM
Subject: New Year's Crank Up


> Only thing I fired up for New Year's was Dolly Diesel, the Listeroid. I 
> hadn't had her out and running in a good while, and had a lot of junk 
> piled up in front that had to be moved. As I was pushing her out I saw 
> Callie, my engine buddy, headed back from eating on the back deck to the 
> neighboring dairy barn where she spends most of her time. I called her, 
> and she came back. She looked a little puzzled at first, then recognized 
> what was going on as I prepared to crank Dolly. She started loudly purring 
> and "talking" to me like a mother cat does to her kittens.
>
> The SAE 30 oil on top of the head to lube the valves had all leaked down 
> past the valve stems into the combustion chamber, and that created a bit 
> of trouble getting her going. She gurgled loudly through the open exhaust 
> valve as I cranked her, and I kept her spinning till I felt enough of the 
> oil had been ejected that I wouldn't get a solid hydraulic lock on letting 
> the exhaust valve close. There was enough oil in the chamber to raise the 
> compression ratio to a level I couldn't spin past compression, still. It'd 
> stop the flywheels and bounce back. I spun her some more with the exhaust 
> valve held open, and got enough oil pumped out that I was just able to get 
> her to spin over and fire, and she sped up normally with a great cloud of 
> white smoke from the exhaust. (If that hadn't worked, I'd've opened the 
> compression changeover valve to lower the compression ratio. Maybe I 
> should've tried it sooner.)
>
> The 230V bathroom heater I rescued from curbside a few years ago as a load 
> for Dolly's generator wouldn't come on, so I let her just idle for a few 
> hours, slobbering out a terrible mess of sticky jet black oil from the 
> exhaust. Keeping a moderate load on prevents that. I did test the 
> generator to make sure it's generating, by spinning up my bench grinder 
> with the 120V output. Looks like that heater's going back to the curb. 
> Else I may just completely bypass the thermostat in it to run the fan and 
> heater continuously, which would really be better as an engine load, 
> anyway.
>
> While Dolly was running, I fired up my gas powered turkey fryer with the 
> big cast iron pot and melted down 250 lbs or so of scrap lead to make 
> ingots for future bullet casting. Ladeled it out into cast iron corn stick 
> moulds, from which it dropped out as shiny silver-colored ears of corn. If 
> any future archeologists find some of my ingots, they'll really wonder 
> about those. Callie stuck around close while I was doing the melting, 
> hopping up and snuggling in my lap while I waited for the burner to do its 
> work.
>
> Jane said it was good to hear Dolly running again. :-)
>
> John Culp
> Bristol, Tennessee, USA
>
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