Itinerant Air-Cooled

My keys to removing rusted old metal assemblies on the job site is vibration and chemical breakdown. Like Colin said above, the penetrant is half the battle. Small consistent taps work wonders to allow the chemicals to weasel down any possible orifice. Yes, the taps may actually break the parts apart, but the vibration of the taps is what will do the work, not the physical blows of the hammer. If you can strike a solid piece of the object with the hardest hammer possible without damaging it, the more you make the parts "sing," the faster they will seperate.

wcfvw69 wrote: Have you gotten the heads off yet? I've never failed to knock the heads loose with an overnight PB blaster soak and some nice blows with a rubber mallet in key places w/out breaking them. Now, the cylinders? Yup, I've had some that refused to break free no matter what I tried before getting aggressive with a steel hammer and shattering them.

Unfortunately not - heads are still on. From what I can tell, its just the middle / upper studs ... they are locked solid to the heads. Oddly the nuts came off fine - no issues at all - so its just the studs as they pass through the heads... though in theory it could be the cylinders stuck to the heads - but visually it does not look "bad" in there.

All the other studs have some wiggle to them, or came out of the case when trying to remove the nuts. Will keep spraying and tapping and start hitting them again this weekend. At present I am trying to clean and rebuild the carb ... which is in equally poor condition ... white corrosion in bowl and all linkages / moving parts very stiff /siezed. Linkages are coming along OK, but still trying to think of the best way to remove the aluminum (?) corrosion in the bowl

slow.bus wrote:At present I am trying to clean and rebuild the carb ... which is in equally poor condition ... white corrosion in bowl and all linkages / moving parts very stiff /siezed. Linkages are coming along OK, but still trying to think of the best way to remove the aluminum (?) corrosion in the bowl

Get a bucket of carb cleaner. It comes in a gallon bucket with a basket strainer inside it. You just put all your carb parts in the basket and immerse the whole mess in the cleaner overnight or however long it takes. Not sure if they still sell that product, though. The solvent is really nasty stuff. You need to be very careful handling it (wear rubber gloves) and make sure it doesn't get into the environment.

slow.bus wrote:Been thinking about this differently ... has anyone tried or had success or feels strongly etc about trying to use some rust killing stuff ... Metal rescue ...por15, vinegar etc to try and eat away at the rust presumed to causing the issue ....

Or for fun he could pour some "The Works" toilet bowl cleaner down the spark plug holes . . . and run.

Heads are still firmly attached ... but hopefully not after this week ... will begin process of "smashing" cylinder ... unless some miracle happens. I am running out of patience with them, and other things too work on (that I want to work on ... this is for learning / fun) ...

Learned that no combination of chemicals alone will get carb. in working order.... just get the obvious corrosion and such off. Had to "drill out" the high speed enrichments (tiny, dull, drill bit in fingers) and tap out the throttle and choke shafts, bushings etc and clean, grind / polish them ... they were corroded in the body of the carb and would barely turn. Choke shaft was also bent ... which seems really strange, which caused a lot of binding ... straightened it as best as I could, but still had to bore out the brass bushing 1/64 to make it turn freely. Throttle shaft just needed some polishing.

Some one drilled a small hole in the bowl that I had not seen before (was clogged with corrosion) ... probably to drain the gas? Need to solder it closed then should be able to re-assemble carb. and move on to something else ... wish I did not have to smash cylinders.

Also, gun blue seemed (in my opinion) to be a good way to re-finish all the steel parts ... looks mean