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Various topics

To: MG Mailing List <mgs@autox.team.net>
Subject: Various topics
From: "John M. Trindle" <jtrindle@tsquare.com>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 13:42:32 -0500 (EST)
Well, I'm catching up on my mail.  I'll put my 20 mills in before asking 
for help on yet another series of problems:

1) Redo-ing the head alone overstresses the other parts.

Yes, in a way.  If the head leaks like a sieve the other parts aren't 
making much power, the compression is low, and there's less chance of 
breaking things on the bottom end.  Blowby goes in a certain pattern, and 
the car sits in the driveway most of the time since it eats a quart of 
oil every 50 miles and doesn't go up hills.  Easy on the bottom end.

When you fix the head, compression goes up, and the blow-by has to go 
around the rings.  This could I suppose accellerate wear on the rings.  
Plus, if all the other parts in the engine were almost as crappy as the 
head, or had symptoms masked by the head, their failure will now be evident.

2) Cylinders 3 and 4 have 0 (!) compression.

I hope this is a blown head gasket or you don't want to know.  If it is a 
head gasket this is a cheap and relatively easy thing to fix.

3) Billowing black smoke.

As others have said, this is probably way over-rich mixture.  Especially 
if your eyes are burning and you are choking.  Oil smoke doesn't smell 
bad, really. (except for the smell of currency burning).  The plugs are 
black with soot and wet with gas.  Either that or you have two problems 
at once.

It is possible to have a sudden catastrophic oil control failure.  In my 
case it was caused by broken COMPRESSION rings and a holed piston.  This 
caused huge amounts of blow-by which sprayed oil on the manifold and 
voila... billing clouds of BLUE smoke.  Not out the exhaust though it 
appears that way while you are moving.


John M. Trindle | jtrindle@tsquare.com | Tidewater Sports Car Club
'73 MGB DSP     | '69 Spitfire E Stock | '88 RX-7 C Stock
Home Page:  http://www.widomaker.com/~trindle
"Sometimes there's not enough rocks - Forrest Gump"



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