Dieseling Fixed
The good news is that I didn’t set the engine on fire AND I don’t think the head gasket is blown. The bad news is that this sucker only likes 93 octane.
Did some work on the carburator today. At one point was joined by my Dad and two neighbors, David and Mike. It was kind of fun to stand around an engine and speculate. Always valuable bits of wisdom to be acquired from those guys.
I was hopeful that the dieseling problem was just some varnish or crud in the cylinders or carb. I started with probably way more Seafoam than I should have. For whatever reason, most of it landed in the left-side bank. I spent the next hour or so letting it run and then shutting it off as the white smoke was sticking around a bit longer than I anticipated. It also starting streaming out of the exhaust manifold which made me nervous.
I picked up 5 gallons of 93 and switch to that fuel supply. Cranked it again, but this time I just let it run and brun as I adjusted the mixture and idle speed. Eventually, it calmed the hell down. Still a bit of white smoke from the left side, but not too bad. After running it longer than I’ve done in the past few weeks, I shut it down. No dieseling, no run-on, no pre-ignition. Sweet!
The engine still seems to run really hot. The temp gauge isn’t working (of course), so I’ll need a temporary measure of some sort. I was also able to run through the gears and check the transmission fluid level - of which it had none. Guess that’s the next project.
