Mr. Little:
The Prince of Darkness LIVES!!!! Bwuh-hah-hah-haaaaah! Time to
sacrifice another chicken.
Would that make you chicken....Little? <- Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Don't know the history of your vehicle, but my experience was
similar. Bought the car knowing
lots of things were wrong with it, one of them was a very rough engine.
One of the major problems
was a blown head gasket on #6. Mine was blown because my DPO installed
the gasket upside down. On
the 74-1/2 the gasket has fire rings, and must be installed so that the
fire rings mate with the
grooves in the deck. My DPO installed the fire rings toward the head, so
the gasket probably
only lasted a couple of months. He also used an intake gasket from the
earlier motor, so the
intake ports were 40% occluded by the gasket. Sigh.
I was wondering if you might have something similar going on. If
your motor has been swapped,
or your DPO was all thumbs, the head gasket could be incorrect or
incorrectly installed. Normally
there is some profound reason why a head gasket lets go, e.g. if a
gasket with fire rings is installed
on an earlier motor, the gasket won't last long. Is this a possibility?
It may also be that the cam has lost a lobe, so that there is no
intake happening on that
cylinder (My DPO reused his old lifters with a new cam, so it lost an
exhaust lobe on #2. Compression
looked great on that cylinder, but it was dead never-the-less. It could
inhale and compress, but it
couldn't exhale. I wrote a book based on this, called "Waiting to
Exhale". Perhaps you have heard
of it. =:-o Ahem. So, perhaps your cam is the root cause? If that is the
case, you could get by
just swapping the cam and lifters out.
Speculation. Sorry to hear you are having engine problems. But
you will get a nicer motor out
of the deal, and the wife will just need to understand. ("Dear, I will
need to spend an extra $200
on that custom cam SO THAT IT CAN'T EVER BREAK AGAIN, ok?" <giggle>)
Keep us posted. And if you need any help picking out expensive
after market components, I am
your man. I LOVE to help others spend their money. Wheeee!
Cheers,
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-6pack@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-6pack@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of R. Ashford Little II
Sent: May 16, 2005 7:57 PM
To: 6pack; Triumph Email List
Subject: Now I know...
<snip>
Well, um, no. The car was now noticeably missing. So I checked the
usual
suspects, timing, plugs, wires, etc. All to no avail. Hmm, I better
check
the valves. Yeah, that will fix it!!! Um, nope. Next up was a
compression
check, but I KNOW that's fine.
So here we go -
#1 120 lbs.
#2
#3 100 lbs.
#4 120 lbs.
#5 110 lbs.
#6 125 lbs.
Wait!!!!! You forgot #2.
Um, it's hard to tell if it ever moved from zero. Damn, I didn't know
that
the Prince of Darkness could also get into your head. I guess now I
know
why the car felt a little sluggish recently.
It looks like we're going to start the first course with a redo on the
head.
Luckily I have an extra head that will be going to the machine shop
soon.
But, if I'm redoing the head, I'll want to shave it a bit, and if I
shave it
a bit, then a hotter cam would be nice, and the muffler is getting on in
age, and..
R. Ashford Little II
'70 TR6 <http://www.ralittle2.com/>
CC54994
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