timing marks & ring compressors

[Don_Edwards]

Wow, that sounded and looked like a sweetheart!

[BruceM]

+1 on dieselgman's comment.  You can only balance well for the running speed, a bit of unbalance is normal on speed up.  Congratulations, she looks and sounds marvelous.

[xyzer]

I would probably not mess much with the balance until I have a nothing else to do day. A little load may change things for sure but you will be chasing a minor balance problem......I am going to step out on a limb and bet it has an aluminum piston...!?

[Quinnf]

I concur with the others.  The level of imbalance isn't out of the ordinary.  When accelerating or decelerating to or from its governed speed the torque pulses are going to make it look pretty severe.  But once you're at speed it settles down nicely.  Bolt it down to a well-made engine bed and get on with the project.  Playing with balance is something you can look into later.  It's sort of like polishing the chrome. Do that after the engine's back in the car.

Quinn

[fabricator]

FF, do NOT do anything to that thing, that is about as good as it gets, you could chase perfection for months and never get any better than it is right now,
Just build yourself a good steel base and get some rubber vibration eliminators from Mc Master Carr and put them between the base and the floor and you are god to go.

[fuelfarmer]

I was told a good mechanic always has parts left over when a project is finished. The only parts from the kit I did not find a home for were 4  3/8 nuts. Any idea where they should go. Or did someone play a trick on me when packing the hardware?

[fabricator]

Were they the ones that bolted it to the crate?

[dieselgman]

Better to have some extras vs lacking pieces... sometimes a few extras are included for good measure. Call them spares. 

dieselgman

[fuelfarmer]

Were they the ones that bolted it to the crate?

No, they were in the little white box that had the "hardware kit" in it. Things like the fuel tank bolts, bolts for the fuel filter and lines.

[bandmiller2]

Short sea story,the firefighters used to give the old mechanic fits they would paint a bolt head red and throw it under the truck.The old fella would spend half a day on the creeper.They tried it on me,new bolt with freash paint under an old truck,OK I waited a week and poured a little antifreeze under his car engine,he was occupied most of the day. Frank C.

[fuelfarmer]

Here is a clip of the engine running on 100% biodiesel. I know it looks very much like the first clip, but you can never have to many clips of a lister clone staring up..........

http://youtu.be/tFljBfO9tX4

[mobile_bob]

here is a mechanics revenge
(hope i haven't told this one before here, and if so i hope i retell it  the same way)

years ago, while working as an apprentice truck mechanic, for a real character that took
great pleasure in setting us up with little tricks and other mental abuses.

the boss came to the shop about an hour before morning break, called us all together which i thought odd at the time, and stated "joe blow is going to come by at about morning breaktime,
he "thinks" he has some lose 5th wheel mounting bolts, Tim i want you to just check em out, because i am leaving for the bank" 
Tim was a new hire, young kid...

something just smelled fishy to me, hmmmm he thinks the bolts are loose, and tim just take a look? rather than take an impact gun and make damn sure they are tight??  hmmm

so i go get my foreman and tell him i smell a setup.. and ask if he is game
he says yes and we wait for the driver to arrive

we hurry out to check it out and yes all the bolts were quite loose!  i ask the driver when the last time our boss had seen him or the truck about this problem, he told me it was at breakfast that morning.... okkkkkk?  starting to make sense to me!

so my foreman and i take a 3/4 inch impact/hose and wrench and hammer them up really tight, then i spray down the bolt heads with wd40, and then take handsfull of limestone dust from the drive to powder the whole area, it looked like it had never been touched.

we then bribed the driver to not say a word, with a cold pepsi

the boss drives in just about the time we all got reseated back in the breakroom,
the first thing he asks is... "tim did you check the 5th wheel bolts"  tim:"why yes of course"
boss: "were they loose"  tim: "no sir, they were all tight"

(oh my lord, i thought the boss was going to have a coronary right on the spot)

he yanks tim up out of the chair draggin him out the door kicking and screaming, grabbing a 15/16 wrench on the way,,,

he starts yelling, "how the hell do you know they are tight?"  "you never even put a wrench on any of them!  look at the dust!"

then he calls him a bunch of names i won't repeat here.... while running around putting his wrench on each bolt and trying to pull a hernia to get any of them to move....

of course none of them would budge,

he then goes up to the front of the truck to see if it is the same one, and it is...

you could see the gears a grinding!

he then looks at the driver and the driver just looks with a blank stare and shrugs his shoulders!

it was priceless, we all standing around doing everything  in our collective power not to laugh at all,,,

we never told him any different! 

we laughed about it for weeks, and after that we spared no opportunity to do the same sort of thing everytime he would start one of his little mind games...

not sure if he ever figured it out or not, maybe he did, i hope so, because some things you don't screw around with,  5th wheel mounting bolts being loose get folks killed, so you don't tell somebody they might be loose if you know they are..

moral of the story?

never screw with a mechanic, he goes through enough mental abuse as it is, and will take immense delight in sharing the pain if you mess with him.

bob g

[Thob]

FuelFarmer - please share with us how you stuffed the rings back in and how you got it timed - inquiring minds want to know!

Nice running engine, in my opinion.  I don't see any balance problems, it does move around due to the startup torque but after it gets up to speed it looks very smooth to me.

Are you going to power the oil press directly, or power a generator head, or???

Thanks!

[fuelfarmer]

To get the rings in I used a combination of ideas. I took some HDPE plastic 1/8 sheet and cut it to size and beveled the top edge so it would slide up further into the beveled bottom of the cylinder. Then the block was placed on the studs and set on wood blocks to hold the block just above the piston that was installed on the rod. The plastic sheet was clamped around the piston with hose clamps and the piston was pushed up int the cylinder by pulling on the flywheel.

The gears just went back like I found them. I was trying to find out how to time the engine if the timing was wrong.

I plan to run a gen head. The engine is more toy than work horse for now, but that could change real fast if we have another 6 day power outage. I also want to use the engine as a demonstrator to burn a little biodiesel when visitors stop by.  Dump in some home grown fuel and crank it up...........smell that fantastic biodiesel smoke.     

[fuelfarmer]

On a different topic. Water leaks. Water was leaking out of the block side cover under the fuel filter. I found a place where the casting was broken away beside a bolt hole where an allen screw stud or hole filler was placed. So I welded some metal onto the bad spot and ground it off smooth. After putting it back together, taking it apart, repeat,pull out some more hair, water still leaked out around the allen screw. It seem there is a pin hole leaking into the bolt hole where the allen screw is. I was using a "minuet gasket" product that maybe should had set up longer, but it would not seal the leak. I ended up just welding the hole shut on the cover. If The hole is ever needed I can drill it out agsin

Also had a leak around a stud on the bottom water port flange. That got "blue goo" and seems to be holding.