He’s ALIVE!

Kermit breathed his first breath of air in almost two months yesterday morning!  I replaced the starter, but the wires on the correct plugs on the proper plugs and Wala!  It fired up! I set the Dwell to 50, but had a difficult time with the timing.  It is supposed to be set to 5 ATDC, but I am having a hard tme getting it to even set to TDC without stalling.  I believe I know the issue.  I have a dual vacuum distributor and only the advance was connected.  The retard side is looped to another port.  In that configuration, it should be 7 BTDC, which I think I can get. I’ll look at that today.  After the elation of getting the bus started wore off, I noticed another issue.  The red light never extinguished, which is to say that the battery isn’t charging.  Muir told me to disconnect the wires from the voltage regulator going to the starter.  Then connect the positive of the timing light to the larger B+ wire and the negative to the other wire and ground to the altenator.  If the timng light came on, then the regulator was shot.  It’s the regulator.  Of course none of these are to be had in Chicago… I wanted so much to drive the bus yesterday . . . .  I found a place called airheadparts they are able to over night the part to me so I should be on the road this afternoon for football practice! . . . .  I hope

 

Old Engine Analysis

I began tearing down the old motor this weekend and discovered that I did do in fact have a doghouse oil cooler on the motor, which I’ll put on the new motor. I have not, however located the thermostat, so this motor may not have one. I have not inspected the new motor yet. All I know about the motor is that it is a 1600 DP without a doghouse and is a 6v motor. I have removed the coil and alternator for installation on the new motor.

The starter has some silicone on the solenoid. I was having problems getting the bus started, not sure if this was the reason or not. Especially since the battery was not charging due to the bad wire off the regulator. Not the best picture. I guess I need to get my tripod out next time.

The oil cooler doesn’t look to bad, but since the engine seized, Ill have it replaced.

The carb on this motor is a Mexican Bocar 34 PICT-3. I looked at the main jet and it was 127.5 which is the apropriate size for this motor. I did feel the oil as was requested and found it to be very dark, slimy, but also with a faint sent of fuel. Below is a pict of the plugs not sure on the condition, but they appear kinda dark for less than 600 miles. They seemed pretty easy to remove and I would have thought that they would have been tighter. They were gap’d at .025. I believe the specification is .026, but my gauge does not have that combination. The plugs themselves are Bosch W8A6 – This type of is a hotter plug suitable for normal driving conditions, cold climate, and stop and go traffic.

I looked at the distributor, not sure how to tell what kind it is, but I believe it is a .009. The rotor and points look good, but I have not verified the gap yet.

Finally, I’m embarrassed to say I found this rubber seal? and I’m not sure yet where this goes, so I’ll have to do some research.  I didn’t have to research too far on this . . I found another one just like it on one of the cooling hoses…. it’s a seal.

The next step is to begin ordering parts I’ll need such as filters, new plugs points ect.

 

What Happened??

First of all big thanks to my cousin John and Gary for helping with the maint this weekend.  We got the engine puled and found that it is in fact seized.  Now we need to determine the cause.  I was a little concerned when I first pulled the engine and saw the inside of the trans axle.

Gene told me this was not a concern since the bus was converted from 6v to 12v and this was done to accommodate the 12v flywheel.  I was curious on how the housing so marred up and the flywheel looked so good.  Now the root cause.  Gene gave me some homework to do, which I will do when we get back from Michigan next week.  This will also give me the opportunity to take off parts from the old engine to the new.  I don’t think I have mentioned this, but I did determine that the blown engine is a 1600 DP too.  I was able to determine this by the AE engine code.  So anyway the homework . . .

• Take out the spark plugs, label them, and take pics for inspection
• Smell and feel the oil that was drained – It was slippery and had a faint smell of gasoline
• Check the thermostat and or the presence of
• Look at the heads and find out what went wrong.
• Verify the jet size on the carb.  It should be ~127 for 1600 120 is too small
  
• Take a picture of the starter for Gene
• Look into a doghouse cooler
• Electronic ignition or points.
  

We did find that a wire on the voltage regulator had a bad connection and that the alternator wasn’t charging the battery.  In fact the battery was so low that we couldn’t use it to test the starter.  We also noticed that the bendix didn’t engage all the time, so I need to make sure I have a good connection, or maybe the starter is bad.  So back to the charging issue, Gene said (I hope I get this right) that it is possible that the lower voltage caused the plugs not to fire properly and caused the engine to overheat. Looking at the plugs should help determine that.  Other thoughts include cheap (regular) gas, which is hard to determine with out knowing the original compression of the engine.

Other notes:

I averaged 20.9 mpg.  The run from Atlanta to Chattanooga was the worst at only 17mpg.  After that I averaged 22.1 mpg.