Technical Do You Know How a Motor Works?

I remember my Dad explaining to me and my brother how an engine worked. I was maybe eight years old, sitting at the table after dinner one night. That was about the time he started letting us help(?) him fix our cars. No hot rods, this was the old garbage that was our daily drivers.

 

I remember in Jr high auto class. The teacher explaining 4 cycle engines and I'm thinking ' no way that's how it works!' Boy, was I wrong.

 

Excellent old time video.

 

I was lucky in being in my gramps' home shop for the trucking company and farms from age 5- and the big shop at his International dealership. Learned a lot about troubleshooting from "the boys", and to troubleshoot, you had to first learn how and why an engine did what it did. Also took every shop class that was offered, wood, metal and electric, and "Ag", which btw earned 2 credits per year- was TA the first day because I knew how to start the Farmall M with the mag cutoff button lol. There was a boxfull of old carbs n distributors under the workbench that I took apart and put back together many times. Built my first complete engine at age 10, a Wisconsin V4 flathead, and showed all my buds how to bypass the governors on their minibikes- my Rupp Roadster with Del'Lorto carb and straight pipe was fastest. Learned a lot of tricks from this bunch

 

Still have the one I got for Christmas years ago. It was one of the first kits that had INSTRUCTIONS that you should read first. I should see if the glue has dried out to get things that should move, moving.

Bob

 

I went to a 2 year vo-tech college right out of high school for auto mechanics where I refined my knowledge gained from minibikes and motorcycles etc. But when I landed my first job as a mechanic, that's when the real learning started. My boss was a hard man to get along with, but he was the best at diagnosing that I ever saw. We would often have other shops and dealers bring us their problems. He taught me how to diagnose faults by sound, like the difference between piston slap and rod knocks, what a failing main bearing sounded like, what a flat cam lobe sounded like, and how to tell if an engine was over advanced or retarded by the sound. His partner said only half jokingly that "he could hear a mouse piss on a ball of cotton". He also taught me not to be intimidated by exotics, because a Rolls-Royce and a garbage truck work the same way. I sure miss Ollie...
However, a Rolls usually smells better.

 

One of my favorite tools is a 2' piece of broomstick, which transmits sound remarkably well from a running engine- works much better than the fancy mechanic's stethescope that stays in the drawer. We had many tractors, combines and such with 4-cyl inline engines, and one of my gramps' tricks that I have used many times, is when a carb starts acting up from "crap in it" is to shut it off, cross the two center plug wires, start it and quickly open the throttle, it'll burpburpburp gently backfire through the carb and usually dislodge the "crap". Drain the float bowl, which was easy on the old stuff with drain plugs, might have to repeat once, but usually worked. After having had a lot of drivers and tractor operators, he always said that somewhere there was a guy who could break ball bearings in a sandbox with a rubber hammer

 

A 3 foot piece of rubber fuel hose makes a good stethoscope, too, and doesn't hurt your ear so bad if you accidently stick it in the fan!