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Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 12:04 pm
by whc03grady
The order of the day was to see why Ludwig wouldn't start and, after starting him, to make him run not so poorly.Image
Chloe and Colin showed up in the afternoon and wrenching commenced. Ludwig was soon up-and-running.Image
We talked about carburetors, timing, the whole deal. Things were going well.Image
We took him for a spin. With the carbs pretty well dialed in, Ludwig was a joy to drive. In fact, he drove as well or better than he ever has. Very hunky dory.
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So why would a couple guys just back from a very pleasant (except for the steering, which Colin had nothing but dark words for) shakedown run next be seen with the engine removed?

Well, a point of minorish annoyance was Ludwig's lack of a working vacuum retard. ("Vacuum? Just get a 009, like John Muir says to." No. Shut up.) It's a simple fix really: remove the distributor, disassemble it, clean it, and replace it. Remove, disassemble, and clean went well. Replace, not so much.

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"That hole there?" he asked. Yes that hole there. That hole there, the hole that feeds oil to the distributor shaft, is where the spring I was replacing, the little unassuming spring who gives tension to the bottom of the distributor shaft, f%^*ing slipped down into the f@#$ing crankcase. Into. The f$%^ing. Crankcase. There is literally no worse possible place in the engine for something like that to go.

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For the next several hours the garage was enveloped in such dismay and disbelief (coming from me, not Colin who was unbelievably--one wants to say "disturbingly"--upbeat about the whole affair) that few pictures were taken. I mean, we were looking at disassembling the entire engine. A nine-hour work day suddenly had the specter of 38 hours hanging over it. What's worse, during the engine-in attempt to fish out the spring with a $0.89 telescoping magnet, the freaking magnet disattaches and falls into the case.

Amazingly, hours later, Colin was able to reattach the magnet--which we got a look at--to its telescope assembly. No mean feat when it is much happier making friends with all the steel parts in the case. Normally when a tool offends me to this degree I'm inclined to give it the heave-to, but we glued the magnet back on and went fishing in the engine case again, upside down now, for the spring. "How about we c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y turn the flywheel and see if anything happens?" Okay, careful, careful, careful, aha! Colin spies and retrieves the wayward spring, mere minutes away from preparing ourselves mentally and physically for a complete teardown. Honestly, I nearly cried.

After reinstalling the engine we put in fresh oil (have to drain all the oil if you're gonna flip an engine upside down) and were back to talking about timing and carbs.

Praise be.

Next: Gertrude Butterblume.

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 2:53 pm
by bajaman72
=D>

Sounds like my luck - minus fishing out the spring.

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 12:42 pm
by Amskeptic
Sylvester wrote: I can imagine your face when you figured what it would take to get it out. Oh my....
But, can you imagine his face when the spring came out on the end of the magnet and we didn't have to split the case??
Colin

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Thu Aug 16, 2012 3:20 pm
by hambone
Good God I woulda pooped.

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 6:31 am
by Amskeptic
It already seems like so long ago . . . here in green Minnesota at 48* this morning @!&%#.
Three visits in a row here!

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 9:01 am
by whc03grady
hambone wrote:Good God I woulda pooped.
I think I did a little.
Sylvester wrote: I can imagine your face when you figured what it would take to get it out. Oh my....
Panic+disbelief. Like watching an execution.
Amskeptic wrote:But, can you imagine his face when the spring came out on the end of the magnet and we didn't have to split the case??
Elation+gratitude. Like getting a subscription to Playboy on your 12th birthday.

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Sat Aug 18, 2012 8:51 pm
by glasseye
One more incredible story for The Book. :study:

EDIT: also, superbly documented. "Pix or it didn't happen" :thumbleft:

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:00 am
by Amskeptic
glasseye wrote:One more incredible story for The Book. :study:
When Mitch told me that the spring had "disappeared", I went immediately into Crisis Plan B mode and was determining:
a) hours to extract
b) energy required to extract
c) neurons remaining to remember case splitting details
d) rest of itinerary schedule
e) any shortcuts

We luckily had a spare case to do scientific gravity/mass/reflecting metal surfaces analyses to see how a spring might fall, what it might bounce against, what it might lodge against. We used a spring in his bits drawer. It really helped.

Mitch in Preliminary Disbelief Mode:
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Itinerant Air-Cooled's flip pollyanna-ish fool-around Mechanic cavorting idiotically in the middle of the catastrophe:
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Another incredibly artistic photograph of Mitch's garage with his engine at some Picasso angle (see 2011 Itinerary July 4th for others):
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The Itinerant Air-Cooled Clown, pulling a spring out of an upside down engine with a failed/repaired telescoping magnet:
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Mitch, gravely re-installing the spring only 17 hours later:
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Engine running but 24 hours after I arrived at their door:
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Mitch and Melissa, a hard-won team, with their Ludwig The Challenging Chariot:
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Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:24 am
by satchmo
For our edification and to possibly prevent a recurrence of a similar event in the future, would you please describe where and how this distributor spring found its way into the engine case? Is there a risk of the spring going somewhere it shouldn't if it just sticks to the bottom of the distributor as I pull the dist. out, or of it slipping into a hole as I put the spring in prior to distributor installation? Anybody have a picture of the area/location where the spring got in?

Also, where in the case did you eventually find the spring?

Tim

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:28 am
by BellePlaine
whc03grady wrote:
hambone wrote:Good God I woulda pooped.
I think I did a little.
Sylvester wrote: I can imagine your face when you figured what it would take to get it out. Oh my....
Panic+disbelief. Like watching an execution.
Amskeptic wrote:But, can you imagine his face when the spring came out on the end of the magnet and we didn't have to split the case??
Elation+gratitude. Like getting a subscription to Playboy on your 12th birthday.
Mitch, you’ve just about perfected the art of suffering for your transportation. But man, I just love happy endings. Wow, what a great story!

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:35 am
by Amskeptic
satchmo wrote:For our edification and to possibly prevent a recurrence of a similar event in the future, would you please describe where and how this distributor spring found its way into the engine case?
Also, where in the case did you eventually find the spring?

Tim
I'll let Mitch describe the spring springing.

It seemed to me that if we rotated the engine backwards whilst upside down slanted to the left, the camshaft would move the spring to where it would drop to the ceiling of the cam/crank gear area (which is also the floor to the breather) and I could fish for it through the distributor drive gear oil hole.
It seemed very hopeless flapping that magnet through the hole until I accidentally spotted the side of the spring with my sunlight-bearing mirror. Boof! A free six hours of not splitting the case magically appeared.
Colin :geek:

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 10:07 am
by whc03grady
BellePlaine wrote:Mitch, you’ve just about perfected the art of suffering for your transportation. But man, I just love happy endings. Wow, what a great story!
It's just like satchmo's signature says. I am the embodiment of its third conjunct.
satchmo wrote:For our edification and to possibly prevent a recurrence of a similar event in the future, would you please describe where and how this distributor spring found its way into the engine case? Is there a risk of the spring going somewhere it shouldn't if it just sticks to the bottom of the distributor as I pull the dist. out, or of it slipping into a hole as I put the spring in prior to distributor installation? Anybody have a picture of the area/location where the spring got in?

Also, where in the case did you eventually find the spring?

Tim
I have known about that spring for years, though have never had cause to remove one or put one back in place. As I'm sure most of us know, the typical horror story/cautionary tale having to do with distributor removal and installation centers around that washer on the bottom of the shaft--and frankly, that's what had me nervous in the first place. So when Colin asked me to replace the spring I thought, "Easy peasy one two threesy" and blithely placed it in the dizzy drive. My fingers are neither long enough nor slim enough for me to be able to have a hold of it the whole time so, since there's that hole it fits in anyway, I got it most of the way there and let go assuming it would basically slide into place.

No, it didn't slide into its hole, or into the case, but cocked itself crossways. "Shucks" I thought, and stuck in my index finger hoping to fish it out. I was chasing it around the inner diameter of the distributor driveshaft hole like a chimpanzee scooping out the last bit of peanut butter from the jar, and when it reached the oiling hole, sproink! in it went.

How I'd Do It Differently Next Time
1. Realize that that oiling hole is in fact big enough to consume the spring
2. Use a needlenose pliers, not butterfingers, to place the spring in its home

I'll try my photoediting skills later to describe where it went and how it came out, and shots of the general area (that spare case that I've been cursing myself for keeping around is coming in quite handy).

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 12:32 pm
by Sylvester
Amskeptic wrote:Mitch in Preliminary Disbelief Mode:
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That is the look! He looks like he is about to take on a room of Stormtroopers and win!

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Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 8:04 pm
by whc03grady
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We're looking down the shaft where the distributor goes. That hole in the wall of the shaft, just a little left and above center, leads straight into the crankcase and is how oil gets to the bottom of the distributor.

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At just above center is the oiling hole from the other side, the crankcase side. In an assembled engine the crank gear which runs the distributor is to the outside (left) of the dizzy gear, and the crank gear which runs the camshaft is on the inside (right) of that gear. Where that gear would be is just a void in this picture, of course.

So the spring went through the oiling hole and, given our experiments with this case half and a camshaft I just happened to have lying around, likely landed around where the crank and cam gears mesh.

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Solution: turn the engine upside down and gently rotate the flywheel, hoping that gravity and the gears' motion will encourage the spring to come to rest on the bottomside of the "floor" of the crankcase breather chamber (i.e., the "roof" of the chamber below, just below center in the picture). Then the magnet goes in to the shaft where the distributor drive would go, turns into the oiling hole, and finds the spring which is hopefully just lying there. Thanks, Colin.

YMMV.

Re: Colin stops in Anaconda Montana (days 0.5-1)

Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2012 9:29 pm
by satchmo
whc03grady wrote: Solution: turn the engine upside down and gently rotate the flywheel, hoping that gravity and the gears' motion will encourage the spring to come to rest on the bottomside of the "floor" of the crankcase breather chamber (i.e., the "roof" of the chamber below, just below center in the picture). Then the magnet goes in to the shaft where the distributor drive would go, turns into the oiling hole, and finds the spring which is hopefully just lying there. Thanks Colin.

YMMV.
I guess it's a good thing some of us are blessed with excellent spacial perception, huh? Thanks for taking the time to show us.

Tim