Smoke Rings

Engine friends, feel free to stop in to see Paul's fine collection of engines, whenever you are in the area. You are most welcome!

From JACK VERSTEEG, 3935 Cooley DR NE, Salem, Oregon 97303; 'This article is for the Smoke Rings-I finished reading the Mar.-April issue of GEM and think maybe an open answer to Mr. Ray Thurman of Fergus Falls, Minnesota might help. As new collectors come in to the fold every year a lot of them acquire an engine with the ever present problem of the stuck piston. Now there are a lot of ways to get it unstuck and the following suggestions are only that. I won't recommend any one over the other as they all have their possible bad effects. I have declared war on numerous stuck ones with good success on some and disastrous results on others. Now down to business:

THE FORCE IT METHOD: Take a piece of oak the approximate size of the bore, insert in barrel with one end on top of piston. Now take the largest sledge hammer you can find (preferably in excess of 25 lbs.) and whomp it. Now about the time your lungs can't pump wind anymore and your muscles hurt, it might be unstuck. At this time the results will either be that it is out or is in many small pieces. How about the headless engines. Refer to Hydro section next.

THE HYDRO METHOD: This works (sometimes) on the headless engines too. If the valves are in the closed position, great! Make a plate to bolt over the ignition holes, insert a zerk fitting in the plate and take your grease and pump it full of grease. Keep the pressure on till the piston pops out. If the piston doesn't come out the head has either been blown off or a section of the barrel has been pushed into the hopper.

THE PRESS METHOD: Locate a hydraulic press, at least 40 ton capacity. Put barrel in to press and take a steel plate approximately same diameter as the bore and lay on top of piston. (Plate should be at least ?' thick.) Start press in to operation and watch results. The problems with this method is that the barrel gets broken or the press breaks.

THE HEAT METHOD: Strip the engine down completely. Take the barrel out back, put it on ground and build a big fire on it. Keep fire going for several hours. Propane torch with rose bud tip will also work. Let fire die down and the next day remove barrel and take back into shop. From now on you resort to the FORCE IT METHOD.

THE STUCK PISTON DILEMMA

THE COLD METHOD: This one is tricky. Tie the barrel down securely. Attach a porta-power to the rod end and put it into the pull position. Now when you have pulled as much as you can and everything is tight, take your CO₂ fire extinguisher and turn it loose into the bottom of the piston. This procedure contracts the piston. This will work about a third of the time. The other two thirds, the piston will be in many little bits.

FINAL NOTE: Heat with the press methods helps a lot. Now we have discussed several ways to remove stubborn pistons. If none of the methods have worked, I suggest that you put everything down, go into the house and have a cup of coffee and a piece of mother's hot apple pie with ice cream and meditate the problems. The end result might be a yard planter or mail box stand. GOOD LUCK.