I agree, Shipchief.  Add a little water and nitrogen to keep the bugs happy and a "dirt muffler" mades a lot of sence environmentally.  The exception would be where the water table was  too near the surface or rain water flushing was a problem so that the bugs wouldn't get a chance to do their job.

Darren,
Plan C:
I don't think you can get enough decrease in mass with messing with the valves.  The  bigger mass is the valve tappet itself (and the cast iron rocker arms)  The tappet is a much bigger (than valves)  chunk of steel, and is easier to replace than the rocker arms.. A composite tappet body with hardened steel face??? Aluminum???

Bruce M

Gerry, I'd like to hear more on your plans for the buried exhaust.  I've been considering this as I have some backhoe work to do shortly anyway.  My thoughts were- dig a 5' deep trench, 30 feet long.  Put two feet of leachfield (3") cinders in it, with a 4' lead in of perforated (slot with oxy torch) steel pipe and a 4' lead out of perforated PVC drain pipe.  Not sure on the pipe diameters.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for the feedback on Mike's governor adjustment.

Bruce M

That's an interesting idea, Scott.  It would also solve the decompression problem for future remote starting.  One concern-  any shutdown that doesn't shut off the fuel supply means a bunch of fuel squirted into the cylinder until the engine coasts to a stop.  I want to use the shut down mechanism for regular remote shut downs.  What do you think?

Bruce M

I forgot to mention-  this is particularly useful to me as sometimes I'll be running the air compressor only, and want to log those engine hours, too.

That's great news about your oil consumption, though baffling.  The detergent must have cleaned up something or the thin viscosity got in somewhere?    I've often gone to straight 30/40 weight with no detergent on older vehicles that started burning oil- and had oil consumption stop, but I've never heard of the reverse situation.

 I'm going to improve my homebrew oil filter media's fine particle performance with some cotton batting or cotton balls, and stick to multiviscosity detergent oils. 

Hey Hotater,
"Regards the oil sight tube---  If you'll replace the elbow with a Tee with a step-up adapter at the top you can add oil through it and to drain the oil all you have to do is disconnect the sight tube. "

I did this, and the trapped air in the oil filler riser screws up the oil level readings of the sight tube.  When the engine was running with the oil filler riser on a Tee, the oil level rose 3/4".  So I had to remove the oi filler pipe and will add one to one of the access doors, someday.

There does seem to be a lot of force from the downward directed oil off the crank. It it really packs down my filter media.  A scraper could direct that force to a pressure filter.

I tried cold starting by hand this morning just after at dawn, about 16 degrees F, and a few degrees colder than that overnight.  No joy, just a sore arm. Maybe this will improve when my engine is broken in, but even my '85 300D MB diesel has trouble starting on mornings like this  My present home here outside Snowflake is at 5900 feet, my new off grid property is  5400 ft.   Hotater- what's your elevation there at Magic Springs?  I wonder if there's still something not right that my Lister(oid) is not cold starting by hand at these temps?

 I took this as an opportunity to test the new Utterpower glow plug I recently purchased. Screwed it in, hooked it up, immediately started cranking by hand, moved the compression release and bang, she fired on the first compression stroke.  Big grin. This after complete failure with many attempts at hand starting without the glow plug.  It's really a nice design- the VW glow plug element tip is right at the focus of the concave plug end  in the precombustion chamber.

Bravo, George, for this very nice Lister enhancement.

Bruce