Proceed on as you were, Kristijan.
I certainly have not always pistons removed either.
Going with many, frequent oil changes with a half of liter of cheapest Automatic Transmission Fluid will detergents boost and clean up, and free-up carbon sticking piston rings too.
Sigh. Restoring compression with a valve job can often turn an engine an oil burner until especially the lower oil control rings do free up.
Pre-oxygen sensors, and pre-catalytic converter systems . . .no problem. Just a bit of tail pipe smoking.
Wanna’ keep O2 sensors and cats alive? Feed them kindly.
Hone lines telling a story??
The worn engine done in place hone lines carry across the dark ring just below the rings never-worn ridge.
This dark line is the most eroded away section of the original cylinder bore. Gets the rings thrust reversal scraping. Get the hottest exposed combustion gases.
IF the hone lines were factory original they would be worn away across the dark wear line and no longer be visible
If it had been worn in service and re-honed with a three stone rigid hone; the inflexible stones will skip over the dark line gap.
So done with a many plastic whiskered ball-ended “Flex-Hone”.
The best for in-service restoring.
Doesn’t take hundreds of engines done to learn all of this.
Just 5,10, to a few more. Depends on the student. Depends on the engine types done.
S.U.
I ended up grinding off 2mm off the head, l was afraid valves wuld hit the piston but it all went well.
I decided to strip off both engines and completely dismantle them, then take whats best of both and asemble one out of two. It all went smoothly, except the distributors did not cross fit and l also needed to do some modifying.
This has been my bigest mechanical project yet. I have never even been in a 4 stroke engine before, and l culdnt have done it without a constant hotline with Mr Tone he deserves about as much credit as l do for the project.
I shuld do the math again, but l belive l increased the compression ratio from original 9.7/1 to around 11.5/1. Polish the valves too.
Guys, its like its a different engine. It feels like it has 20hp more. Bare in mind the stock engine only has 54hp! Torque increased a great amount in the whole region of rpm but it seems its the high end rpm that shines the most. After about 3000rpm the engine was dead before, now at this point it realy starts pulling and it just wants to go! It runs much smoother and quieter, wich is ofcorse the resault of freshly adjusted valves…
I also installed LPG/CNG sparkplugs.
We will see what this all means to woodgas. For now, l am pleased.
Christian, I am not worthy of such praise, you are worthy of admiration, because I know the conditions in which you work, thank God that you succeeded, I hope you will be satisfied with the results also on wood gas. One of my friends said, “What a man has done, a man can fix.” ,
I would like to throw something in. Don’t know anything about Ford engines—they change engine designs so often I can’t keep up. Many years ago (60’s ?) , the Pinto had a 4 cylinder over head cam. Someone (Popular Science?) printed that you could improve the performance of the engine if you filed out about 10 thousands of an inch off from one side of the keyed slot in the cam gear on the overhead cam. I did it for one person and after he said it really made a difference in the performance. I never drove a Pinto, so I took it for a ride. When I stepped on the gas it felt like pushing on a bole of mashed potatoes. If the customer was happy so was I. TomC
I’ve seen small engine guys just use a huge belt sander to shave down their heads. There’s a machine shop i might take mine to though. Only way I could do it is take a big hunk of sandpaper on a flat surface and just move it around. Too risky in my hands.
The 2 MM that Kristijan removed would be about a sixteenth of an inch. Doesn’t seem like much but taking that much metal out of a cast iron head even if it were only a four cylinder and keeping it dead flat is no small task. Again. Even doing it took some balls. That the thing ran and ran better afterward still amazes me and I’m not that easily impressed.
Thanks for the thumbs up guys! But there was a missunderstanding. I did not grind the head my self. Im comfident l culd do it by hand, since is Aluminium and hasnt got much meat, l got a thick tempered glass tabletop and alredy prepared the surface for grinding, like Cody sayd. Huge sheet of sand paper. lm quite sure l culd achive the same resault, but after about 4 hours of hand grinding
Anyways, l found a shop via Facebook located a couple of miles from my home that did it for me. Came there with the head to be ground, left with the end product and a job offer the boss sayd geting a decent fabricator these days is near impossible. They were looking for a employee for 6 months and the best guy they found culdnt even power wash their van
Im actualy gonna concider the offer. Those nightshifts are killing me alive. The work there seems tailored to my needs, they make custom cooling/heating stainless vessels like beer fermenters and such.
I am generaly aginst much automation in a gasifier, but lm thinking of a way to light this gasifier via electricity. Its hard to light from the top or a touch hole. Glow plugs wuld probably burn up soon, so im thinking this…
Ok, I didnt dare to ask if you did it yourself! I read somewhere about stitching a wound with a horse hair, and I have seen you bungeejump with a chainsaw, so, it wouldnt surprise me if you did it yourself. We all know you are a Mc Gyver XL.
Cool! And nightjobs are killing. I dont care what kind of work to do, but the night is for sleeping. And as you get older it gets worse.
Once again, impressive build!
I’m glad you sent it out. Now I don’t feel like such a slug. I have had overheated, cast iron heads that warped. Hardly noticeable and still would never seal. Cheaper to throw them in the scrap pile than take them to the machine shop. That’s why I always ran Chevy’s. They made a billion of them and all the parts were pretty interchangeable up to 1997. You could turn over a rock and find a small block under it.
I did my 2.3L head that way, only about 4 thousandths. I used 60 grit paper glued to a piece of glass out of an oven door, on top of my table saw. I liked the way it looked. I couldn’t see light under the steel ruler at all. The gasket has held for almost three years now.
I learned from youtube.
Ok guys, l only lit twice so far and l still dont have a hybrid swich, or any instrumentation for that matter. In short, there is still work to be done. The power on woodgas has NOT increased drasticly.
Since now, l never had problems with ignition timing on any vehicle, or even had the ability to change it. They all ran reasonably good stock. But l have a feeling here its a different story.
At the moment, l have two options for timing adjustment. One is changing the ignition from ECU to the old fassion type coil and dist, and set it via cable like most of you guys do.
Second is to relocate the crank position sensor above the flywheel. Its a constant injectiin engine so this sensor only sets timing.
I decided for this route. I will keep the original sensor and add a second one next to it, then hook both of them on the same swich as the fuel pump, this way l have petrol mode and woodgas mode in one swich.
Now, my question for you guys is this. How much? Does anyone know what the rough timing advance is for your vehicles? Thank you, hope l can collect as mach data as possible before l averidge them out and drill the gearbox
Kristijan,
Old books say 10-15° depending on engine. The V8 guys obviously advance 45°, but their computers probably retard it back some from there.
My own experiences:
Rabbit: Old school dist cable, with maybe 45° capability. No difference in power on wood though.
Mazda: Horisontal heavy dist. Permanently advanced as much as the slots allow. Occantional kick-backs when cranking up on dino, but no obvious increase in power on wood.
Volvo: Permanently electrically advanced 9°. No detectable increase in power.
I WAG would be to try maybe 15° earlier on the flywheel, but with your increased compression ratio there’s probably not much power to gain by advancing the timing. But, you never know. Every engine type is different.
he deserves about as much credit as l do for the project.
