I have a 65 Spitfire with (I believe) the 1127cc engine. When I brought it
it would smoke heavily from the rocker breather pipe under sustained load
once warmed up - taking off from lights, up hills etc. Fairly embarrassing
at it's worst. I presumed the rings were bad and expected that a rebuild
was in my future - managed to mostly avoid hills in the interim. Never did
get to doing that compression check though.
Anyway - here we are a year later - and after a few sunny weekends I've
been driving it around town - pretty hard on the flats. It started smoking
less and less from the breather. This weekend - I took a long run up-hill
under full load - almost no smoke at all. Power is also up slightly, from
negligible to low.
In other respects the engine sounds pretty good - revs freely to 6k, oil
pressure is excellent (80psi/50psi hot idle). The plug don't foul and it
never really burned much oil - maybe 1/4 pint per tank or less. The valve
train is also pretty quiet which would suggest the mileage isn't too high.
When I brought it - the guy said it had sat for a while - how long I don't
know, the floor pans were rusted out, so could have been quite a while.
I'm wondering if perhaps the rings were somehow gummed up - and that a
little heavy workout under load has freed them up??? The increased power
I'm noticing would fit this theory.
Any other theories out there?
I'm pretty happy about the whole thing I have to say. Now I can focus on
all the other things to fix - brakes, floor pans etc. I'm also wondering
if there is something else I can do to finish off the cleaning process - a
few changes of straight 40wt oil? Some sort of additive? I recall some
discussion of drizzling a little water or atf down the carbs while the
engine was running to remove the carbon build-up.
Cheers
Mark
(on digest)
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