RE: TR4A plugs

[Bill Babcock <BillB@bnj.com>]

Bobby Strahlman is the guy I was trying to think of. My experience was
mostly with motorcycle engines, and mainly air-cooled two strokes at that. I
think they are much more sensitive to carburetion and other engine parameter
changes than water cooled four strokes.

Bobby was at a lot of races to help the tuners get their jetting right. I
always thought it was kind of cool that he's look at any plug--even an
NGK--and try to help you out. I knew better than to bring him a plug from an
engine that was obviously not even close--those guys either got "looks
pretty good" if they were rich or "much too lean" if they were lean. If he
didn't ask you a bunch of questions befor he gave a verdict you could be
pretty sure he thought you were a bozo. 

One time I showed him the plugs from a motor that was slowly driving me
nuts--couldn't get the readings to stabilize. He told me that he thought the
labyrinth seal between the two cylinders of that TZ350 Yamaha was damaged
(that lets the air/oil/gas mixture blow a little bit from one crankcase to
the other). I asked how he could tell and he just said he'd "seen it before"
(whatever "it" was). When I pulled the motor down a few days later the lab
seal was squished on one side from a blob of gasket goop that some clown
(me) let get under the seal retainer. It's a pain in the butt to replace
those--you have to press the crank apart and rebuild it. But I did, and the
engine was much better.