[SEL] Engine problems

[Mike Royster]

This is a great help.  I have a 6hp with the same components doing the same 
symptoms.  Can't wait to try your solution.

Mike Royster

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "JIM KIRKES" <jd.kirkes at verizon.net>
To: "Stationary Engine List" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>; "Old_Engine" 
<stationary-engine at oldengine.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 9:02 PM
Subject: [SEL] Engine problems


> About 4 or 5 years ago I took a Alamo flywheel engine to a
> show.  This engine has always been easy to start and a good
> runner.  It refused to run and I did some  show fixing but
> finally gave it up and brought it home and let it sit until
> now.  I decided to take it to an upcoming show and did not
> want to repeat the previous fiasco so I wheeled it into the
> shop and began to fiddle with it.  I got it started and
> convinced myself it was not getting a good fuel supply.  I
> took the fuel pump apart and made sure the check valves
> worked and put it back together with almost no change except
> maybe worse.  Well the next thing was to take the mixer
> apart, when in doubt take something apart, at the very least
> find something to twist.  This is an overflow mixer and
> there really is not much in it to go  wrong,  made sure
> everything was clear and put it back on the engine. I also
> took the mag/igniter out and checked the spark and it  made
> a nice fat blue spark. I got the engine started after some
> backfires and flooding which kind of surprised me as it
> never did this before. The engine was running but rather
> poorly and sometimes hitting the mag trip 4 or 5 times
> before firing.  I was a little perplexed, after all there is
> a pretty definite limit to what can be fixed on an engine
> like this. After watching this bad runner for a while it
> looked like the mag was not getting a very good trip.  I
> held the trip down with my finger so as to get more rotation
> on the mag armature and the everything smoothed right out.
> I took the trip off and reworked it so as to have a longer
> engagement and get a faster and longer rotation of the
> armature.  Problem solved, runs fine.
>
> A mag works by turning the armature through the magnetic
> field.  The hottest spark will be produced by turning
> through the most lines of force as fast as possible.  The
> mag trip on this engine was one of those thing that wear
> very slowly until it finally does not work very well.  As
> this happens over a long time it can be hard to spot. The
> mag worked fine outside the engine with the hand trip.The
> hand trip never gets used so it works pretty much like it
> did when it was new which got me convinced that there was
> nothing wrong with it. Amazing how you can look at something
> you understand and see nothing until it finally beats you
> over the head.  The upside of all this is that it runs like
> it used to and I know the fuel system is clean.
>
> Jim
>
> Jim and Diane Kirkes
> Hemet, California U.S.A.
> replace nomore with net to send mail
> jd.kirkes at verizon.nomore
>
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