Milwaukee Midget

[fordboy628]

Meah . . . it's all done.

I have no way of accurately checking .002 in situ. 

Went with copper, sprayed the hell out of it, clamped, heat-cycled, retorqued, readjusted lash.

Lost .002 in lash on the retorque with the copper gasket. Went from .015 to .013 cold. THAT I can confirm.

If it gets to the point where it continues to be a problem - ie, it gets to the point where I need to pull the engine - it'll be replaced with somethong [sic ? ?] more substantial.

More likely need to be sold before that, though.

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody.

Chris,

You are watching too much Pornhub, and not enough of the Motor Trend Channel.

JMHO

[Milwaukee Midget]

Chris,

You are watching too much Pornhub, and not enough of the Motor Trend Channel.

JMHO

Yeah - well, I had my "Hans" full at the time . . . but enough about mandated restraints . . .

Nick was in town last weekend for the Green Bay game - they were supposed to play the professional football team out of Chicago, but the Bears showed up instead.

And search engines being what they are, for a while last Sunday, you could go on Google and ask, "Who owns the Chicago Bears?", and rather than Virginia McCaskey, a picture Aaron Rodgers would appear in the search results.

Nick got me up to speed with Trello, which is a business task organizing app he's been using for years. It's great in that it keeps me tighter to task and is easily accessed by Nick, keeping us on the same page and more closely involving him as we move forward.

I popped the head off of the K this morning. When we left Bonneville, the engine was running insanely rich, carboning up the 3 and 4 cylinders, and we were still getting oil buildup on the 1 and 2 plugs. Leakdown test and oil analysis indicated nothing physically wrong with the head or block, although the rich fuel delivery was likely the chief contributor to the amount of lead found in the motor oil sample. Inspecting the bores indicated that my fear of a broken ring was likely unfounded - there was no scoring:

DSCN0175 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Copper coloration is the ceramic coating of the piston crown.

What was odd was the amount of oil in the #1 and # 2 holes.  The 3 and 4 show a lot of carbon from the fuel richness, yet the 1 and 2 are actually rather clean. Curious that the top of the pistons had what looked and felt like ARP thread lube - greyish and sticky - very weird, especially considering the car had in fact turned 9,500 RPM down the salt the last time it ran.

DSCN0177 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Close inspection of the head gasket indicated no leaks or burn-through, and the O-rings on the head continue to stand proud:

DSCN0184 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Thursday, I stopped down and swiped Mark's valve spring compressor, and I'm going to check the intake valve seals on the 1 and 2 holes to see if that might be the source of the oil burning. Another thought is that we might be running too high of oil pressure and the 0W20 is seeping past the low tension upper springs. I bring that up because none of this was happening on the dyno when we were using straight 30 weight break-in oil.

The deeper I dig into this, the less conclusive my findings become.

[Milwaukee Midget]

Oh - by the way - I received a new set of 21 lb injectors last week to replace the 36 lb pieces we attempted to make work.

21 is slightly larger than what the motor requires but these should be trimmable at 43 psi fuel pressure rather than barely workably at 29 lb's at a 40% duty cycle - which apparently didn't work.

[Milwaukee Midget]

Putting 2021 in the rear view mirror thank-you-very-much.

Been a bit busy with both the Midget and life. The Trello app is keeping me to task and maintaining a degree of communication between Nick and myself. It's essentially acting as a white board that I can fit in my pocket - simple and effective.

I want to share this. Some of you have met my dad - he came out for the rain-out in 2014, but I made a point to get him introduced to a number of you.

I was in Iowa last week giving them some help and I got to dig through his tools. He had a really REALLY nice 24" Lufkin combination square with gradations in 64ths, which he gave to me. But before he did, he reminisced about working in inspection at Collins Radio back during the Gemini and Apollo projects.

"We used to do this all the time - you know, like parlor tricks", he said, and picked up the square, eyed up the end, tightened down the head and said, "That's .700".

Some people bet the ponies, some play poker, but there's not a casino in Nevada that should lay odds against my old man and a combination square.
 
He handed me his caliper, and damned if he wasn't within a half thou.

This is a guy who's 84 years old, has had a retinal detachment and cataracts and hasn't so much as even touched a micrometer in probably 25 years.

Okay, back to the Midget.

I've been keeping an eye on Stainless' progress of late, and realized that along with changing out injectors, I should probably paint the TB bracketing. I neglected it in the run-up to Bonneville and it needed a clean-up:

20220117_125315 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Came apart nice and I changed out the 36lb injectors for a new set of 21 pounders.

20220117_125204 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr

Rather than waiting for it to cure, I hit the bracketry with a light coat of Dupli-Color engine primer and a coat of Moss Motors proprietary Austin-Healy Green engine enamel and hung it in the oven at 280 for about an hour.

20220117_174428 by Chris Conrad, on Flickr


Back together, and one step closer to firing it up - once I get the head back on - and the clutch installed - and the engine installed . . .

On the way back from Iowa, I made a swing up to Bangor, Wisconsin - yep, we've got one here, too - and chatted with Rey Moreno.  Ray owns Badger Tuners and is a Holley certified dyno tuner who looked over my data and settings.

https://badgertuners.com/

Nick and I will be bringing the Midget up to his shop the last weekend of March to put a tune on it that eliminates the variables I had reinstalling the engine after our stressful yet successful initial dyno work at T&T.

Yup - I just threw down a timeline.

[manta22]

Interesting that your Dad worked at Collins Radio. They made very high quality equipment for the military and for amateur radio operators. I still have my Collins "S-Line" and one of the first SSB transceivers ever made, a KWM-1. I also have a military R-390A/URR radio made by Collins with serial number 12. Maybe your Dad will recognize some of these model numbers.

[Stainless1]

Yep, easy to tell the stuff that needs attention after a couple of months... if it is orange and it wasn't painted that color then it needs work.  If it's white and it used to be shiny aluminum... that's rust too.
Now's a good time to look at the rest of the car... before you can see the ground
Good to hear you found a tuner... now all you need to do is get him interested in coming to Bonneville because every gearhead should... and he could be part of a team... racing not spectating... on his own dime of course   
 

[fordboy628]

Oh - by the way - I received a new set of 21 lb injectors last week to replace the 36 lb pieces we attempted to make work.

21 is slightly larger than what the motor requires but these should be trimmable at 43 psi fuel pressure rather than barely workably at 29 lb's at a 40% duty cycle - which apparently didn't work.

JMHO . . . .

The smaller injectors running at a higher working pressure, will supply a better "atomized" fuel component into the inlet stream.   I have seen tests where better "atomization" ENHANCES bhp output, IF, this is what the engine requires/desires.   This is USUALLY the case on 4 valve DOHC engines.   BUT, there are other engine types where the bhp responds favorably to the fuel being "rained in", and droplet size does not matter.

How to know for sure?    Test, test, test . . . . .     This is a situation where you will want to use HB2's "closed loop" test procedure.    Read his dyno testing book to grasp the significance of this procedure.

BTW, that Samuel Johnson thing:   "All things, but in moderation."     Uuhhmm . . . . NO.

F/b

[Milwaukee Midget]

Yeah, I'm still here . . .

After trying every reasonable method to suss out the cause of my ongoing oil smoke from cylinders one and two, I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply going to have to pull the engine again, strip it down and get the cylinders re-honed.

My diagnostics included the following:

Drained the Mobil One racing oil, which is the biggest change I made when installing the engine back in the car - it had been topped up with 30 wt Brad Penn Break-in Oil during the dyno time. I went back to the Brad Penn this time, and yes, Rex, I also emptied the accumulator (that thing is SO COOL)

Checked the spark plug leads - ranging from 550 to 1250 ohms, length dependent

Confirmed spark on all cylinders

Cleaned O2 sensor - never a great idea, but you have to start somewhere

REPLACED O2 sensor after observing obviously faulty lean reading considering the carbon build-up on the plugs

Confirmed injector actuation with really cool and likely dangerous technique that I'd just as soon not share the details with Kate about

Cleaned plugs

Replaced plugs

Went two heat ranges hotter on plugs, pulling the ignition back a couple of ticks to avoid having to replace the Diamond pistons which I've been told they will never make again because they're "Getting out of making the weird s#*t"

Reset the throttle cable

Reset the TPS

Checked crankcase pressure - found it to be zero - it is really well ventilated

Checked valve guide seals - no leaks


1 and 2 remain oily - 3 and 4 continue to carbon up.

I was going to head to Badger Tuners last month to put it on the dyno, but we would have been working around what is, at this point, almost certainly a mechanical issue, and not an EFI problem.

So out it comes again. I found the deck plate (thanks again, Terry) and the associated washers and will pull it out and completely tear it down to the block.  Placed the order for the piston rings this morning - should see them in a couple of weeks.

What's been confusing me was why I'm still seeing stellar leakdown numbers. Cold, the #1 is at 4%, the rest are at 5%.

I came across this - it's a good read, and my thinking after reading it is this - I maintain good leakdown because at TDC, the cylinder pressure holds the ring against the wall tightly. When the piston moves in the bore without that pressure and is drawing a vacuum in the cylinder, I'm thinking a glazed cylinder wall and middle/oil ring issue with high oil pressure pumping past a low tension top ring.

Something like that . . .

In short, I'm fairly confident I screwed up by switching oil too early after the initial dyno work - aka, improper break-in.

https://www.jrcengineering.com/technical-support/piston-ring-seating-problems/

[generatorshovel]

Chris, many years ago, I had a Shovelhead HD, damn thing ate oil, several rebores later, the problem persisted, eventually I discovered that once the heads got hot, oil was pulled thru the pores in the alloy, from an oil return, into the intake port, which I discovered after heating the heads in an oven I noticed oil bubbling out of the alloy ever so slightly, it turned out that when relieving the heads to accept a higher(er) lift cam, plus porting, left 2 poofteenths of very porous cast alloy between the bottom valve spring retainer, & the intake port,,,that discovery took several years to pinpoint
Tiny

[manta22]

Chris,

You might check the cylinder bore diameter at three places- top, middle, and bottom of the bore to see if you have taper on any of the cylinders.

[Milwaukee Midget]

Chris, many years ago, I had a Shovelhead HD, damn thing ate oil, several rebores later, the problem persisted, eventually I discovered that once the heads got hot, oil was pulled thru the pores in the alloy, from an oil return, into the intake port, which I discovered after heating the heads in an oven I noticed oil bubbling out of the alloy ever so slightly, it turned out that when relieving the heads to accept a higher(er) lift cam, plus porting, left 2 poofteenths of very porous cast alloy between the bottom valve spring retainer, & the intake port,,,that discovery took several years to pinpoint
Tiny

Well, a Harley's going to leak SOMEWHERE . . . 

Tiny, while nothing on this morphydite motor would surprise me, I can actually rule that one out because after the last fire-up, I removed the intake manifold and checked the back of the intake valves for oil to confirm my previous valve-stem seal observation. No oil accumulation or residue, despite a really oily cylinder.

Neil, I dug up my bore gauge earlier this morning in anticipation of doing that very thing. 

[salt27]

Happy Birthday Chris, I'll be tilting one in your honor.   

[Milwaukee Midget]

Thanks, Don!

Actually, I was digging through the "beer fridge" earlier this morning and came across the Black Butte Porter you set me up with last September.  How I let it go unnoticed this long is absolutely a crime against all things I hold sacred, so I too will lift one - or maybe more - later today.

Got to upload some pictures - and I received a cool video from Badger Tuners with a hotrod garden tractor they built and dynoed, doing a pull in Northern Wisconsin. I think it's a 2.5 liter ECOTEC, and its running flat up against it at full tilt. Scarey cool.

Off to lunch.  I'll work on the photos later today.

[Stainless1]

Well in honor of your birthday I took my Brother from another mother, my Brother and his son out to B&C BBQ for smoked prime rib and a Buffalo Sweat Stout. 
Then we came back to the house and I opened a Heretic Brewing Incubus barrel aged stout.  We had a great time on your birthday...
Oh... Happy Birthday 

[Milwaukee Midget]

We had a great time on your birthday...
Oh... Happy Birthday 

I also celebrated your birthday - and Slim's - on March 17th.

The intake officer at county told Kate I was having a great time as well!

I'll take their word for it . . .