In preparation for running, each of the systems needed to be checked – air, fuel, oil and water. I started with fuel and quickly ran into a problem. I used a small gas tank for fuel. The system is gravity fed to a fuel strainer and from there to the fuel injector pumps and the torch tank. The fuel strainer had been split from water and freezing. This was covered in a prior post a few years ago. The first shop that did repairs unfortunately did a poor job. The fuel strainer was brazed but the body was badly warped. I had to do a lot of fine hand grinding to get the bronze cap to fit as the body was oblong. When fuel was added from the tank, the strainer leaked badly from many places.
Luckily I now have Crow Custom Cast Welding available to me to make proper repairs. Buck cut out all the brazing and properly repaired the cracked areas. I did not have high expectations of the strainer being repairable but Buck does amazing work. I don’t have a good picture of the finished product but it looks literally as good as new. The shape sprung back to round so the bronze cap fit again.
With fuel now in the system the injector lines were primed, which took a bit of time. I was able to verify that my injector calibrations were correct and performing as expected. It was then time to fire up the torches. The #1 torch had to be disassembled and recalibrated (and will need to be done again).
I check and calibrated all the oil pumps. I also still needed to overhaul the two oilers. I had purchased new ones but these turned out to not be satisfactory so I ordered some new material to make new site glass. The old oilers have some issues but they should work good enough.
Next up was the air starting system. The original air tank from the boat was mounted on the trailer and plumbed in with new hoses and fittings. It quickly became obvious that there was a problem with the air distributor. I tore it apart and discovered I had not sealed the lower shaft properly. This was kind of a head slapper. Once it was correctly packed, it worked as good as new.
But then the next problem reared up. I was told that 150psi of air would be needed but I had not given it a lot of thought. None of my compressors, including my big shop compressor, go above 135psi. The engine would painfully pull through two compressions but not fast enough to start. I bit the bullet and bought gas powered compressor with a cutout of 175psi. The engine wasn’t going to start without it. I mounted this onto the trailer as well and tied it into the big airtank for a total of about 170 gallons. Now I could get a few good revolutions at a speed good enough to start.
I used a 55 gallon plastic drum as a water reservoir. I’ll need to come up with some kind of cooling system for continuous running but this will work for now.
Time to see if it runs!