Posted by dave horvath on Sunday, September 05, 2004 at 8:47PM :
A guy named Terry stopped by on his way to Beckly, WV from Baltimore, MD to buy some cowl lights I had. After talking trucks for a while, we thought we'd check some of my old wiper motors to see if they were any good. I started up the 1950 PW to use the vacuum.
Right away, Terry says "it's missing". I thought it wasn't running right, but had no idea why or what was wrong. He pulled the plug wires off the distributor one at a time and the engine ran rougher each time till we got to number 4. He said "number 4's not firing". He pulled the plug and I turned the engine over, no compression at all in number 4. We tried a new plug, still nothing.
He said it could be a stuck valve from sitting so long since being rebuilt. One way to find out was to pull the head and take look down the cylinder at the valves.
Well, we took off all of the accesories and pulled the head. Number four was as clean and shiny as it was the day I brought it back from having it "professionally" rebuilt. The exhaust valve wouldn't seat, and would just spin around.
We removed the fender, splash panel, and valve covers to have a look. There was no clearance whatsoever under number four exhaust valve. We adjusted it cold to .014. Checked the intake, almost no clearance there either. We adjusted it to .012. We went ahead and checked all the rest of the valves. Not a single valve had anywhere near enough clearance.
Closed her back up and blessed the head gasket. Started right up but smoked a little bit. We adjusted the idle mixture and the timing, and now it runs like a dream. You can just hear the valves tap, tap, tapping.
Four hours after he arrived, he set off on his way again. We never did check the wiper motors. He's gonna come back soon to swap parts, show me his truck, and hopefully help me get the wiring hooked up right. You meet the nicest people in this hobby.
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