"First I want to thank everyon
"First I want to thank everyone here for these inspiring posts that made me think I could get my engine running. Well, I came close. A little history... AQ131A w/ 275 leg. It ran fine 10 years ago, gradually got worse, then wouldn't run and sat ever since. Last year I got motivated to troubleshoot, and found #4 was full of crud. So much crud that it stopped the engine from being turned over by hand. Pulled the exhaust manifold, and it was shot. Pulled the head and cleaned it up. Some material was missing around the #4 exhaust port, but not terrible. I cleaned everything up and replaced the exhaust manifold. R&R'd the carb, good accelerator pump squirts, rechecked the timing belt, all three timing marks on, good spark, everything the posts say to do. She turns over fine, sounds like she wants to start, but no luck. Next I replaced the points with Pertronix... BINGO. She ran for about 30 seconds as long as I kept the RPM high. Next day I reassembled everything... won't run again. I bought a compression tester, and here is where I am: all cylinders - 50 - 80 psi dry test. wet test gets me between 150 - 180 psi on all cylinders. I bought a leak down tester, and all of the leakage is blow by - coming back at me through the oil fill cap in the valve cover.
This is killing me because I bought so many new / renewed parts expecting her to run: alternator, manifold, Pertronix, heat exchanger, outdrive bellows, throttle and shift cables... and on and on... I would hate to have to throw that all away.
So... does the fact that she ran a little this week mean anything? Do I have any choice now other than to pull the engine from the boat?"
"First I want to thank everyone here for these inspiring posts that made me think I could get my engine running. Well, I came close. A little history... AQ131A w/ 275 leg. It ran fine 10 years ago, gradually got worse, then wouldn't run and sat ever since. Last year I got motivated to troubleshoot, and found #4 was full of crud. So much crud that it stopped the engine from being turned over by hand. Pulled the exhaust manifold, and it was shot. Pulled the head and cleaned it up. Some material was missing around the #4 exhaust port, but not terrible. I cleaned everything up and replaced the exhaust manifold. R&R'd the carb, good accelerator pump squirts, rechecked the timing belt, all three timing marks on, good spark, everything the posts say to do. She turns over fine, sounds like she wants to start, but no luck. Next I replaced the points with Pertronix... BINGO. She ran for about 30 seconds as long as I kept the RPM high. Next day I reassembled everything... won't run again. I bought a compression tester, and here is where I am: all cylinders - 50 - 80 psi dry test. wet test gets me between 150 - 180 psi on all cylinders. I bought a leak down tester, and all of the leakage is blow by - coming back at me through the oil fill cap in the valve cover.
This is killing me because I bought so many new / renewed parts expecting her to run: alternator, manifold, Pertronix, heat exchanger, outdrive bellows, throttle and shift cables... and on and on... I would hate to have to throw that all away.
So... does the fact that she ran a little this week mean anything? Do I have any choice now other than to pull the engine from the boat?"