I still haven't found my problem. Peyote starts and runs fine now. When the
engine quit in the beginning of turn 12 I shoved in the clutch and coasted
into the hot pits. Probably the cleanest plug chop I'm going to do this
year. The only other run time on the engine was a few seconds in the paddock
to put the car in the trailer. I looked at the plugs this evening and they
are white right down to the bottom of the insulator, with just a little bit
of color at the tips, and a funny spot of carbon on each plug that's about
1/4" wide and long, on the extended part of the insulator. Each plug had it,
and I'll bet if I had a good way of indexing them thay would all point to
the same area of the combustion chamber. I suspect it's the intake
valve--fresh mixture hitting the plug, but I'm guessing.
Anyway, I don't mind a plug being this white with a clean chop--looks about
right to me, but I spent all my time looking at race motors for bikes, and
bugging the guy from Champion to read my plugs for me--what the heck was his
name. Bobby something. I might go a step richer on the mains just for the
heck of it.
I pried back the side electrode and looked at the center--all of the plugs
had a nice splatter mark dead center--good indication that the ignition
voltage is adequate.
I don't have a leakdown tester, I'll have to pick one up tomorrow, but I
don't think I've got a blown head gasket. My compression tester says 195
pounds in every cylinder except #1, and that's 185.
The spark is fat and blue, of course everything is cold now. I suspect my
gremlin is ignition. I have one of those Pertonics Ignitor II units, it
might be going south. I'll have to drag a bunch of parts along for the big
Pacific Northwest Historics weekend after next. Probably one of those
pain-in-the-neck things that just shows up on lap five. Or it won't show up
at all. I was flogging it pretty hard trying to get past those Shelby
GT350s. Might have been just some gentle backtalk.
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