Hey thanks Dave.
But I wasn’t always so fanatical about oil levels checking and changing out often for best average oils condition.
That began with trying (challenging) Mobile One’s 15,000 miles oil service life back in ~1988? And I’d just bought my very first new vehicle in a 1987 Suzuki Samurai.
I’d just turned 35 and had gone back to eating really well to try and get my best physical performance and mental days of my late 20’s and early 30’s back. I was doing better once again.
So why not try things with this little all aluminum highly worked engine?
Ha! The 15,000 try was a failure. By 7500-8000 miles the oil was pure black and I was building up black deposits all along the easy removed cam cover underside and visible cylinder top.
So I then went onto using a change when the oil had darkened to not see through metric. Still using the Mobile One. A rare perk I could squeeze out of my company on the corporate charge card commuter gas allowance.
The internal engine browning from that initial one-time extended oil left-in never did completely clear up in the next 13 years of use.
And eventually that engine did develop starting up cold blue smoke. But that at 10 years; 120K plus miles. ~2000 service hours. 30% was city driving.
I had modified the crankcase PVC from a stupid minimal T- only let pressure out; to a fresh filtered air-in continual sucking sweeping out to get rid of the condensation moisture slime that would build up on the oil fill cap underside. Oil stayed noticeably cleaner, longer then too.
Yeah. Yeah. Had to break off the anti-tamper idle mixture cap to adjust for the too lean idle misfiring-burbling I’d created.
Ha! Ha! Dealership shop busted me for that saying I was breaking Federal Pollution Laws and that they would void my 3 year - 36,000 mile warranty if I did not desist modifying “thier” vehicle.
Nope! Was MY VEHICLE. Never went back. Bi-annually required underhood mandated Emission Inspections never found my modifying hacks. The tail pipe gases were alway within limits.
Wow. Nearly 50 years ago now.
On an old sludged up engine; rapid, frequent oil changes with some cleaning additive will work and help to restore.
But once the cylinder walls metals are worn away; the piston skirts and ring grooves metal worn; the valve guide and valve stems worn lose; and the many oil seals all gone hard and cracked from oils become acidic . . . no going back to anywhere near new again.
I do try to buy new since, to benefit the longest from possible service lives I can retain.
The pictured above three vehicles: the Hyundai and the two Fords all still have good engines with no oil consumptions. Quiet timing chains. None; to minimal, external oil leaks.
Ha! But the now decades years aged the accessories impossible to get new replacement parts to keep up with failures if daily driven.
The home Visiting Nurse Wife needs working AC’s; power windows and such. Needs as close as possible 100% turn-key reliability year around. Each, and every time. In our 31 years of marriage only vehicle collisions has even had her to be towed back home. I drive the aged out Limp’ers until we cycled down another cast off from her.
The Hyundai goes for-sale “by-by” next summer when I can get the weather to fix a few things minimally. One of the timing belt guide bearings seized up last Fall at 242K miles.
I will miss it. Never liked driving her fat, wide Ford Edge.
Her old 1999 Plymouth mini-van “loads-master” had been my favorite hand-me-down to use-up.
IT taught me to keep ahead on coolant changing outs and use true distilled water to not lose cylinder head gaskets. Coolant gets metals contaminated then becomes an acidic pumped hot etching electrolyte.
Regards
Steve Unruh
Hi All
The current California LA fire has reminded me that last summer I was unable to work even two oscillators yard sprinklers from my current deep well system.
~300 foot deep well submersible pump then pumping an additional ~150 feet uphill and then ~250 feet horizontally.
So my idea of wildfire evzacuation with a 4-5 hour fueled up gasoline generator powering the well then it pressurizing a walk away sprinklers system will be a no-go.
I’ll need instead to portable pump all of the way up to the house from the ~700 foot distant and ~400 foot downslope year around creek.
So I’ll need a true powerful system like this one:
Still researching.
Thoughts?
Experiences?
Regards
Steve Unruh
Here, the local volunteer fire department has to be summoned to the station from where ever they are and because I later found out that in an emergency they couldn’t find my purposely obscurely located site even after about a half hour after the call, I thought I planned ahead In my original design and I put in 3 mostly decorative ponds right in front of the house. I have a semi-trash pump similar to the pump in the video except 4 stroke. Stepping the hoses down to garden hose size gives enough pressure to shoot water out 30 to 40 feet. Maybe 1500 gallons of water available.
Being partially brain dead it never occurred to me that those ponds would be frozen solid 6 months of the year. Just as when I put about 200 sq foot of glass in the south face of my house for solar gain without realizing that the sun never shines all winter long. Nice views though. So if your winter temps are high enough that everything isn’t frozen solid or if you were to dig a pond deep enough that it didn’t freeze solid then a pump like that would be a good back up plan.
Hi SteveU, only some thougts from me, the priming system is important, a self-priming, good suction pump will never be as effective as a, for example, centrifugal pump. Many pumps over about 15hp seems to have a built-in evacuation pump, that fills the suction line, then are by-passed, that is a pretty good system.
Many smaller “self-priming” pumps are a real PITA to get pumping, leaky bottom-check-valves, priming funnels to fill with a bucket when in a hurry, and so on.
Also need to check the true capacity, pumping height affected by suction height, backpressure an like.
Im no expert, but have got soaking wet many times when struggling with various pumps.
Edit: i don’t know how it works in the US, but in Sweden it was common in older time that firefighters and civil defense stuff was sold as surplus when outdated, you got (old) real quality, and well serviced stuff cheap, not many wanted the bigger stuff, so it got cheaper.
Nice pump, Steve. Google says you can get the same pump on a Kohler ohc 4-stroke. Save $1000, avoid the screaming 2-stroke. It will cost you 21 more pounds when carrying it. Wheels are your friend. We have an irrigation pump to feed 90 foot throw impact sprinklers (one at a time), mainly for getting forage crops started. It’s similar up to about 70 psi, but that’s about the limit. Honda engine, that runs really well, but won’t do the job going up your hill. We feed it with ditch water, which as Tom pointed out, is seasonal. But then so are most of our fires.
Everybody’s situation will vary.
As said mine will not be a frozen water supply system in our warm/hot dry wildfire season time. Late October through May even a fame thrower could not make a spreading conflagration.
The rated 8 horsepower pump system I put up was because it did have the specs to maybe get from down in our property edge creek enough water up to the house and shop to make a difference.
Ha! And we will not be putting in a pool or near pond up here in this made kinda level property corner. Although pricing out 600-700 feet of 2 inch pressure line gives a $$$$ pause.
If we were more or less level then this fellows $1500. USD system could do the trick:
Or something low-costs similar.
It doesn’t seem to require all that much if you remain active on hands:
At 1:55 it shows past them family-safe hugging in the driveway; three red five gallon cans of gasoline, and one 20 pound propane battle.
For an IC engined electric power generator now needed I expect. And a propane cooking stove.
S.U.
Yes Sean I’d watched that one too.
I like the approaches of this one much better:
As I said somewhere else our situations do vary a lot.
Urban dense having to rely then much on what others around you are doing; or not doing.
Rural isolated then it is really all on you.
Flat terrain versus sloping/hilly surrounds. These can isolate you. Or accentuate the burns.
I’ve pictured up enough of our house and surrounds for any to see we do not have or allow any tall trees around us. Mostly this because of winds falling hazards. And we have minimal shrubbery.
Exterior walls materials we can, and will be doing much fire resistant better as $'s and time allows.
But as the actual home owners who self-saved their houses videos testified it was winds blown spot fires that were always the beginnings on their houses. Just a little bit of human hands focused water sprayed knocked these back from growing big. Why they have houses and neighbors who relied on others; luck; the Grace-of-God, do not.
Previously in a video of a Nor-Cal urban “only home saved” by a Navy Veteran: he said he turned his house surrounds yards into “mud” with sprinklers.
To me it is just like the wood gasification approches.
You cheer on, and wait for someone else; “more educated”, “smarter”, “a specialist” to do something meaningful about it. Paying them in $'s and support. Waiting expectantly for results that will trickle down to you.
Or . . . YOU; do something about it. Right Now. Today. Starting with yourself. Expanding out at most to your own local areas.
Wife and I do vote funding our local Fire Department/EMS; Schools; Sheriffs Dept. Roads and PUD.
Money and efforts thrown away, up to the state and federal levels has too much damn shrinkage.
Subject to too many political fancies. Grand projects to make the cities flow and function better. And where is the benefit to me? Culture? Arts? World class hospitals? International class airports? Still more worldwide daily live and function fine outside of these artificially supported pressure pots.
Sorry to some of you guys for expressing these feelings. I feel the same way any time when I’ve had to spend our post-taxed money to degreed professionals. Of course we have. Dentists. Engineers. Medical Doctors. And, yes . . . Lawyers. But we learned to be very picky choosy. Choosing ones who do have families with children. Choosing to personally live reasonable too.
Not ones living statements lives. Catering to statement projects. One who were able to endure through the 4-6-8 years of re-educational camps of “you must comply to the consensus” and come out the other end shaking it off to then be still reasonable human beings.
Steve Unruh
Of course now that I’ve watched a few save-your-home-from-wildfires I am deluged with like videos.
This short does stand out though:
Of course if the Grid above ground power lines are down you’d need some DIY electrical power for your water pumping well.
THAT had to be set up beforehand. Before the actual need.
And for me that’d be manual pull starting gasoline electric generators.
S.U.
Actually, I just watched a video short on FB, that had basically exploding fire retardant to stop grass fires. It won’t stop it in high winds muchless trees. Which got me thinking, your cheapest option is. using Phos-chek and getting a drone to drop it over your property. You can program them to do specific patterns and they can carry sprayers and spreaders. so you can get it to do a pattern that covers your house first, and your barn, and work it’s way all the way across your property. It is mixed at a 5:1 ratio and I think it said 30lbs to an acre.
Ha! Ha!
O.K. back to engine talk.
This aviation engine video may seem out of place on a small engine topic.
Not really though. The same issues of power delivery smoothness and reliability apply down to modern single cylinder air cooled engines.
Example. The nearly same sized single cylinder engines when in my suitcase electrical generators seem quiet and smooth running. And extremely fuel use efficient.
Now the very similar single slant cylinder engine as installed in my new tracked tower/hauler will vibration buzz my hands to the painful point in just minutes. It is hard metals to metals installed.
The suitcase electrical generators are double insulated mounted. You do not continuously have to hands hold them. And they are not motorbike installed down, and operating between your legs, butt buzzing you.
A longer video well worth still in winter closed-in mode to detail watch:
Of course for some of you the comparisons will be the original VW four air-cooled versus an air-cooled Chevrolet six cylinder Corvair. Or air-cooled Porsche engines: fours versus sixes.
Even the later water cooled higher compression fuel injected aviation engines could be compared to the early pushrod Subaru auto engines. The ones I actually liked.
The video in the secondary balance section makes reference to Inline three cylinder engines. The new, latest darlings, they are turbo forcing acceptance of now. O.K. in low power density applications says I. (Add another cylinder for a fours benefits IMHO)
View. Enjoy. And learn something applicable, useful. Use-in-installations matters more than Ideals is what this video teaches.
Steve Unruh
