Compressors

I had a productive afternoon on this yesterday. It looks like there were several issues with the carb. Firstly, it would flood without the engine running. Despite cleaning out the tank and the gauze filters fitted in the tap and carb banjo, there was sediment in the float bowl so I suspect the needle valve was not shutting off all the time. Letting fuel run through with the float and bowl removed seems to have done the trick. Then there was the mixture adjustment itself. I set the needle to it lowest point and then by trial and error raised it a couple of turns at a time until the engine would run smoothly with the throttle slide raised slightly with my wire/clamp arrangement:


The third problem was fuel leaking from the carb body/float bowl joint, I had fitted a new sealing ring but the face of the carb body was pitted. I cleaned it up wit a needle file and reassembled it with a smear of gasket cement.

Now onto the compressor...

I put 10-40 engine oil in the crankcase as that was all I had. The combined filler cap/dipstick is worn and is a loose fit, so it was being blown out by crankcase pressure. I made a collar from the thin metal of a drinks can:


Oil was also being pushed out of the breather recesses in the cap, so I cable tied a strip of rag around it, hopefully it should still be able to breath:


The other thing was oil was being blown out with the air, either because of bore/ring wear or it is just the oil I used during assembly. I have piped it into a temporary catch tank, if it continues to be an issue I will sort out a more permanent arrangement:


Despite all that I am very pleased with the way runs now, next weekend I am planning to get my Tarpen generating set out for a play and hopefully make a little garden crank-up video...

Bit of an update:

I had been looking out for a better oil catch container, while on holiday recently I spotted this in the bargain box outside an antique shop:



£2.50, a bit of elbow grease, a grommet and bracket making later:

I posted on another thread about the issue I had with this when we went to the Open Farm Sunday back in June. The engine would only run on choke, at the time I thought the issue was the screw which locates the carb jet being stripped and allowing the jet to move up and down. At the weekend I had some time to finally look at it, I took the carb to pieces again and realised that the screw only stops the jet from turning and it can't move when the float bowl is in place. So I tried starting it, but now there was nothing. So off came the float bowl and there was no fuel at all getting through. So off came the tank and I took the tap out:



I've no idea what happened here, it looks like the remains of the original gauze filter. The tap was blocked solid, I can only think that at the show there was still just enough fuel getting through for it to run on choke. The strange thing was there didn't seem to be any loose rust in the tank.

I cleared the tap out and pushed a rolled up piece of fine gauze in as I have done on other taps, should be enough to stop any dead pigeons or small children ending up in the carb...