Michael Stoliker's Journal
Home Page: Michael Stoliker
Bethlehem, PA, USA
| Total Posts: 18 | Latest Post: 2012-09-28 |
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It's been bothering me that now that I have my Spitfire running that I haven't been able to get it running better. It feels and sounds like it's running on two cylinders. I had confirmed that that was the case by pulling the spark plug wires in turn and the two front cylinders were making almost no contribution to the engine.
When I pulled the wires previously, I followed up with a compression test expecting to find something horribly wrong with the two front cylinders, so I was surprised to discover that they had higher compression readings than the two back cylinders.
This time I followed up by checking for spark. I thought maybe I had two bad wires & it was just a coincidence that they were next to each other. But no, there was a nice fat spark from each wire.
Standing there scratching my head and looking across the engine at the dual carbs and manifold, it occured to me that the answer might be staring me right in the face. So, I pulled the air filter off the front carb, and after restarting the engine, I sprayed carb cleaner down the throat of the carb.
The response was immediate. The RPMs climbed, the engine smoothed out and stopped sounding like an extended death rattle and snarled like a Spitfire should.
It was pretty awesome that I could control engine speed by pressing a spray button on an aerosol can. The bad news is that I think I have some carbs to rebuild. Something to think about later...it's late and I'm tired.
Good night all.
When I pulled the wires previously, I followed up with a compression test expecting to find something horribly wrong with the two front cylinders, so I was surprised to discover that they had higher compression readings than the two back cylinders.
This time I followed up by checking for spark. I thought maybe I had two bad wires & it was just a coincidence that they were next to each other. But no, there was a nice fat spark from each wire.
Standing there scratching my head and looking across the engine at the dual carbs and manifold, it occured to me that the answer might be staring me right in the face. So, I pulled the air filter off the front carb, and after restarting the engine, I sprayed carb cleaner down the throat of the carb.
The response was immediate. The RPMs climbed, the engine smoothed out and stopped sounding like an extended death rattle and snarled like a Spitfire should.
It was pretty awesome that I could control engine speed by pressing a spray button on an aerosol can. The bad news is that I think I have some carbs to rebuild. Something to think about later...it's late and I'm tired.
Good night all.
The culprit.
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