General TR Well that was close!

[tinman58]

I went out for a drive to the grocery store in the TR3. All was going well until the motor seized. I rolled to a stop, and of course tried to start it up. Very slow cranking, played with a few things to no avail. I thought a valve broke, pulled the cover off and all was good. Just for fun I was going to try starting it once more before calling for help. To my surprise it fired up! Made a quick u-turn and headed for home. 1/2 mile later Bam same thing, this time I could smell the belt burning, coasted to a stop. Water pump? Alternator? Turns out the bolt holding the air cleaner came loose and went thru the carb and into the supercharger! Thinking the worst I pulled the belt loose and made it up the last hill and coasted home. After dinner I pulled off the s/c and found the bolt. So I tore the s/c apart and removed all the bits and pieces, filed down all the ruff edges and. Put it back together. I crossed my fingers and it fired right up. Went for a drive and everything seems fine. I think I got very lucky nothing major happened.

 

[Gliderman8]

Glad all is well... you got lucky!

 

[Basil]

Wow, close call indeed! Yikes!

 

[PeterK]

Lucky. wow.

 

[Sarastro]

At the risk of telling you something that you now already know, it's always a good idea to keep small hardware out of the inside of the air filter. I have a rule that I never allow anything inside the air filter that could fit down the bore of the carburetor. That means, especially, screws or nuts that could come loose.

As an example--below is a picture of the breather connection to the Weber carbs on one of my other cars. The elbow is actually a PVC pipe elbow, and the "screw" attaching it, on the inside, is made out of a piece of PVC adapter. It's far too big to fit down the bore of the carburetor. As simple as it seems in hindsight, I put a fair amount of thought into figuring out how I wanted to do this.

 

[Gliderman8]

At the risk of telling you something that you now already know, it's always a good idea to keep small hardware out of the inside of the air filter. I have a rule that I never allow anything inside the air filter that could fit down the bore of the carburetor. That means, especially, screws or nuts that could come loose.

I bought a TR6 a few years ago and heard this strange noise after I got it started. It sat many years in the sellers garage.
When I pulled the head I found this lock washer sitting on top of #3 piston.

 

[Sarastro]

Wow! Good catch!

You're lucky it didn't do more damage--I suspect a lot of people would have just driven it and hoped the noise would go away.

 

[Gliderman8]

Wow! Good catch!

You're lucky it didn't do more damage--I suspect a lot of people would have just driven it and hoped the noise would go away.

Thank goodness there was no damage. It was a weird "pinging" sound. The guy I bought the car from never worked on his car and always took it to his "mechanic".
His mechanic probably dropped it and it went into the intake and never said anything to the owner. My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw the lock washer sitting on top of the piston.

 

[kjman55]

Thumbs up for the cast iron head!

 

[Gliderman8]

Thumbs up for the cast iron head!

You can say that again! Luckily the walls of the cylinder were fine the only damage was the intake valve was leaking (no surprise there). I have the damaged head in my garage and plan on getting it repaired with hardened exhaust valve seats.

 

[Deleted member 8987]

I had a brain-damaged Army vet working for me (encephalitis) who was a motor pool mechanic.

So...we get a GM diseasemal pickup in, he's got the air cleaner off doing something.
In the doorway of the shop...exhaust at the open window to the boss' office.

He laid a red shop rag on top of the inlet to keep from dropping anything in.

Gets done and starts it.
Yup.
Forgot the rag.

Pink fog FILLED the office.
Didn't seem to have hurt anything, ran fine (well, as good as those converted gasoline engines ran).

 

[Alfred E. Neuman]

I had a brain-damaged Army vet working for me (encephalitis) who was a motor pool mechanic.

So...we get a GM diseasemal pickup in, he's got the air cleaner off doing something.
In the doorway of the shop...exhaust at the open window to the boss' office.

He laid a red shop rag on top of the inlet to keep from dropping anything in.

Gets done and starts it.
Yup.
Forgot the rag.

Pink fog FILLED the office.
Didn't seem to have hurt anything, ran fine (well, as good as those converted gasoline engines ran).

Tech got finished with an intake manifold cleaning/oil cooler replacement on a Mercedes 642 Diesel at the shop. Got it all back together and started it, wouldn't catch for a minute. Nothing to worry about yet since it takes a bit for the fuel rail to get pressure after it's been off. Finally got it to cough to life and it was stumbling all over itself. BROWN smoke out the tailpipe.
Yep, left the blue paper shop towels in the intake ports and they got pulled through the cylinders, chewed up, and spit out onto the CATs.
Off comes the manifold again to check for bent valves - none. Cleaned everything as well as possible, put it back together, and it coughed to life again.
A few trips around the block and the CATS finally burned off the remnants of the paper towels in what looked like a Saturn V rocket taking off.

 

[bnw]

With the carb removed, I was tightening the two large Philip's headed screws under the carb that hold the 1BBL Carter carb body together on the Chrysler 225 slant 6. A very common problem on the 225. Put it back together, started it up, and WHAM! BANG BANG BANG just like a rod let loose. I had no idea what had happened. It was quitting time and as I was cleaning up my bench, I saw my favorite magnetic tip screwdriver missing the replaceable Phillip's bit. So I pulled that huge cast iron head the next day and found my bit standing straight up where it was pounded into the #5 piston crown. There were 7 nicks on the crown surrounding the bit. So I figured the bit stayed in the screw head when I put the carb back on the intake. It banged around for 7 revolutions before it got caught in an upright position where it proceeded to get pounded into the piston crown by hitting the head. I kept that piston with the bit in place for 25 years. Sadly, it disappeared during one of my moves.