Well....due to me wanting to get my compression correct between the cylinders of a twin listeroid, ONE of the cylinders required a "minimalistic" approach with the base gasket below the cylinder. AND...this VERY thin gasket resulted in some oil being evenly distributed about the bottom end of my engine...on the OUTSIDE. So...me ordered a goodly sized tube of RTV...for a caulking gun, and went to work. After spraying down the twin with a pressure washer, drying it off, and then cleaning the vertical and horizontal mating surface with some goodly quantity of carburetor cleaner (and then wiping it off clean), I caulked the hell out of that joint between the body of the engine and #1 cylinder. AND FOR GOOD MEASURE, I figured I'd also aptly caulk under the cam follower support housings for the valves....(being that I don't know the formal "kennel name" for such things...ahem "Valve Tappet Guide")
Well....do YOU know that those blasted valve tappets DO slide up and down, inside those guides? Who'd have thought? And...if you don't watch it, those valve tappets WILL slide RIGHT OUT of those guides, and deposit themselves down into the bowels of a lister? Well....it was time for an oil change anyway.
And so...after draining the oil from the sump, I managed to find that entire valve tappet, safely bathed in a goodly quantity of perfectly-good 500-hour oil. And I thought to myself, "Now....I'm not that flexible so as to wrap my arm up under that crankshaft, over the camshaft, place that valve tappet up into its location...AND hold it in place with the OTHER hand, while also balanced upon a 2-foot flywheel" Nope.
Hmmm...I thought. There, THERE in the recesses of the laboratory is a 10-foot cutting of some spare 14-gauge solid electrical wire. AND IF I WERE SMART, I'd form that into a bit of a fish-tape. And so....I grabbed the ground-wire off that bunch of Romex 14 gauge wire, and fished it DOWN from the valve tappet guide hole, to the inside of the cam, to the outside of the crankshaft, down into the sump...and out the door.
I wrapped that 14-gauge wire around the valve tappet about 5 or 4 times, then dog-legged the last wrap, so that any tension I placed upon that wire as I was pulling the valve tappet back through the inner workings of that listeroid would cause the thin-end to travel first.
DO YOU KNOW that within about 30 seconds of wrapping that valve tappet in wire, and a few "words of encouragement", I had the stub of that valve tappet pinched between my fingers, perched on top of the hole for the valve tappet guide?
Yep. And that's how I slayed the dragon today.
