Hey Guys,
In the essence of "Push it till it breaks, then back off a bit" I have run TM1 on a low WI input on sump gunk until he is thoroughly clogged up.
As mentioned previously, about an hour into the run, I flushed him with good bit of water to clean up the deposited carbon from the initial warmup. Well, my inquiring and somewhat destructive mind got me to run him without a flush and just minimal attention for the last few days... Four, to be exact, to see how long it would take for the carbon to become a serious problem.
This is what I found:
After Day one - a bit of buildup internally, an hour into the run, instead of flushing, I reduced the load a little and running seemed to improve after about 15mins or so so he went back to full load.
After Day two - A little harder to start, carbon was building up on the valves I think, there was a bit of a "low compression" symptom, only with starting, no major cc breather venting, but passable in power.
After Day three - Still hardish to start, compression was a bit down, a little cc breather activity, but mostly evident was valve leakage.
Day Four - Sluggish start, quite a bit of cc breather activity initially, this calmed down after a few minutes of running. After about 1 1/2 hours of running, there was major cc breather venting, this developed over about 30 to 45 min, not smoke per se' but carried oil droplets were making a mess. There were no other leaks on seals or gaskets, so the improved cc vent valve was doing a reasonable job. The run was abandoned around 2 hours in, even though he was making full power.
I will tear him down and see what the gunk has done. The symptoms are of a broken compression ring or two, or possibly just that the grooves are badly carboned up and jamming the rings....
I will report back once the teardown has been done!
Any bets as to what has happened?
Keep it spinning...
Regds
Ed
PS - We are almost finished with the framing for the new gantry/workshop shed - The roof covers about 80sq m with about 70sq m usable by the gantry, lift height is around 2.4m. The gantry looks like it will develop into a double beam runner with 2 hoist blocks on one beam and a single on the other, spaced around 75-mm apart... The main load rails are 160mm H section x 2 with an additional outboard rail of 160mm I beam close to the door opening of around 9m wide. The roofing frame is made from 125 and 150mm lip channel affixed to the top of the main gantry runners. Quite a bit of work, but well worth it in the end, I reckon..