<VV> VV Sleeping Lakewood
Tony Underwood
tonyu at roava.net
Tue Apr 5 17:06:18 EDT 2005
The weather finally stopped raining, snowing, freezing, blowing gale force
winds, and allowed me to actually assault the recently acquired Roman Red
Lakewood that had been sitting since 1969-70.
After rebuilding the carbs, replacing spark plugs (an adventure in itself
since they appear to be the original spark plugs so you can imagine how
stuck they were) the plug wires, and the entire distributor since half of
it didn't work, the engine finally started and ran smoothly. It quieted
down after running a few minutes... and actually sounds pretty good.
The inside of the engine is a mess. When I pulled the distributor out,
it was caked up with grey sludge... don't know what the previous owner was
using for oil back in the '60s, but it must have been rotgut crap to leave
this sort of plaque behind. The crankcase won't be keeping *this* load of
Advance Store engine oil for very long... it's gonna need changing after a
couple hours worth of running to see if I can flush some of this crud out
along with it. Rislone is gonna be my buddy for the next couple of oil
changes for this engine... I can't leave this stuff inside it. I'd hate
to see what else is caked inside everything.
I don't wanna have to pull this engine apart to clean it out. Anybody
know of anything that works well to flush out this sort of crud besides the
usual kerosene soak or running 5 gallons of lacquer thinner through it a
dozen times? Any sort of engine crud buster that works well, maybe an
engine flush that actually does something except paper some manufacturer's
pockets?
This crud looks like it had lead in it...
I knew somebody who "knew somebody" who said they once cleaned up an engine
crankcase by running the engine with a couple of gallons of kerosene in the
crankcase for a minute or two, cut with a couple of quarts of engine
oil. The kero was above the level of the crankshaft throws, which
blasted kerosene all around the inside of the crankcase with a vengeance
and "cleaned it up pretty good".
I do not wanna try this with an all original Lakewood engine with 58,000
miles on it. But I'd like to clean it up inside without having to tear
it apart. I have too much stuff apart already.
I'm tempted to give it a cheap lacquer thinner soak... 5 gallons poured
through it a few times etc. Let it soak overnight... and hope it doesn't
melt every gasket and seal in the engine...? Or maybe I should stick
with Rislone...?
So: Anybody have any preferences for a GOOD engine crankcase flush that
actually works? It's been a while since I saw an engine with crud like
this.
tony..
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