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2016 VMCCA Nickel Tour


Brian_Heil

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Brother Brian, I know that you ain't gonna want to hear this, but Mark Shaw is right on about the Marvel Mystery Oil.  That is the most wonderful penetrating oil that has ever been invented.  Let me relate to you about stuck cages in a Buick cylinder block.  Been there - done that.  I have one of the Buffum Cage Pullers like what you borrowed from Larry Schramm.  I was pulling all of the cages in my '16 getting ready for the valve train rebuild.  My dad was still alive, so this was a few years back.  I used that puller and all of the cages came out relatively easy except for the very last cage in the block.  This was the exhaust cage in the number six cylinder.  That thing was stuck in there tighter than the hubs of hell.  I asked my dad what he thought the best way to get it out of the block was.  He had years and years of experience with rusted and locked up nuts and bolts on the old John Deere tractors he worked on.  He came over to the shop and checked out what I was doing.  He told me to keep the puller on the valve stem with a very good pull or tension on the stem.  He then told me to fill the cage pocket full of Marvel Oil and fill it full to the top of the block and then just walk away from it and leave it set.  That was hard for me to do because I wanted that cage out of the block right then.  He told me it might take a day or so or longer to get to the point of turning loose in the cage pocket.  I tried it the next day after getting home from work with no luck.  On the third day I put the 18 inch break over bar on it and just started ever so slightly sneaking up on it.  Very carefully I increased my pull and then all of a sudden - BANG!!  it broke loose.  I remember thinking, OH HOLY MOTHER of GOD, what have I done?  What broke that cannot be easily fixed.  I carefully kept turning on the bar and the cage pulled up out of the pocket all in one piece and I just about died during the whole ordeal.  It sounded like a shotgun went off when that thing turned loose.  Since the cylinder block and valve cages are gray cast iron, it is not uncommon for them to really stick together.  Just be careful Brian, you could tear up things that are very expensive to fix.  Yup, been there, done that.  It all comes down to patience and perseverance.

 

Terry Wiegand

Out Doo Dah Way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm certain MMO will grow hair too.

 

Only wish I'd invented it, along with pet rocks, $1 air machines at gas stations, the internet (damn that Al Gore), cable TV pricing that is loaded with commercials, payroll taxes and Chinese trailer tires to name just a few of my other 'favorite' things.

 

PB Blaster is working fine.  What would you guys do without my tales of trouble?

 

My favorite stuck story is a frozen piston in a little tractor that sat outside with no spark plugs and became a 4 unit mouse hotel.  The guy put it in the barn basement, removed the hood/tank and head, let the air out of the tires and put a screw pole jack between the stuck piston and the overhead barn floor beam. Gave it a spray and a twist every month or so.  Took two years but one day he drove his motor home into the barn above and bang.  He still uses that tractor.  Guess the mice failed to drink MMO.

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Since this thread has morphed into an attack on MMO, I am impelled to join the fray and tell you why I have used it for 20 years as a fuel additive:

 

All my vintage cars are side-valve:  L-heads and one T-head.  I began using MMO at a suggestion from a long-experienced owner-restorer in response to chronically sticking valves on two separate 1925 Pierce Series 80s--one fully restored with 6,000 miles on a professional rebuild and the other refurbished cosmetically but with a rebuilt-50-yrs ago, fairly tired engine.  Four ounces per ten gallons of gas on a regular basis (at least half the time) did the job, and the problem has never recurred.

 

Some prefer 2-cycle oil for that purpose, and have their own rationale.  Here is my rationale for MMO:  MMO has a naphtha base, and was originally formulated in the 1920s to ameliorate a major problem of the day, excessive buildup of carbon in the combustion chambers which, at the time, caused pre-ignition and detonation.  Due to the low (by modern standards) quality of gas available in the 1920s, "de-carbonizing" was a 15,000-mile standard procedure.  That involved removing the heads and chiseling out very hard carbon buildups in the combustion chambers.  MMO was claimed to reduce (not eliminate) that hard-carbon buildup.

 

Side-valve engines have, in my 55+ years of experience driving them and wrenching on them, a propensity to develop substantial hard-carbon deposits in the combustion chambers--far more so than in OHV engines.  I have NOT felt it advantageous to use it in OHV engines.  When I've removed heads for valve jobs since commencing use of MMO, I've still found *some* carbon, but not nearly as much as I remember from my pre-MMO days.

 

I do not consider MMO to be any kind of Miracle-in-a-Can, but at $18/gallon at WalMart, it's minor expense to keep tigers away.

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I've had one stuck valve in 20 years and 30,000 miles of driving due to me being lazy and not doing regular compression checks and lapping valves when necessary. The Buick design and my issue (never mind all those voices in my head for the moment) are anything but chronic, except my lapping laziness.

 

I can see the machine marks in the tops of my (oil) wet pistons when I have the cages out so no carbon build up here either.

 

I also realize all my MMO bashing will cause some Murphy jinx on some other area on my car.  As the rest of you dance around your MMO jugs and stick pins in your GM Engineer Doll.

 

Why, even the boys on Hamilton Avenue in Flint saw the light for 1924 and went to overhead pressure lubrication.

 

Thought of Terry at lunch when I picked up a new can of PB Blaster.  #2 Exhaust cage had sucked another pool of PB Blaster down last night when I walked by the Buick this morning and I gave it my last shot of PB.

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Mystery Spot.jpg

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