My ol’ Wheel Horse had been running rough lately so I decided to show it some love. Pulled the head and cleaned it up, changed oil, adjusted carb, blew out air filter and its pre, and cleaned up the plug. Runs like a top now. My flavor of choose for 4 stroke OPE. It has been missing lately. Admittedly, my son messed with the carb a long time ago and I never bothered after him. He had a spell there for a while to make everything idle really low. Good grief! One thing I noticed, appeared to me that the piston was a good bit smaller in bore size than the cylinder. Never had this head off before so I’m not sure what to think. All cleaned up and ready to reassemble. After starting from baseline w/ carb adjustment, it now runs night and day better. Shouldn’t have waited so long to do that. Probably get some Seafoam and run a few treated tanks through it. Now I just need to get a new seat for it.
That piston will expand quite a bit when hot, that's why it looks undersized. It looks like the head gasket was leaking also, did you put a new one on it? It's always a nice feeling to breathe some new life into something mechanical.
First thing I noticed. I didn’t have a new gasket but plan to keep a close eye on it. Thinking/hoping maybe re-torquing the bolts will seal it up.
You can get K gaskets at Napa. Nice machines they are as Cecil Pond kept it simple and stout. Low idle is not a good thing.
I know. It was a faze and I never kept throttle full low. I’ll have to get my DTI tach out and see where I have it now, just out of curiosity. Thanks for the info about gasket availability. I’ll pick one up for sure.
Dunno what the piston/cyl clearance is supposed to be on that engine, but I see nothing there that would make me concerned...low RPM 4 strokes with a decent sized bore like that do have some clearance normally...if it doesn't knock or use oil, run it!
I've been in cars, motorcycles 4 stroke and 2 and lots of ope, but this is the first in a flathead. The gap is much more than I've ever seen. I'll not fret until there's reason, but it's good to hear it's just normal. No knocking and it doesn't consume abnormal amounts of erl.
Spoiling it with that oil = liquid love. Copper spray works well on sealing a used head gasket. Not saying I would use it on a 1000hp Race Engine but for something like that I wouldn't even think twice about using it.
Pistons are smaller at the top where the rings are , the skirt area is bigger and this is what gives the clearance piston to wall. Nothing to worry about.
